He wore a hardhat and mustard-colored overalls, a working man’s uniform like the other men on the site. His demeanor said he was the one in charge. A small crew of younger guys looked to him for direction as their towering crane slowly inched elephantine slabs of curved, unpainted, unburnished...
When is a secret no secret at all? Magic — stage magic of the sort that makes elephants disappear — relies on the best efforts of the pyrotechnician and the orchestra and the lighting designer. There is pomp and there is circumstantial evidence of a good time. It’s all quite earnest, quite...
Fíor Schríobh is a virtual exhibition on Instagram documenting the fascinating bilingual street signs of Dublin city and shining a light on the beautiful ancient Irish script seen on these signs. The word is pronounced feer-SHCREE-uv in the Irish language (Gaeilge) and means True (Fíor) Script (Scríobh). As the curator...
The many times Texas leadership had failed the people of Texas, as well as failed to adequately respond to multiple health and natural disasters during 2020 -2022...
When I first began hearing news about critical race theory (CRT), I wondered how it had become such a hotly debated topic in the political arena. Echoing the sentiments of other state legislatures across the country, Texas Republicans advocated limiting what public school teachers may teach regarding the nation's historical...
Slavery didn’t end in the United States on January 1, 1863, with President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. As the National Archives notes, the proclamation. In fact, it wasn’t until the summer of 1865 — two and a half years after the proclamation — that slaves in Texas were informed of their freedom. On...
In Dallas, the sky was big and blue and the air was thin, as if in the mountains. I felt a slight dizziness during my two days there, staying in a room on Gaston Avenue. It was December, a couple weeks before Christmas. My host was bald, heavyset, and unkempt. He had...
During Scotland’s lockdown, I had the good fortune of stumbling upon the work of a writer whose name had never turned up in all my many years of Hebrew/Jewish education: H. Leivick. Perhaps he was too Socialist. Or too Yiddish. Too, somehow, American. Maybe all three. But, somehow, in 2020...
I begin as a twitch in my father’s groin. I’ve imagined this moment when two people who think they love each other decide to fuck. I am a condom. I am a puddle of blood on the kitchen floor, my mother standing barefoot in me, screaming. My father washes her...
Among the few pleasant surprises of 2021 are the emails I’ve received from Sady Sparks, a new resident of Austin. She emailed to inquire into the status of the journal — does it still exist? — and to tell me she enjoyed my introductory note to the second print issue of...
