The rectangle of light from the open fridge illuminates the darkening kitchen. Behind its doors stands a woman with glazed over eyes, staring into an abyss of options. She releases a sigh of exasperation. It is a sigh of exasperation heard across the country, at the end of the work day, as we all trudge […]
Behind every abandoned building is a story. Within its walls forgotten voices whisper endless conversations, once-important papers yellow in the sun that sneaks through cracked windows, old time cards sit in their holders, covered in the smudged fingerprints of their old owners. Rhode Island is full of these vacant, lively, buildings. For someone who builds […]
Ralph Waldo Emerson, arguably one of the most influential American philosophers and naturalists, famously writes in his essay Nature about his time in the woods, “I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of god.” Emerson belongs to […]
It’s 1875, a year before Edward Mitchell Bannister becomes the first Black painter to win a nationally recognized award. He and his wife Christiana Carteaux Bannister are taking a slow stroll down Westminster St. towards the bridge crossing the Woonasquatucket River. They are coming from her salon, where she operates as a successful “hair-doctress” for […]
Julius Kolawole works with a young volunteer to plant seeds. Photos courtesy of the African Alliance of RI. There is nothing that defines a culture more intrinsically than its food. The food a region eats is the first clue to its geography. A society on the ocean, in a humid climate, is more likely to […]
When I pulled off the exit towards Mystic Seaport, Connecticut, I came around the corner of a narrow, tree-lined road and saw the ocean stretching wide and limitless behind the bay. Whitecaps threatened the gentle waves, a gray sky hugged the shoreline. My little car was warm, a hovel of safety protecting me from the […]
There is something fascinating about the American suburb. It is an experiment, at its best, in family dynamics; and at its worst, a reflection of capitalist disillusionment. Diane Josefowicz confronts the dual nature of appearance vs. reality in her confrontational, almost uncomfortable novella, L’Air Du Temps (1985). In the pages we find our narrator, thirteenyear-old […]
A man sits at a desk with his feet up, surrounded by computer programming and philosophy books. He looks out the window at the bare branches of a tree behind a sheet of winter blue sky. In his reverie, he is haunted by a question that he can’t seem to answer: In the age of […]
The day begins its descent into night; city shadows stretch like taffy as the sun sinks below the horizon. Antoni walks the darkening roads underneath the show of apartment windows lighting up like notes on a keyboard. A black cat slinks by, disappearing into the shadowy room behind a dumpster. The sun is replaced by […]
It’s that time of the year when we dive deep into the ocean of consumerism and let the great beast of capitalism wrap its seedy tentacles around us: Christmas time! The time to get together, appreciate family, and use unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with that childhood trauma you’ve buried down deep. Don’t you love […]