From High School Drop Out to World-Renowned Fashionista As a closeted goth (which wasn’t exactly cool in Bronx public schools in the late 90s) who scribbled dark and depressing poetry on the margins of her notebooks, I found a kindred spirit in Lee Alexander McQueen. I saw “Savage Beauty” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art […]
Escaping into music and fashion: Whitney Houston and Alexander McQueen
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 […]
Homesick for a Place That Doesn’t Exist
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 […]
In Memoriam: Lowell May
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 […]
Get Out While You Can!”
“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 […]
Defining Hard Crackers: From the Editors
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; […]