5 seconds give or take. That’s all that is required for Alec Baldwin to disrupt your life. It was a normal day. I had stepped inside the corporate pharmacy to purchase a feminine hygiene product for my then partner. The cornucopia of options left me daunted and she had given no further instruction. I find […]
Let the Blood Moon Shine
Review of When the Moon Turns to Blood by Leah Sottile Twelve Books, 2022, $15.99 – 320 pages Over a decade ago, I came across a fascinating story about whom Vice News had dubbed the “Mormon Mansons”. The LeBaron Family is certainly a frightening bunch, a polygamist sect about 5 schisms removed from the Church […]
The Last Bailout
It was Sam’s last day with Bail Out Oklahoma, and he felt both relieved and somber walking down the corridor leading to C7 the final time. Ralph the Roach, the long dead and desiccated unofficial mascot of the jail’s visitation area remained unmolested in his final resting place on the carpet where he’d lain for […]
Hymns and Arias – Rugby in Wales
“Rugby is a wonderful show: dance, opera and, suddenly, the blood of a killing.” Richard Burton – Welsh actor There’s this old gag. Elvis Presley, James Brown and Tom Jones go fishing together in a small boat on the ocean. The craft gets capsized and they are all swallowed up by a gigantic whale. Deep […]
Plowshares into Swords: John Brown and the Poet of Rage: An Appreciation of the Work of Russell Banks
The novelist Russell Banks died on January 7, 2023. We are publishing this appreciation of his work by Beth Henson that first appeared in Race Traitor #10 (Winter, 1999). Beth does a wonderful job describing Russell Banks’s “voyages” through the discontents of people’s daily lives. The Hard Crackers editors are especially thankful to Beth for agreeing […]
Cosmos!
On October 1, 1977, Edson Arantes do Nascimento, a/k/a “Pelé” played his last game as a professional footballer. The game was played at New Jersey’s Giants Stadium, across the Hudson River from midtown Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Station in New York City, a truly seedy place, but one where soccer fans without cars could drop […]