Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Here is a retelling of the Hopi story, The Revenge of the Katcinas (Kachinas or Katsinam). To grow crops and survive in their mountainous desert, the Hopis understand the necessity for proper devotion to the supernatural powers, known as the Kachinas, who embody the spirits of living things and also of ancestors who have died and become a part of nature. When the people fall out of favor with the supernaturals, disaster results.
Paul Bowles during his life (1910-1999) remained aloof from all the hipsters and hypesters of U.S. letters. Living in self-imposed exile in Tangier, he had cast a spell over such talents as Tennessee Williams, Libby Holman, Truman Capote, and Allen Ginsberg. We revisit an essay penned by Jay McInerny in 1985, on how the inimitable expatriate writer-composer’s dark arts retain their power, even more so 32 years later.
An exhibition by artist Cristóbal Valecillos in Los Angeles invoked the Dancing Devils of Yare, a 400-year old Venezuelan tradition celebrating life, the triumph of good over evil, and renewal. His provocative interpretation of the diablo masks, hand-sculpted from repurposed waste materials, takes aim at culture and consumption in the US, a plea for overcoming.
We feature the popularized story version of the French fairy tale ‘La Belle et La Bête’ (Beauty and the Beast), which became a classic 1946 Jean Cocteau film accompanied by composer Philip Glass’s mesmerizing 1994 score.
Canadians facilitate illegal land sales of ancestral land in Caribbean Honduras, and members of the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization (OFRANEH) denounced for defamation by tourism investors Patrick Daniel Forseth (Carivida Villas) and Randy Jorgensen (Life Vision Developments) — see any issues of neocolonialism here?
Alan Durning lays out how many cities have succeeded in building affordable housing with some lessons from unexpected places. Yet constrained housing markets come about from economics, environment, and geography, and sprawl remains a scourge that affordable cities have allowed. No silver bullet here, but ideas…
Since the solar eclipse of 2017, climate and tectonic instability has accelerated across the Earth: Rehearsal for the End Times? Predicted fossil fueled climate disruption and superstorm cataclysm? Sun-Moon alignment that bulged the Earth’s crust, precipitating earthquakes? What really is happening here? We survey scientific, religious, and traditional indigenous belief for answers.
‘Bellatrix: Volume 3’, features adventurous fiction, poetry, essays, and lyrics, and an excerpt of Jack Eidt’s psychic-animism fiction, Medicine Walk.
Buy the book!
