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Luchita And The Radio Man

A Searing, True-Life Tale of Broadcasting, Love, and Deception

The two of us are on a fact-finding expedition to Philo, California. At first, Luchita hadn’t wanted to come; she knew I was researching a magazine article, and she’s still a little peeved at certain references I made to her in a profile of Lola Falana I wrote some months back. But she knows I like her company, and that this article is important.

Utne Reader’s 1990 Alternative Press Award For Best Essays And Criticism

My Earth Day

We were all terribly sorry we’d made the earth pay for our pleasure these last 200 years. We had a fear-taste in our mouths. Maybe the earth is preparing revenge. In comic books, an exposure to toxicity creates superpowered heroes, but in this world we are not so lucky.

From The Editor

Friend Of The Sun

Notes Toward A Journalism Of Consciousness

I was slowly beginning to question the whole purpose of identifying and eliminating “bad guys” from positions of power or influence, a purpose which seemed to be the end-all of investigative journalism. I wanted to know what made guys bad, and journalism seemed to have no means for investigating that.

The Ethics Of Photography

An Interview With John Rosenthal

It’s hard not to see that a photograph is an act of aggression, no matter who is taking it. You’re stopping people from the flow of their lives, you’re cropping them from the space in which they live and have their being, you’re juxtaposing them with something that they didn’t know they were next to.

A Reminder

Alice’s Hunch

Dickens, I find myself thinking. Not Toulouse-Lautrec drawing in smoky bars, but Dickens; this morning I am Dickens walking around with eyes wide open, seeing a pure beam of humor illuminating human squalor.

Class Struggles In Sweet Cider

This is the part where Karen Wheeler jumped in and turned the world around, whether because Karen Wheeler is one fine bowler herself and enjoys as much as anybody kicking the butts of the folks over in Greensboro, or whether, as I’ve said, her heart has spots soft for Gus, I don’t know.