Last Word

Doom Chimes

December 23rd, 2019

By Zach Nerpel
zachnerpel@gmail.com

Doom chimes all around us and I feel a greedy sense of relief understanding the real possibility I will be here when it all ends. What greater gift than to be a part of the very last chapter of humanity? The only question is, how exactly will we come to pass?

Will we burn as they are in Australia? Will we drown or be swept away by tidal waves like small, Oceanic islands and litter the deep seafloor like several oily Atlantis? Will it be climate at all?…

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How Small We’ve Become

December 11th, 2019

By Waylon Hedegaard
retiringwithcats@gmail.com

When I think about grandmothers, I think of a kindly woman with a plate of cookies in an old fashioned kitchen, but I’m not sure why. For my grandmother, none of this was even remotely true.

Except for the cookies. There were always cookies. Sometimes they even had sugar… but that’s another story.

My grandmother lived on a farm in Eastern Montana. She was small but tough, that ornery kind of tough that makes those around her nervous, and…

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Routine fatigue

December 4th, 2019

By Zach Nerpel
zachnerpel@gmail.com

What fugue was this which ferried me from Fall into our now and immediately miserable Winter? Where had I been this entire season? How much time had passed and what had I experienced? What had I learned?

The last time I had written to this publication, it was about unfulfilling and wasted Summers. How fitting it is, then, that Fall was so meaningless itself that I never felt the need to relieve myself on paper the entire period?

But was it so…

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​Dr. Snyder’s 20 Tips to Topple Tyranny

December 4th, 2019

“Because oil and gas are found all over the freaking place…companies need a rudimentary foreign policy to maximize…their ability to produce their product; (they need)…stability, access, control, simplicity. Countries may come and go, but oil and gas companies need to think bigger than that: …so the longer the relevant foreign ruler is in power, the better. And if the local autocrat is …on the payroll, no one’s going to bother anyone about cleaning up any mess that oil production…

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The Empire, Trump and Intra-Ruling Class Conflict

November 13th, 2019

Daily Trump Cartoon

Gary Olson
olsong@moravian.edu

Over the past few months President Trump has unilaterally by Tweet and telephone began to dismantle the U.S. military’s involvement in the Middle East. The irony is amazing, because in a general overarching narrative sense, this is what the marginalized antiwar movement has been trying to do for decades. — John Grant (1)

Prof. Harry Targ, in his important piece “United States foreign policy: yesterday, today, and tomorrow,” (MR online, October 23,…

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There is no such thing as ‘well-intended’ Misogyny

November 13th, 2019

By Amido Jusu
amidujusu@live.com

As much as I wanted someone else—especially a woman of color—to write such an article, I also felt like it needed to be said urgently. The kind of misogyny Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. (commonly known as T.I.) engaged in regarding his daughter’s virginity is a sin that has been plaguing black men in America since the inception of racist ideas that essentially defined both black masculinity and black femininity. It will continue to be a sin unless it’s…

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​Brexit: heck of a high note to hit

October 9th, 2019

ro-EU protests outside Parliament, August 2019 - photograph provided by William Southworth

By William Southworth
wsouthwo@cord.edu

The United Kingdom has a new boss. 

Considered to by some to be a British counterpart to Trump, Boris Johnson is riding a wave of political discontent with a can-do attitude and bubbly stage persona. He opened his inaugural speech with a powerful and politically charged promise. 

After ‘three long years of indecision’ this new Prime Minister´s government will deliver Brexit with or without a deal by the 31st of October. He will do this by simply…

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​Dr. Snyder’s 20 Step Defense for Real/Intended Victims of Trump’s Toy Hitlerism

October 2nd, 2019

Cartoon by Daily Trump

“In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people…This is a history of political mass murder. The fourteen million were all victims of a Soviet or Nazi killing policy, often of an interaction between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but never casualties of the war between them…The distinction between concentration camps and killing sites cannot be made perfectly: people were executed and people were…

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The arts are thriving in the Metro

September 25th, 2019

Award winning potter, Brad Bachmeier, pit firing his pottery at his studio - photograph by C.S. Hagen.

By Dayna Del Val
dayna@theartspartnership.net

Welcome to HPR’s big art issue! I was delighted at the invitation to write a guest column for this issue because, as you may know, the work we do at The Arts Partnership (TAP) is all in service to #supportlocalart and the artists who make it. And it’s fun to think about readers of HPR being immersed in a full issue of much of the art that makes our Metro community so great.

Whether you love music: rock, jazz, classical, instrumental or…

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How FAR You Can GO

September 25th, 2019

Andrew Maus

By Andy Maus
amaus@plainsart.org

When I started working at Plains Art Museum in 2000, I worked at the Museum’s visitor services desk – greeting visitors, answering phones, and selling items in the store. I was just getting started, so I didn’t have a lot of perspective, but one thing was certain – this museum did not fit my narrow understanding of what an art museum is. Isn’t an art museum just a place where old things go to die? I had never seen an art museum that did so much…

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