From the Blog

His Way with Words

July 10, 2020 - By Ward Schumaker

Donald Trump finds some stiff competition in the words of former presidents:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident...” Thomas Jefferson
“A house divided against itself cannot stand...” Abraham Lincoln.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick...” Theodore Roosevelt
“The only thing we have to fear...” Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“The buck stops here...” Harry S. Truman
“Ask not what your country can do for you...” John F. Kennedy

And so many others.

Yet Donald has a way with words, a way like no other. No matter how often we might assume we’ve already heard his best, he still manages to awaken us each day with some even more amazing statement on Twitter.

We may be...

To Do Justice to the Experience

July 9, 2020 - By Jim Hicks

(Melanerpes carolinus. Photo by Toni Herkalokoch, for the Audubon Society)

To capture a life in words is not possible, especially when words were—more than anything thing else—the very stuff of that life. It seems to me, then, that only one way could pass for close to adequate...

10 Questions for Alexandra Kulik & Julian Senn-Raemont

July 6, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

Through the window, the day probably looks less distant that it is, Sebastian decided. Or he himself wasn't ready to interact with it. Ones step into a new day changes the course of time, he read once on a sign at the mall. For today he chose a T-shirt with blue and gray geometric shapes, and loose underpants. He stared into the emptiness of Brighton Street, without having the apocalyptic sentiment that a personless street is an empty street, or any other train of thought. The sunlight strode in and out of the breaks in shade. He watched this with all his mind but no judgment. Sebastian was an innocent boy.
—from "Through the Window," Volume 61, Issue 2 (Summer 2020)

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This Is Now

July 4, 2020 - By Kwame Ture

Editor's Note: On July 3, 2020 ("Independence Day, observed"), the POTUS delivered a speech on illegally occupied land sacred to Native Americans, with a monument sculpted by a friend of the KKK as his backdrop. To many, the aim behind his intentionally divisive words seemed clear: to win reelection by igniting a new Civil War. In response...

Back to Basics: Whitman's Brew du Monde

July 2, 2020 - By Marsha Bryant

A lager is a lager is a lager. Unless it’s a Lager+. And that’s what I deem the sixth beer in the Leaves of Grass tribute series from Bell’s Brewery: Salut au Monde! Bell’s dubs it an Unfiltered Rustic Lager, their version of a Kellerbier. Rustic and unfiltered can also describe the persona that Walt Whitman cultivated in “Salut au Monde!” and other poems from Leaves of Grass. As I mentioned in my review of beer I in this series, the poet frequented...