“If the trend toward bureaucratization and mechanization continues, I predict a revolution, not by librarians, but by readers—townspeople, students, and teachers—those who use the library in their need for knowledge and delight, who think of the library as a kind of temple, and who sicken of social scientists and personal psychologists of documentalists and gadgeteers, in places of power."
by Kenneth L. Field If someday they take the radio station away from us, if they close down our newspaper, if they silence us, if they kill all the priests and the bishop too, and you are left alone, a people without priests, each one of you must be God’s microphone, each one of you … Continue reading The Example of Romero
by Cara Strickland I am the last person you might expect to see at a music festival. Although I’m a lover of live music, that love is rivaled by my love of sitting down in climate-controlled spaces. I camp only when there is no other option. My feet get easily tired. My brother called in … Continue reading Love, Loss, and Rock & Roll
by Polly Hollar Pauley I recently read that Japanese ceramic artists think that an item that has suffered damage becomes more beautiful, and that when an item is cracked they will fill in the cracks with gold. This evening we went to church for a hayride, one of the many advantages of an uber-rural congregation. … Continue reading Filling the Cracks with Gold
by Holli Steinmetz David Ruhlman has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History from the University of Utah. His work has been featured in over 20 exhibitions from 2008-2015 and was used in the 9.2 Fall issue of Rock & Sling as both cover and content art. David’s gallery features paintings, handmade books, collaborations and fascinating … Continue reading An Interview with R&S 9.2 Cover Artist David Ruhlman
by Jackie Wallace When I was seventeen, I read a book called Paper Towns, by John Green. You may have heard of it due to the upcoming release of its movie adaptation. More on that later. The book tells the story of a teenage boy who idolizes the girl next door. The girl disappears, leading … Continue reading Writer’s Ink: The Light Can Get In
by Sunni Brown Wilkinson The care center smelled on par with all the others I’d ever been in: musty and antiseptic with a passing breeze of mothballs. I’d always found them depressing, but this one at least made very sincere efforts to keep things upbeat, even jazzy. One day, they hired a guy to come … Continue reading Remembered Sounds: “My Sweet Lord”
by Karissa Knox Sorrell In his poem “Ode to the Unbroken World, Which is Coming,” Thomas Lux wrote: It must be coming, mustn’t it? Churches and saloons are filled with decent humans. Once I would have thought of those two places as opposites. Churches were where the good people went, and saloons – or bars, … Continue reading On the Advent of an Unbroken World
by Leah Silvieus In Xoxocotlán Cemetery tonight, the night before El Día De Los Muertos, life and death sit vigil together: families picnic while setting up shrines for their loved ones, grandmothers hold babies while parents arrange flowers on the headstones. The night is still beneath the nearly full moon, and the air blooms with … Continue reading “The Heart Dies of This Sweetness”: On Endings
by Kathryn Smith First, Marion insists I take her peaches. A few weeks later, the pears start falling, and Meredith and Blake hand me bags of them over the back fence. Then, from the corner of the backyard, enough plums overhang that I could never imagine needing a tree of my own. Such is late … Continue reading You Are 60 Percent Fruit Fly
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