“The Parable Is Now,” by Lynell George
Parable of the Sower, Octavia E. Butler’s 1993 novel, takes place in the year 2024, a time when, she imagined, social division, environmental decline, and corrupt politicians had turned the West into a barely livable hellscape. Alta Journal contributor Lynell George, who wrote A Handful of Earth, a Handful of Sky: The World of Octavia Butler, spent the first half of this year looking at what Butler got right and what we all got so wrong.
“Butler bristled against the notion that she was clairvoyant. She held strongly to the belief that she was simply paying attention to the state of the world, what she could see at the edges of her vision. And, crucially, that we should too.”
“Ashland’s Shakespeare Wars,” by Marcus Crowder
For decades, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has been a welcoming space for directors and performers to interpret classics and stage newer productions. As longtime theater critic Marcus Crowder reported, the festival has been hit by financial shortfalls, demographic changes, and disagreements around diversity and politics.
“Across the country, the pillars propping up nonprofit theater have collapsed,” Crowder wrote. “The ticket-sales-plus-donor-gifts equation no longer adds up on either end. As OSF’s new season began on March 29, the storied festival was struggling to redefine itself in a drastically changed world.”
“Missing Joe Wood,” by Tricia Romano
In February, Tricia Romano, author of The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, wrote about the Voice editor and writer Joe Wood, who went for a hike to Mount Rainier in 1999 and was never seen again.
“He was on a public intellectual, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Stanley Crouch type of path,” author Colson Whitehead told Romano. Talking with colleagues and friends, Romano showed the space Wood has left in journalism and in the culture.
“Megalopolis Now,” by Tom Zito
Critics were not kind to Megalopolis, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed genre-exploding epic. But watching it on the big screen, longtime Alta contributor and Coppola friend Tom Zito saw “a film filled with so many wondrous scenes that it will certainly be remembered for changing the way stories are told visually and for delivering an endless procession of priceless images.”
Megalopolis is ready for a reassessment, and Zito’s review is a good place to start.
“Chop Wood. Start Fire. Have Baby.,” by Kailyn McCord
In January, author Kailyn McCord filed a deeply personal—and deeply reported—dispatch about having a baby in rural Mendocino County.
As McCord wrote: “I knew that in Fort Bragg, medical care would be more limited, but once I started to dig into prenatal and delivery options, I was surprised at the lack. How could a town that boasted nearly 7,000 people, or that number once or twice over again if you included ‘nearby points beyond,’ as our local radio station’s slogan did, not have an obstetrician? Or a labor and delivery (L&D) department?”
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