Mother Jones Illustrations;michel Christopher/abaca/zuma;malcolm Ali/whe image/getty;chip sornodevilla/getty What happens when dystopian visions of futuristic societies stop feeling like fiction and begin to resemble reality? A year ago, a group of us read Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents (read my blog3/1/25). What struck me then and disturbs me even more now was how eerily familiar Butler’s imagined America felt. Her novel depicts a society des

The World Is a Circle (lyrics Burt Bacharach and Hal David) “The world is a circle without a beginning,and nobody knows where it really ends…” Those words have lived inside me for more than fifty years. The song was written in 1973 by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for the film Lost Horizon . I was ten years old then too young to remember the movie, too young perhaps to grasp its metaphysics but not too young to remember the song. I remember every lyric. I remember the melody

Sunday, December 20, 2025, marked the Winter Solstice the longest night of the year. For others, the day was observed as Blue Christmas. Though these events are not inherently connected, Blue Christmas services are often held in December as sacred acknowledgment that the holiday season is not joyous for everyone. For many, this time of year is layered with grief, loss, rejection, illness, loneliness, and unresolved pain. Physical ache and emotional wounds do not quiet themsel

Xfinity Well, it is out Wicked: For Good, Part II of the Wicked film series and yes, I have seen it. In a theater filled almost entirely with Black women, there was literally one man present, seated with his wife in the last row. And on premiere night, another theater filled up as well. Black women showed up $17 million in sales on opening day and projections surpassing $85 million by weekend’s end. If you follow my blog, you may remember my 2024 reflections, “Gravity I” and

Google Images: Threads I haven’t posted in weeks—frankly, because I’m exhausted. Trump-tigue, I call it. Ironically, it hasn’t even been...