Category: Uncategorized
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Ugly Crying
An Essay on the Poet, Magic, and Re-Enchanting the World Sometimes I think I have written many of my poems against my will. I think this must be true for a great number of poets. A poet, like any artist, is sensitive; being sensitive means living as an exposed nerve. As such, poets are nervous…
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Wry Melancholy
Twenty Years Listening to The Blues Listening to “The Blues” has always felt like playing with fire. Did I always know that, did I always feel that? Of course not. Some things, most things, can only be understood with age. The blues, for my part, is one of them. Even now, since my first real…
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Living With Itchy Feet
An Essay on Modern Nomadism I’ve never had itchy feet, not in the sense of travel or wanderlust. Itchy feet, as far as my knowing, was always a dermatological issue, not a spiritual malady. But, something changed roughly this time last year, and I can feel it changing again. June, 2023 — That was the month…
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Now Dig This
What I’ve been reading in 2024 As Desert Dispatch prepares to relocate its southwestern regional office to a new, more expansive suite (read: we’re moving into a townhouse), yours truly has been feeling a little more pressed for time. As such, your fearless writer has been scrambling for time to prepare each week’s pair of newsletters. So,…
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Big History in South Carolina
Nikki Haley and the American Civil War Nikki Haley (right) and former President Donald Trump during a 2018 meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. | Photo c/o The White House. Frederick Douglass, like anyone worth their salt in nineteenth-century America, loved quoting scripture. Douglass, in his essay “The Union and How to Save It,”…
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The Crime Wave at Saltburn
Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” and P.G. Wodehouse’s “Blandings” Saltburn, the recent film by Emerald Fennell, caused a stir when it debuted on Amazon Prime this past December. It’s been criticized, praised, and meme’d, while simultaneously re-popularizating Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s early-2000s hit song “Murder on the Dancefloor.” In short, the film has caused something of a sensation. As…