Charles Davidson: Bannocks (Loaves) of Bread
Fifty-five years ago, I spent a memorable week on the tiny island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, the site to which St. Columba came from Ireland in A.D. 563, to inaugurate the Christian mission to northern Britain.
Linda Parsons: Visitations
Everything seems to glow richer before first frost, a last hurrah before the ghostly breath passes over.
Rebecca Gordon: It’s Almost Twenty Years Since 9/11
Perhaps the horrors of 2020—the fires and hurricanes, Trump’s vicious attacks on democracy, the death, sickness, and economic dislocation caused by Covid-19—can force a real conversation about national security in 2021. Maybe this time we can finally ask whether trying to prop up a dying empire actually makes us—or indeed the world—any safer.
Olivia Pace: Policing keeps us safe? It’s a myth. Here’s why.
When you peel back the facade, police and military perpetuate violence on a personal and professional level.
Paul Christensen: The Old Year in my Hand
I am beginning to believe democracy survived a profound crisis, and is about to show that a flimsy idea proved itself as durable as the trunk of an ancient maple tree.
Stephen Muecke: What Aboriginal people know about the pathways of knowledge
What can living in one place for 60,000 years teach a people?
Paul Christensen: The Testament of Winter
The wind last night was fierce and numbingly cold. It moved like a carving knife through the remaining remnants of summer, easing away the reluctant last memories we have of the warm and sunny past.
Michael Simms: Blue Notes
I think of Fats Waller whose left hand leaped down the keys, showing the path for every jazz pianist who followed, including the great Art Tatum and the minor Billy Joel.
Gerry LaFemina: Collection
In my life I’ve gathered maybe five perfect rocks. It isn’t that they were smooth or handsomely speckled with rare minerals. No, they were often misshapen, pitted, easily forgettable.
Paul Christensen: Election Terrors
No one seems to know what to think or how to feel right now. The stress is building and the threats to this election are so poisonous, it makes you quiver with fear.
Tom Engelhardt: Beyond Our Control
It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across country with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught moment.
Andrea Mazzarino: How the War Came Home, Big Time
For the Proud Boys to say that they reject racism and venerate housewives did little more than provide them with a veneer of social acceptability, even as they planned armed counter-rallies in progressive cities like Providence and Portland with the explicit purpose of inciting violence among Black Lives Matter protesters and their allies.
Vincent Van Gogh: Art and Soul
A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke.
