In Cuba, it’s ‘Complicado’
What do you get when you drop into Havana, Cuba for two days and start turning around to snap photographs in every direction? You get complications.
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“Bring Sunshine When You Come”
A song for families that have lost someone in this pandemic. And for the many people putting their lives on the line to save our lives, plus the helpers who run to the disaster, instead of away May all see sunshine soon.
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Essays
Somewhere, Not Nowhere
QUOTE of the DAY: "The challenge, these days, is to be somewhere as opposed to nowhere, actually to belong to some particular place, invest oneself in it, draw strength and courage from it ..." Read on at the link.
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Essays
“The Key To My Grandfather’s House”
What unites us is that we are all immigrants of one kind or another. Here is one family's tale out of the hills of Calabria to the shores of Lake Erie in Ohio and beyond.
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Getting Ready for Loss in a Pandemic
A huge wave of dying and grief is headed our way from the Covid-19 pandemic. And for that we must be prepared to share the burden—and share the joy, even—of coming together even as things fall apart.
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Essays
Nature’s Not Sheltering in Place
t looks like the violets have returned from wherever violets over-winter. They are small, but distinctive. Kind of like the Pekinese of the front yard. Meanwhile, out on the deck the cardinals are just as prevalent as the violets. Flitting about like there's no tomorrow. Maybe for us. Not for them, it looks like.
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The Long Life of a PopCult
As we settle into self-containment and life constricts to several rooms, I wish to look around and note folks still publishing worthy original content online. Back in the Days of Yore, pre-Plague, when we were all young and innocent and didn't tweet-rage or sh*tpost, there were these things called 'blogs.'
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The Joy of Little Things and Carrots, too
If we cannot feel joy in daily pandemic life at the moment, perhaps we can find some teensy joys in our shut-down experiences. as daily human interaction telescopes down to our living room couch. A contagion meditation on carrot videos, Falstaff and a 'furiouser and furiouser' ruling regime
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“Dear Doug Reynolds …”
We all let out a sigh of relief in the building when HD Media bought the Charleston Gazette-Mail. A West Virginia guy with deep pockets, if a middle-of-the-road, non-fire-breathing dragon sort. But still! A sort-of, quasi-liberal new owner, for one of America’s renowned, way-liberal, fire-breathing, storied small newspapers. But... did we get that wrong?
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Essays
Sister Mary Pellicane at 98
Sister Mary Pellicane has been at the business of being a nun—and being alive—a long while. On the occasion of her 98th birthday, meet this still feisty, still questing nun's life story.
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What Have You Done With All the Jerks?
What do you do when people act in a totally, unexpected, strange, unnerving manner in an age when civility is in the ER hooked up to an IV?
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May You Find Your Inner PEZ Once More
A few words to our PEZ Family as we go our separate ways. And may you be full of PEZ again some day!
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You didn’t go one-on-one with the One-Armed Bandit
The life of a journalist is filled with mundane daily tasks. Get the calendar edited. Rewrite a press release. Track down a source who isn’t returning e-mails. Then, you get to talk to Gary Mays. The West Virginia native, had his left arm shot off at age 5. What happened next was the stuff of legend and lore, complicated by…
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