Essays Archives - Page 20 of 53

Marriage, That Magical Contract

Late Marriage is one of the few films concerning marriage bold enough to suggest that our modern insistence on personal fulfillment in romance is the double-edged sword that brings two people together but can also poison them with expectations that tear romance apart. And it is one of the more honest films about marriage in its open, forthright acknowledgment that the institution—and in this film, marriage is most certainly an institution—involves far more than the forces and desires of two people.

Essays

The Rise and Fall of The “Empire” of One American University

By John Griswold

The story of Delyte Morris and the Southern Illinois University he created is what Robert A. Harper calls “a story of unlikely success and a tragic end.” It does read like an American tragedy, somehow, based in a rustic start, ambition, ingenuity, and the fallibility of good intentions.

Essays

Mama, Don’t Take My Kodachrome Away

By Jeannette Cooperman

In an artist’s hands, digital technology is a toolkit whose wands and transformations grant almost magical powers. But what about the rest of us, holding up our phones everywhere we go? Now we, too, live as Photographers.

Essays

The Rise and Fall of The “Empire” of One American University

By John Griswold

The story of Delyte Morris and the Southern Illinois University he created is what Robert A. Harper calls “a story of unlikely success and a tragic end.” It does read like an American tragedy, somehow, based in a rustic start, ambition, ingenuity, and the fallibility of good intentions.

Essays

Finding a Decorated Army Nurse

By John Griswold

WWII’s most famous correspondent, a combat nurse, and the need to remember our sacrifice.

Essays

Not with a Whimper but with a Bang

By Jeannette Cooperman

Instead of trying to predict how soon the world will end or reaching for a static, reassuringly rigid worldview, we need to take in new information every day, brush our teeth with it, readjust our internal model of the world as we go.

Essays

Finding a Decorated Army Nurse

By John Griswold

She had likely been in more countries and combat zones than WWII correspondent Ernie Pyle and had helped save many lives, maybe even someone in your family. But few remember her from life, the records are mostly lost, and I know of no markers.

Essays

Why James Cameron’s Skynet Is Even More Disturbing as Reality

By Jeannette Cooperman

Extreme and eccentric though they be, transhumanists represent a movement to take control of human evolution. Artificial intelligence will, they predict, accelerate itself into a superintelligence far more powerful than anything our human brains are capable of. The consequences? Nothing less than immortality, some say. Certainly an end to much of our disease and suffering. Maybe an end to us.

Essays

Comics and Black America

By Clifford Thompson

Comic Art and African Americans

Essays

Whose Problem Is Lake Charles, Louisiana?

By John Griswold

Lake Charles, Louisiana, is a particularly sensitive canary in the coal mine of global warming. Not only is southwest Louisiana low-lying in the age of sea-rise; the land is also subsiding faster than just about anywhere on earth, and water courses through everything.

Essays