Our America

No One Likes a Bully

No One Likes a Bully

In 1991, during the confirmation hearing of William Barr as George H. W. Bush’s Attorney General, a lawyer named Jimmy Lohman published a piece in an obscure periodical, the Florida Flambeau. Lohman had been a classmate of Barr in high school and again later, at Columbia, and he remembered Barr well: “Billy . . .

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Going Postal

Going Postal

In 1968 I was living a half block from San Francisco’s Haight Street, I’d just lost my job, and though I didn’t consider myself a hippie, I was stoned twenty-four hours a day. My speech and the condition of my eyes made that obvious, so how was I going to support myself? . . .

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Journey to the Border Wall

Journey to the Border Wall

Photo: The Rio Grande Valley from Mount Cristo Rey, alongside the “GoFundMe” border wall. Almost immediately after landing at the airport, we changed all of our plans. We had a long list of museums to see and people to talk to as we embarked on our borderlands journey to West Texas, but almost . . .

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Local Life under Lockdown

Local Life under Lockdown

When the Massachusetts Review approached me to do a photo essay on local life under the COVID-19 lockdown, my first thought was, How could I possibly capture the pandemic? Could I physically do this? On March 5th, I had undergone rotator cuff surgery. Forty years of heavy cameras slung around my shoulders, the tools of . . .

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Decency

Decency

“I have here in my hand a list of two hundred and five people that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.”-Senator Joseph R. McCarthy (Republican, Wisconsin) 09 February 1950 Having . . .

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Lewis and Trump

Lewis and Trump

The differences between the two men’s backgrounds could hardly be greater: one was born in 1940, black, the son of sharecroppers, in a small town in Alabama. By the age of six, he had seen only two white people. The other was born in 1946, white, in New York City, the son . . .

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Panteha Abareshi“Chronically Ill and Severe” Artist

Panteha Abareshi“Chronically Ill and Severe” Artist

The Massachusetts Review first featured the work of interdisciplnary artist Panteha Abareshi in Summer 2018 (volume 59. issue 2), when she was 18. I have been keeping an eye on her amazing progress. Such strong work across disciplines. Here is how Panteha introduces herself on her website: “My name is Panteha Abareshi, . . .

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The Presence of the Past of Things

The Presence of the Past of Things

Some time ago I visited an elderly couple who lived on the outskirts of a small German city. I had never met them, but I already knew some things about them: I knew that they were my girlfriend’s paternal grandparents, that they were readers of Theodor Fontane, that he had been a . . .

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John Lewis’s America

John Lewis’s America

Photo: Selma High School students (l-r) Grady Broadnax, Fatima Salaam, Tad Bartlett, Jacinta Lake Thomas, and Malika Sanders Fortier, on the steps of the Selma Board of Education building, January 8, 1990. Patricia Cavanaugh McCarter, photographer.   I was six when my family moved to Selma, Alabama, during the recession that closed . . .

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His Way with Words

His Way with Words

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 . . .

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