Ursula K. Le Guin left behind a legacy unparalleled in American letters when she passed away this January at the age of eighty-eight. Named a Living Legend by the Library of Congress for her contributions to America’s cultural heritage—the...
Dr. Thomas A. Andrew served as New Hampshire’s Chief Medical Examiner for two decades, retiring in September 2017 amid the growing opioid crisis. Now he’s studying to become an ordained deacon in extension ministry to help at-risk youth on...
One big expectation of the murder mystery is that the payoff includes some answers, that eventually we learn the truth. The best payoffs are layered, too, so that the revelations include not just who did the deed but how and why—what the...
You and I are members of a culture. Likely we are members of different cultures. Mine—one of mine, anyway—is South by Southwestern folded up into a Jesuitical Irishness tempered with first-generation punk rock. Yours may be Puritan, or...
The weekend of El Grito (the Scream), when Mexico celebrates its rebel yell against Spain, is also the weekend when the season’s first pilgrims arrive in the town of Real de Catorce, high on a sun-blitzed mountaintop in the deserts of San...
Nitrous oxide, N2O, is a fuel racing crews use to propel their cars hundreds of miles an hour. Under intense pressure, it allows the same engine to produce more power. Blends of N2O fuel rockets. They might include, for example...
It’s Friday morning. As has been his custom for almost three decades, Miguel Natividad Borrayo is dressed in white, from his T-shirt to his shoes, to honor those imprisoned for challenging the Castro regime—men like him, who spent seventeen...
Tiffany—“like Tiffany & Co.”—has lived here her whole life. Her hair is woven into a neat French twist. “Cops come and sit in here,” she says, waving her hand at the shadows on the small plaza around us. A white plastic bag rustles in a...
