It may well be that no outrage yet carried out under the Trump regime has so galvanized popular disgust and opposition as the decision to implement a policy of separating children from parents when they arrive at the Mexican-US border. Although the news reports from the detention centers are not as revealing as they could be […]
Boats Against the Current
The desperate search for a bathroom in New York City teaches one much about the surrounding world and one’s place in it. With my pockets empty but my bladder and small intestine poised to burst, I stilt down 9th Avenue struggling to maintain the poise and composure necessary for the daily fight to satisfy basic […]
Viva Mexico! Dispatches from the World Cup
Little Italy in the Bronx is slowly waking up from the previous night’s revelry. A man wearing a “Kiss me, I’m Italian” t-shirt sets up his makeshift sidewalk kitchen, soon to be selling zeppoles, sausage, and peppers on the main strip of Arthur Avenue. To his left a Mexican family sets up their own stand, […]
Scottsboro
We’re driving down Route 72 Saturday morning from Huntsville to Scottsboro, a small blue collar city of fourteen thousand that the Tennessee wraps around like a fat brown snake before uncoiling down river. Scottsboro, that Alabama town historically stained with the legacy of the Scottsboro Boys trials, even if many of the later trials took […]
Whittling
R was showing me this hunk of wood he preserved from a tree that fell. He wants to make an anvil out of it. With what’s left over, he was hoping to carve a Wind God. As bicyclists, the Wind God is ever present, a source misery and a source of delight. In my case, […]
Guntersville, Alabama: Eugene Debs, Sweet Tea and the Quest for Cheap Housing
The first time I saw an unfurled and flown Confederate flag in Alabama was about four years ago on my first trip to Guntersville. In a small squatter trailer camp nestled in a field off Route 431 , the main drag linking northeast Alabama to points south, was a large weather–beaten Stars and Bars draped […]