When I was a teenager, I had a poster of Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper on their Harleys from the movie, Easy Rider, taped to my bedroom wall. It was the early 1970s, and I lived in a town of one thousand people in rural southeastern Illinois where conservative values held sway. Those values left…

On October 6, 2020, the Swedish Academy announced the year’s Nobel prizes in Physics and, two days later, in Literature. The selection committees may as well have collaborated, so tuned were they to the pulse of a uniquely awful year. Louise Glück, poet of “isolation, betrayal . . . and death” (NYT 10/8/2020), won for…

(Ed note: This essay was the first part of a letter sent by family friend David Norcross. It was so insightful and entertaining that we asked David’s permission to reprint it on the Lens. Thank you David!)   Christmas 2020 and Other End of Year Musings “And every picture shows a perfect family…” No one…

A few weeks ago—just after Thanksgiving—I received an unexpected package in the mail from artist/curator Crystalle Lacouture. Contained within was a limited run wood-block print, a directive, and a booklet of matches, all related to a timely project—#farewellgoodbye2020. The message of the letter, which you can read at the link below, was essentially this: 2020…