To mark its 50th anniversary, the Nature Conservancy commissioned a group of 12 diverse photographers to document areas which the Conservancy helps to protect and has deemed “The Last Great Places.” The show at the MMAA is a fine selection of about 50 pieces running concurrently to a larger exhibit also touring the country. Hope … Read more
Church, Bierstadt, Kensett. These were the superstars of their era, painters already a part of our budding national mythology from the early 19th century. The 10 men who authored the 90-plus paintings here did as much to create the American sense of self as nearly any writer or political leader of the day. What they … Read more
We’re pleased as punch that our friends over at The Loft and Utne Reader are in cahoots to produce this glossy new lit magazine, which premieres on the national newsstand at the end of the month. Actually, this nifty project secretly triangulates with Ruminator; Editor Bart Schneider was the man who put the Hungry Mind … Read more
In his first memoir, All Over But the Shoutin’, Pulitzer-winning reporter Rick Bragg told of his mother’s triumphant struggle to raise three boys in the face of grinding poverty and an abusive, alcoholic husband. Ava’s Man , new to paperback, takes the story back a generation to chronicle his maternal grandfather, Charlie Bundrum, a carpenter … Read more
Norah Labiner is in love with language. She writes in a great tidal wave of words, logophilia sometimes cresting into babble as she races to tell her story, then jumps back to pick up a detail dropped in the rush, then joyously forward again. Like her first novel, Our Sometime Sister , Miniatures is a … Read more
Susan Power is known for her “powerful characters,” but she’s a powerful character herself. She was born in Chicago in 1961 of a mother from Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota and a father from Ithaca, New York. She went through Harvard Law School before entering the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and knocking off her MFA. … Read more
In his column, “Pick that trash up, homeboy!” [Free the Jackson Five!, May] Clinton Collins wrote, “Oh, I can hear the apologist now…” Well, Mr. Collins, if you step out beyond your own back yard into the community, you can see the institutions that those apologists have built: Pilot City, Father Project, Turning Point, StairStep … Read more
Jeannine Ouellette reverts to simplistic name-calling in her column about Promise Keepers [Wife, Interrupted, August]. Ms. Ouellette states that Promise Keepers has “misogynistic, homophobic, racist underpinnings.” If we examine these labels a bit more, Ms. Ouellette’s charges come up woefully lacking. First, PK has made racial reconciliation a cornerstone of the organization. One of its … Read more
There’s a new father at the restaurant where I work. I asked about his daughter the other day. “She’s doing great,” Dave said, radiating paternal pride. “I took Maya to her six month appointment this afternoon. The doctor said that out of a hundred babies born that same day, she’s the biggest one. Heaviest and … Read more
Uncle Tom. Aunt Jemima. Clarence Thomas. For most white people, these names represent, respectively, a literary figure, a picture on a pancake box, and a conservative African-American Supreme Court justice. For those of us on the darker side, they represent something much more ominous. Being called one of these names is tantamount to being called … Read more