Just after the New Year, I picked up my first pair of reading glasses at the Family Dollar around the block from my house. It wasn’t part of a New Year’s resolution; in fact, it was a long time coming. Although I have always had good eyesight and have never worn glasses, I scheduled an […]
The Thames Delta is Our Backyard: On Wilko Johnson
Bang! – The Unstoppable Force Meets the Immoveable Object From Oil City Confidential I’m listening to the latest Wilko Johnson record called Blow Your Mind. A few years before that, I listened a lot to his previous album Going Back Home, a joint venture with Roger Daltry, The Who singer. And way before that, I […]
The Big Takeover
On January 6th a determined mob from across the United States descended on Washington, D.C. They rumbled with police, overturned barricades, breached the perimeter of the United States Capitol, and smashed their way into the building itself – all while both houses were in session. Inside, the insurgents played cat and mouse with police and […]
Top 20 of 2020
We entered 2020 with a renewed commitment to the Hard Crackers project. The year has shaped up to be one that none of us could have imagined, not even in our wildest dreams. We’d like to take this moment and revisit some of the ways we contributed to documenting daily life in the midst of […]
Middle-Class War: A Visit to Staten Island’s Autonomous Zone
Transmission rates are on the rise again in New York City. Hospital beds are filling, the temperature is dropping, and most have accepted a renewed lockdown to be a foregone conclusion. But the talk of the town has been a humble pub on Staten Island’s East Shore pushing against the trend. As the transmission rate […]
Ho Ho This!
Christmas is here and if you live in America you know this because the bombardment starts on Thanksgiving. The television commercials are a dead giveaway, plus the specially named shopping days, “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday.” The most insulting ads are the car ones. There’s no greater Christmas surprise than buying a Land Rover SUV […]