A Dublin Fall in Fall
By Maddalena Beltrami In that brief moment of twilight, where the thoughts are as random and as powerful as can be, I think I have to tell my mother what happened to me. The thought is so real that when I awaken a few seconds later to the realization that, “you can’t, she’s dead”, the […]
Songs and the Seeping Sadness
By Robert Basler Come and sit by my side if you love me, do not hasten to bid me adieu, but remember the Red River Valley, and the cowboy who loved you so true “Does she really love that cowboy?” “Yes, I think she does.” “Then why is she leaving him?” “Sometimes people just think […]
Ivan Baidak: Moving from Self-Inflicted Invisibility to Visibility
By Diane Bracuk (In)visible— An (in) sider’s look at living with visible disabilities by award-winning Ukrainian author Ivan Baidak. A year ago, many people would have been hard pressed to find Ukraine on a map. Now with the Russian invasion, the country and its people have become highly visible to the world, with many Western […]
The F-Boys of Jane Austen
By Susan Catto, I don’t believe in defining anything I enjoy as a “guilty pleasure”—I’ll read and watch what I like and not feel bad about it—but I admit to feeling a little sheepish about my enjoyment of F-Boy Island. The HBOMax hit (on Crave in Canada) follows three women as they sort through two […]
The Bi-Divide
By Alexandra Beitia, In 2020, a Gallup review reported that 3.1% of all U.S. adults self-identify as bisexual. The review also shows that it is most common for younger generations to identify as bisexual, as 15.9% of Generation Z (born 1997-2002) identify within the LGBTQIA+ community. However, even as growing numbers of people feel comfortable […]
Psychedelics & the Norse Viking Warriors
By Andrew M. Weisse, On a cold battlefield in Scandinavia sometime around 900 A.D., legend has it that a Norse Viking Berserker Warrior, adorned in nothing but a severed Bears head repurposed as a helmet, devoured the edges of his shield before gulping down fiery coals and snatching live embers with his mouth. He howled […]
Were the Salem “Witches” High on Psychedelics?
By Andrew M. Weisse, During a cold, wet New England winter in 1692, something peculiar began to happen. In the town of Salem, which sits on the Massachusetts coastline about 16 miles north of Boston, people started acting strangely. Specifically – young women. Two of them in particular; the 9 year old daughter & the […]
Ancestors and Enemies
By Sarah Royalty Pinkelman, A modern, brutal graphic—tiny dots of ink cover a rectangle, like a channel that can’t transmit a signal. The February 2021 New York Times graphic of a half million U.S. lives lost to COVID-19 needs doubling, wet ink, folded in half in a kindergarten art project. Not oblong, those dots, like […]
My Father, Part Seven
(George F. Walker, one of Canada’s most prolific and popular playwrights, pens an elegy to his father in seven parts. Esoterica will syndicate one part each day leading up to Father’s Day. Read Part One, Two, Three, Four, Five and Six here.) By George F. Walker, My father had a question for me. “Are you a […]
My Father: Part Six
(George F. Walker, one of Canada’s most prolific and popular playwrights, pens an elegy to his father in seven parts. Esoterica will syndicate one part each day leading up to Father’s Day. Read Part One, Two, Three, Four and Five here.) By George F. Walker. I don’t know if my father had a gambling problem. I […]