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Among the Pyros at One of the Biggest Fireworks Competitions in the World

It was just over a hundred years ago that “Through the Looking-Glass,” the second of Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books, was published, yet Carroll’s fantasy adventures into a little girl’s dream worlds have a wider, more responsive audience...

Revisiting Steinbeck’s California.

Heavy blue veins streak across my mother’s legs,
Some of them bunched up into dark lumps at her ankles.

We lift our glasses to the river that has been for a very long time not a river, the river that is reenchanting Los Angeles, the river that will soon power an enormous waterwheel, which will turn right here where we are standing.

What was the heart of her story,
tired, on their bicycles, night

coming on while they tried to reach
Lago di Balseno, the farmer,

The mind 
likes the squeeze 
of chutes and channels.