THE MOUNTAIN – Jim Krosschell
Tuesday, January 15, 2013 11:07 — 0 Comments
Downtown Hamilton was slightly off-limits for the teenagers who lived on the Mountain. Our parents never told us outright to avoid the girls and the bars and the roughnecks coming out of second shift at the giant Stelco plant on the shores of the lake. It was just assumed we would. Where I had come from just before this sojourn in Canada – a tiny town called Prinsburg on the plains of Minnesota – the parents would have declaimed in school board meetings and the Ladies Aid against the sin festering in a big city such as this, as if […]
MINOTAUR – Sean Finucane Toner
Tuesday, January 8, 2013 13:22 — 0 Comments
I hear rumors of light through my bedroom window: gulls calling to each other, children playing in my neighbor’s yard, a sander grinding as another neighbor polishes his boat. The doorbell to my grandmother’s shore house rings in the hallway and I turn off my book on tape, ditch the headphones, knuckle my way out of my room and down the hall. I touch the back of a chair here and there as I move through the dining room, toe-tap the bottom of the living room couch and finally reach the screen door.
The Last Game – Shaun Scott
Saturday, January 5, 2013 15:49 — 0 Comments
I watched the Seattle Seahawks’ last regular season game of their 2012-2013 campaign at one of the few sports bars in the city’s young and trendy Capitol Hill neighborhood, a stripped-down, dank place called “Bill’sâ€. I was waiting for my college friend Chris, who was in town from San Francisco. Chris had a ruthless hangover, which impaired his ability to make and keep plans. We schemed to meet for kick-off, but I sat through the first half alone surrounded by other people, clapping politely at the TV while perfect strangers at the bar lived and died loudly with every play. […]
13 Years Ago – Ahamefule J. Oluo
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 14:06 — 1 Comment
13 years ago, on my 16th birthday, my grandpa handed me a beautifully wrapped package.  It was the size of a cake box and weighed a little less than a six-pack of bottled soda. My grandpa was never one to give elaborate presents but the intricate wrapping job and shiny bow gave me hope that this might be something substantial. I eagerly opened my gift. Inside I found wads of crumpled newspapers cushioning 6 empty soda bottles that had been placed in the box to add weight…and, at the bottom of the box, the thing that every 16 year old wants to see on his birthday, a key chain. Typically key chains are good because typically key chains have keys […]
Fibonacci, Bread, Mathematics, And Some Mention Of Sardines And Poetry – Mark Ari
Monday, November 5, 2012 15:41 — 3 Comments
Fibonacci, frustrated by a career of mathematical obsession on the question of spirals and how they got that way, gave it all up, opened an Italian bakery and invented the lovely grilled bread—crusty and dipped in herbed garlic—that came to bear his name. Alas, it was the favorite frippery of Mussolini so, when Caesar met his meat hook, Fibonacci bread was cast into the shadow of repressed history. For a time, it could be found, though rarely, in small bakeries operated out of homes in Sicilian villages and Portuguese sailor bars where it was quite naturally served with spinach and […]
November In America – Shaun Scott
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 12:27 — 0 Comments
It’s November in America again, and I can’t think of two films so significant, loaded and well-done as “Rocky†and “Taxi Driver†to use as a centerpiece in these next few pages for a few reflections about a country in its holiday and election seasons. But before we get into all that, a digression:
What Happened At The World’s Fair: Elvis And The Future In Seattle – Jim Demetre
Thursday, October 18, 2012 14:03 — 8 Comments
In the realm of music, Elvis Presley is an iconic American figure who became, before his death in 1977 at age 42, as close to a messiah as one could get in our deeply religious and celebrity-obsessed country. On film, however, the boy from Tupelo, Mississippi always portrayed scrappy, backcountry upstarts on the make. And while Elvis may have been the King of Rock & Roll, in Hollywood his status was more that of a beleaguered, indentured serf than of cinematic royalty.Â
We Regret The Illusion: Typos, Fact Checkers And The Cult Of Sic – Michael Thomsen
Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:39 — 0 Comments
“We don’t have fact checkers,” an editor once told me, “so if there’s a mistake, it’s your ass.” I was writing a difficult story, based on months of research about a subject that had no widely accepted experimental record. In the process of working through six different drafts, we wrestled back and forth over my word choices, him trimming explanations he thought too long, and then asking for more specificity about other ideas I’d condensed into single-sentence glosses. In almost every draft I discovered a note where he would ask me to fact check a sentence he had put into […]
On Being Nominated For A ‘Genius Award’ – Shaun Scott
Friday, September 21, 2012 10:57 — 0 Comments
It dawned on me awhile back that my most beloved professional and recreational activities in life all share the word “shootâ€: pool, basketball, and especially film.
Tea Partying – Thom Fain
Wednesday, September 5, 2012 12:44 — 1 Comment
TEA PARTYING, PT. I: A Weekend with the Radical Right in Washington, D.C.
The answer isn't poetry, but rather language
- Richard Kenney
