Well, here we are. I said I’d make a post about worthy charities every week until the US election, and-this is it. I’ve enjoyed doing it, actually, and may at some point do another series of charity posts just because I feel like it. Because I am nowhere near out of good charities. Not by a long shot.

Today I wanted to talk about arts organizations ( Read more... )

One of the most frustrating things about the way the American news cycle has devolved into over a year of all-presidential-election all-the-time is that events in the wider world get downplayed, ignored, or at best recast as opportunities for US Presidential candidates to make a gaffe (or, I suppose, dodge one).

Meanwhile, Hurricane Matthew is yet ( Read more... )

Every week between now and the election-thankfully not that many weeks left-I’m posting about a charity. This week’s is Alliance for the Great Lakes. (WordPress has been weird about dropping my links when I publish posts, so I’m going to write out the URL here even though it’s awkward: https:// ( Read more... )

I have a new story out in Nature, and you can go read it: The Most Important Thing. I also did a guest blog post for their blog, about how I wrote it, why, what for: here. It doesn’t actually pertain to Arlo Guthrie performing the pic. I just went on a minor autopilot for that part.

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux

Remember last week, when I said I was going to post weekly about charities between now and the election? Yep, that was last week.

This week’s charity is 360 Communities, formerly known as the Community Action Council. They have multiple sites in the south Minneapolis metro, providing shelters for people who are fleeing domestic violence, food ( Read more... )

Okay, kids, new ballgame.

I don’t have anything insightful to say about the US presidential debate going on tonight. I’m not even watching. But I’m pretty sure that the things I would have to say would be disgusted, and possibly profane, and also that if you’re going to vote for one of those two candidates and don’t know which one yet, I don’t know ( Read more... )

It’s all over but the shouting from the RNC. Wait. It was all shouting all along, and we have three and a half months of shouting left before the general. And the DNC still to come. Well, luckily for everybody there are tons more great American poets to read? I guess?

In the meantime, the rest of Langston Hughes. He was a national figure by this ( Read more... )

The 1940s! Surely there’s nothing to be said about combating overly simplified political narratives, propaganda, infighting, and or demagoguery in that decade, right?

…um.

The poems Langston Hughes wrote in the 1940s did not stop calling American domestic politics to account. The Bitter River was a cry of anguish and anger after two more very young ( Read more... )

It’s a relief when people get in trouble for what they actually said. It makes things easier, more straightforward. What does that have to do with the RNC going on? Well, you decide, that’s up to you. But Langston Hughes, well. Most of the stuff that people try to call him out for, oh yes, he said that stuff. He did that stuff.

The context of him ( Read more... )

I turned on my Twitter feed long enough to see that Donald Trump is the official nominee, as we have known he would be for weeks now. They have various people doing the sorts of things a convention does. So here’s your reminder from Langston Hughes that I, Too.

“I, Too” (also often called “I, Too, Sing America”) is both prophetic in an era when our ( Read more... )