1. The temptation is there. Every time my daughter rubs her elbow against it, the sliver opens underneath like a tomb. I did that. I cut the plastic that covers our table, and through the tablecloth itself. I did it earlier, right before dinner as I was cutting my basted quilt pieces with the rotary…

From Chris Stapleton’s rootsy repurposing of Nashville pop-country to Sturgill Simpson’s “metamodern” new-Outlaw nihilism, the past few years have seen Kentucky-born artists setting the agenda for a different kind of country music—not so much a complete break with the past as a series of unpredictable mash-ups of what’s come before. Simpson protégé Tyler Childers is…

This post, which appears as the Editorial Statement in Image issue 90, is continued from yesterday. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, a contemporary of Shakespeare, knew his share of failure. As a young man he went off to serve in the military—whether to escape arrest for wounding a man in a duel or for some other…

The first church I attended as a teenaged new believer swiftly taught me two doctrines: There won’t be any Democrats in heaven. Secular music is tantamount to heresy. The first one was easy enough to get. Reagan had saved us from the devil Jimmy Carter, and now Jesus had the go-ahead to return whenever he…

The Detroit Institute of Art (DIA) is obviously not a religious institution. But damn if its Rivera Court doesn’t feel like sacred space. The Rivera Court consists of wall murals, floor to ceiling, around an indoor courtyard. The murals were painted by Diego Rivera (1886-1957), the famous Mexican muralist. Rivera himself was not an especially…