HARD CRACKERS

Part I Like most Americans I am obsessed with celebrities. I am often that annoying person holding up the line at the local Rite Aid with her one item (usually Twix caramel chocolate bar), thumbing idly through the latest People magazine, scoffing at the newest celebrity break up and feeling vindicated that romantic love is […]


Whether we realize it or not, we all need a sense of community, a sense of belonging, a place to call home. A place that, no matter where else we find ourselves, 50 miles away or halfway around the globe, always calls us back to it.

Even those of us who live in the atomized, hyperindividualistic […]

Hard Crackers editor Lowell May died at his Denver home on the morning of December 19. Born in 1949, he grew up under harsh conditions on a farm near Lorimer, Iowa. He went to high school in Hampton, Iowa (class of 1967), where he played on the football team. He attended the University of Iowa […]

“Can I get a ride to the State Store?” “Sure,” I said “Hop in.” Leon lives upstairs, mid-40s, Black, with an oversized head on a small frame, talkative and personable. He’s a Huntsville native and knows the region like the back of his hand; that makes him my go-to source for local information. Leon drives […]

1. Modern American society is a ticking time-bomb where an impending social explosion is hinted at by everyday violence of all kinds— the abuse of children; physical and sexual attacks by men against women, against other men and against those who do not conform to conventional images of men and women; the mistreatment of animals; […]

Exclusive: Dutch hospitals to drop U.S. body brokers, cite ethical concerns AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Two major Dutch hospitals say they will stop importing human body parts from American firms, which they have been doing without any regulation for a decade. The hospitals told Reuters in recent weeks they made their decisions on ethical grounds. The move comes […]