The tram conductors will strike tomorrow— Efren buttoned the top of his coat and adjusted his scarf. With old men it is always politics or the past, and usually they are the same. The too-loud discussions closed as the door closed in the bar behind him. He crossed to the other side of the canal. …
48 miles northwest In January of 2005 a mudslide covered the beachside town of La Conchita. Known as punta until 1925, it was founded in the late 19th century by men working on the South Pacific Railroad. The landslide destroyed thirty-six of one hundred sixty homes. Ten people died. The railroad still a vein running …
I’m all confused. What if she hadn’t gone to Emergency that last time? She didn’t want to go. I told her she had to. “Listen, you’re sick. You can’t stay at home. We can’t chance it. You have what seems like pneumonia again. After four times in two years, I can recognize the signs. You’ve …
Like the cramped sushi bar I found in Kyoto packed with friendly businessmen and laughing smokers, and the independent Tokyo record store I found filled with collectible blues and jazz, I stumbled on Jazz In Rokudenashi by accident. It was a jazu kissa on a brick side street in Kyoto’s historic Gion-Shijō district. Jazu kissa …
A lot of your work in medical history examines people and conditions which are considered by the larger society to be “monstrous” or “freakish.” What do you think it means to “monsterize” these people? I think humans are fascinated by differences, including extreme differences, and also have a tendency to want to say to themselves …
Sarah McCord can’t quite remember when she discovered that PubMed was still calling conjoined twins “monsters.” She does, however, remember being startled. “It bothered me,” she wrote to me, “because it seemed like there were all kinds of news stories about conjoined twins being surgically separated, and I knew that there would be more searching …
Monsters are on the rise. People can’t seem to get enough of vampires lately, the giant monsters (Kaiju) are resurfacing, and zombies have a new lease on life. The reasons for this increased monster culture are hard to pin down. Maybe it’s social anxiety in the post-9/11 decade, or the conflict in Iraq—some think there’s …
Both issues were tabled and solved in the same conversation: Geri and Jim would date one another, and they would rent out their basement. It was a ranging, hour-long discussion that took into account their finances and career prospects, as well as their mental health and fitness. Geri wrote notes on legal paper and, after, …
For your final paper this semester, you will be assigned a poem from the American literary canon. Write a twelve-to-fifteen page essay in which you analyze the poem and explain how it relates to your life. Make sure you draw personal connections to your life while you analyze the poem. What makes this poem significant …
A year before his own death, Art Smith, found himself in western Ohio at the service of First National Pictures, advertising with his skywriting, the company’s new moving picture, The Lost World. His mission bought him over the Little Miami River valley to The Land of the Cross-Tipped Churches, a farming region settled by immigrant …