American Girl

With the Veteran's flag from my father's funeral

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Fake News

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Last week I broke my sabbatical seclusion to attend a panel that my colleagues in the Department of History had organized on "Understanding the Trump Phenomenon." The panelists covered a range of themes: climate change denialism, white nationalism, the global failure of capitalism, the latent illiberalism of American culture, and world-wide yearnings towards totalitarianism--all the usual -isms. And then they opened the floor to questions. Like a good fencer, I got my hand up first and said something about the need to think of American culture in more regional and long-range terms, particularly the differences in conceptions of liberty that David Hackett Fisher  has shown to be in play, but it was already too late. The room was primed to descend into pessimism and despair, although since we're talking academics here--fellow professors and graduate students in History for the most part--it was subtle and came out mainly in the kinds of questions asked. One question in pa
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Abortion Games: The Lady Priest

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1 She stands alone, her hair unveiled for God, a cup held high as if to offer laud. And with her lips she whispers words most holy; she takes the bread and says, “This is my body.” Then from the cup she takes a drink of water, her spirit hot to channel God as Daughter. “O holy, holy, holy, Lord Most High,” she sings, but in her heart knows it’s a lie. 2 A voice came from behind, with honeyed tones: “Why do you speak as if your god were bones?” In fear she spills the golden cup she holds, then spins around, three women to behold. One dressed in black, pearls dangling from her wrist, her red mouth pursed as if she had been kissed. One dumpling fat, with floury arms and cheeks, the other gaunt, as if she’d starved for weeks. 3 “Angel, dear, we come here with an offer: something to help fill your church’s coffer. A little thing, we hope you won’t refuse, a sister whom we gave the right to choose. She’s one with us, but now she’s split in two; we long to guide her on a path that’s true. You
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Bears Abroad! Q&A with Madam Mayo

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Madam Mayo invited me to answer a few questions about our poetry over on her blog . I was happy to oblige! C.M. MAYO:   How did you find Handrawnbear? Because, Wow! RACHEL FULTON BROWN:  Handdrawnbear found us! She had been working for several years making drawings and animations at unBearables Media ( https://unbearablesmedia.com/hand-drawn-bear/ ). I was in touch with one of their other creators and asked if there were anyone interested in doing illustrations for our new bear poem. Being a “bear,” she jumped at the chance! She has written on her own blog about how working with us has inspired her to write more Christian poetry ( https://handdrawnbear.com/blogs/handdrawn-journal/the-once-mute-bear-finds-her-voice ). I notice that in her version of the story, I found her. This is a taste of what it was like working on  Aurora Bearialis : it often felt as if the poem were writing itself or that we were discovering it along with the penguins and bears. To this day, I have only a vague me
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Confessions of a New World Sugar Eater

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  Sugar is a drug.   This observation will not come as news to long-time readers of this blog. I used to harp on it regularly , back in the day when I discovered Atkins and was cutting the carbs to lose weight . I can happily report that I have kept myself on a relatively low-carb diet since (ten years, woohoo!), but this past year and half were challenging, especially the six weeks in autumn 2020 that I spent with my mother while my step-father was dying. The house was full  of cookies and chocolates and more cookies made by her friends from church, and I ate all of them.  I tried resisting, but it just didn’t seem worth it. My step-father was dying; my brother and I were there to comfort our mother; and resisting the sugar seemed so pointless. Why not give in and get fat?  Except that somehow I knew, deep down, it wasn’t about getting fat.  It was about feeding the demons.  Have I told you about the year I spent eating frozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts when I was in elementary school
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Spice Wars Study Guide

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  “He who controls the spice controls the universe.”  — Frank Herbert, Dune  (1965) It came to me in a flash last summer .  Why the United States of America had spent the past two decades trying to control Afghanistan.  Why Big Pharma was pushing the vaccines.  It was the spice. The opium of the poppy fields. The opioids of Big Pharma.  Everything was about controlling the spice. And always had been. Once upon a time, there was a Silk Road. You’ve heard of it I’m sure. The caravan road across the middle of the great Eurasian continent, linking the treasures of the Orient with the markets of the West.  Except throughout the Middle Ages, the markets in the West weren’t much to speak of. A few Italian city-states. A few burghers in the north. Back in high school, I did a presentation about the fairs where they sold their spices. I even wore a costume—a hat that I got at the Renaissance Faire north of Houston, the autumn before I started college there. I had a basket full of spices and a h
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