Barbara Hamby: Ode to Hardware Stores
Where have all the hardware stores gone—dusty, sixty-watt
warrens with wood floors, cracked linoleum,
poured concrete painted blood red?
Thom Hartmann: Will US Democracy Survive? This Is a Threshold Moment
The moment is urgent. If we don’t speak up and rise up now, we may not get another chance.
Video: Let There Be Light (John Huston’s 1946 documentary about PTSD)
The film was intended to educate the public about post-traumatic stress disorder and its treatment among returning veterans, but its unscripted presentation of mental disability caused the U.S. government to suppress the film.
Lisa M. Hase-Jackson: Post Solstice Academics
my ancestors are
druid tree-dwellers, forest dancers
intimate with boreal communities
and life’s brief promise—
Michael Simms: Two Poems Inspired by Sean Sexton
Some people should be allowed to live forever
on the basis of our world’s great need. — Sean Sexton
Kenneth A. Carlson: Does Character Still Matter in the Age of Trump?
Democracies with high levels of corruption and low trust in leaders’ integrity are significantly more prone to backsliding toward authoritarianism.
Tony Hoagland: Sweet Ruin
Maybe that is what he was after,
my father, when he arranged, ten years ago,
to be discovered in a mobile home
with a woman named Roxanne, an attractive,
recently divorced masseuse.
Sharon Zhang: After Bombing 6 Countries This Year, Netanyahu Pins Israeli Isolation on Muslims
“We’ll need to develop our weapons industry — we’re going to be Athens and super Sparta combined,” Netanyahu said.
George Yancy: Authoritarian Wave in US Shows Democracy’s Fragility, South African Scholar Says
Trump’s attacks are buttressed by his commitment to an authoritarian playbook that wallows in weaponizing differences against the backdrop of creating historical myths — in this case about the supremacy of whiteness.
James Crews: Light and Dark
Half-awake, I lose myself in a pool
of late morning sun and leaf-shadows
flashing on the floor outside my bedroom,
what the Japanese call komorebi—light
and dark held in the same container
of a single moment, as we hold them in us,
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis: Beware Rich Men Quoting the Bible to Punish the Poor
There is never a suggestion, of course, that the rich, who have functionally stolen people’s wages and engorged themselves by denying them healthcare, are in any way to blame.
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer: Design
Whatever is sacred, I feel it in canyons,
these earthen temples to surrender—
such holy architecture
with their deep and ancient silence
Chris Hedges: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk
The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States.
Chana Bloch: A Marriage
Theirs was the one with the noisy bedsprings.
How does a child solve a riddle like that?
Scritchity-screech
—are they fighting again?
