Elmer Ploetz

Tagged Hallwalls, member exhibition (Photo Above): A wall of particularly nightmarish paintings. Photo by Colin Dabkowski By Colin Dabkowski Inside the art world there here are few events as tedious as the dreaded members exhibition. They are the artistic equivalent of oil changes: dutiful exercises in reputation maintenance designed to keep membership fees trickling in and the host organization sputtering along for another year. The Hallwalls Members Exhibition is not like this.

Tagged Food Writing, Reviews A decade ago, when I wrote my first restaurant review, my first draft made an editor blanch. “You can’t say that in a restaurant review.” From the beginning, determined to offer descriptions and judgements in non-standard language, my drafts contained sentences that walked the line between fun and appalling errors in judgment. So I did what working writers do: Remove sentences red-flagged by editors. To save for later.

The timing was pure serendipity, really. The National Rifle Association was having its national convention in Houston, just days after 19 children and two teachers were gunned down by a teenager in a Texas school and less than two weeks after 10 black people were gunned down by a teenager in Buffalo for, well, being black. The NRA, of course, has responded with its usual tropes that it's people, not weapons, that kill. Also, it says, people would be safer if more of them were able to shoot back.