The Hoodie

By Richard Torres

A fox tail dangling from a leather belt. A key chain dangling from a leather belt. A leather belt with a personalized name buckle. Low top red Converse sneakers. High-top black Converse sneakers. Green suede Puma sneakers. Clamshell white Adidas sneakers. White Nike basketball athletic footwear. Blue chinos with the orange stripe running down the side. Black “overlap” slacks with two overlapping seams running down the side. Black “AJ’s” slacks with white thread running down the side. Denim jackets with the sleeves cut off. Leather vests worn without a shirt.... Continue reading "The Hoodie"

R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: Low Country Blues & The Artist

By Scott Spencer

In 1965, three friends and I walked into a Chicago bar dressed in jeans and work shirts, sporting the hairdos of the time — the kind you had to pat into place because no comb can make its way through. We were going to a legendary blues bar at 47th and Indiana, in a solidly African-American section of the city; it was late and the street was mostly shuttered for the night — maybe a check-cashing place and a chicken shack were open, besides our destination, Theresa’s, the dimly-lit club... Continue reading "R.E.S.P.E.C.T.: Low Country Blues & The Artist"

Irrevocable

By Aram Saroyan

During the last years of her life, Diane Arbus visited institutions for the mentally ill to photograph the residents, people often physically as well as mentally disabled. I remember being repelled by these photographs, and gathered that Arbus had by now crossed a line in her own mental state, becoming engulfed by a spiritual/emotional darkness from which she would never recover. She committed suicide by slitting her wrists in 1971 at the age of 48. Continue reading "Irrevocable"

Manny and Bill, Willie and Joe

By Bob Levin

My Uncle Manny, a doctor, was at the Battle of the Bulge. When he came home, he lived with us on 46th Street. After he moved out, he left behind a collection of German beer steins and some books. He never talked about the war in my presence, and only one of those books pertained to it: the cartoonist Bill Mauldin’s Up Front. Continue reading "Manny and Bill, Willie and Joe"

Culture Hero: The Anthropologist as Public Intellectual

By Stephen J. Whitfield

The most famous line of the most famous book of one of the great American public intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth-century defines “the problem” of the coming century as “the problem of the color-line.” The Souls of Black Folk (1903) uses the sentence three times, and may not refer exclusively to the chasm that divided black and white. But prescient though W. E. B. Du Bois was, and salient though his legacy has been, he is not conspicuously associated with the defense of other racial minorities and ancestral groups. In the twenty-first century, the line looks more colorful than the one that Du Bois devoted his life to erasing... Continue reading "Culture Hero: The Anthropologist as Public Intellectual"

Ethnographic Highs: The Forest People & African Rhythm and African Sensibility

By John Chernoff & T. David Brent

First is honored (and stoked!) to reprint the following tributes (which originally appeared in a German publisher's "yearbook") to two classic ethnographies. Continue reading "Ethnographic Highs: The Forest People & African Rhythm and African Sensibility"

Life Studies

By Alison Stone

People who speak Spanish all have outside jobs, my daughter announces... Continue reading "Life Studies"

The Garden of Chelm

By Bob Liss

Philosopher-king Bill Russell used to say basketball is a simple game, played by grown men in short pants. As the hem-lines dropped, though, the force of Russ’s dictum waned. The Jeremy Lin phenomenon leaves one looking back to Russ’s clarities and ahead to a New Age of lucidity for homo ludens. Continue reading "The Garden of Chelm"

Riffs on Debt

By George Caffentzis

Few issues are attracting so much attention in our time, and not just in social movement circles, as the question of debt. Student debt, mortgage debt, household/personal debt, governmental debt... Continue reading "Riffs on Debt"

Christianity or Capitalism

By Amiri Baraka

Rev Howard’s letter in the S. Liar entitled "Newark Schools Need Your Support Now," is simply a craven and hypocritical fronting for the Charter School takeover... Continue reading "Christianity or Capitalism"

Food for Thought

By Bill Ayers

Tucker Carlson got a letter from the Illinois Humanities Council: “Congratulations,” it began. “You are the winning bidder for The Public Square's 10th anniversary auction item: Dinner for six with Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Thank you very much for your payment of $2500 for this item.” Continue reading "Food for Thought"

Big Man & Sisters Under the Skin

By Benj DeMott

“I won’t change my mind...Keep your hand on my thigh tonight!” That’s a line from the chorus of the echt Springsteen track of the past decade. But it’s not by Bruce. The song is Kathleen Edwards’ “Oil Man’s War” – a tale of Bobby (“who wished he was from the past/He said those cars they used to drive were the best”) and Annabel (“no way in hell I'm going home/Mamma says she always knows best/God love her, but her life is a mess”). Bobby’s gone AWOL and they’re Continue reading "Big Man & Sisters Under the Skin"

Recent Entries

• Big Man & Sisters Under the Skin by Benj DeMott, from April, 2012
• Christianity or Capitalism by Amiri Baraka, from April, 2012
• The Hoodie by Richard Torres, from April, 2012
• Life Studies by Alison Stone, from April, 2012