STORY BY ANDREW SHUTES-DAVID
When the salesmen approach, I am laying on the floor of my outdoor office—the deck. My head rests against the wooden deck post, my ankles are crossed in front of me, and my laptop is perched just below my chest, its screen strategically centered in the shade from the post.
Perhaps my supine position makes me an easy mark.p>
ESSAY BY BECKY HANCOCK
IMAGES BY BRUCE MCCAMISH & DON DELFORD
I’m the director of the Tennessee Theatre, a non-profit theatre in Knoxville. Since 1928, this theatre has featured countless performers on its stage and screen, creating lifelong memories for the millions who have passed through her golden doors. It’s a theatre that has gone through more lives than a lucky cat.
Formerly known as a “movie palace,” the Theatre was designed to imitate the opulence and magnificence of an old-world palace in Paris or Prague or perhaps Marrakesh. In the early 20th century, Hollywood-based movie studios built thousands of theaters throughout the United States. In movie palaces, their largest and most extravagant type of venue, the studios intended for people to feel like royalty, to be whisked away from everyday cares.
WORDS & IMAGES BY JESSICA FOUST
Last summer, due to political events in the States, I started asking my husband, Gareth, if we could “disappear for a while.” When we were first married in Fall 2021, we had committed to try to live in such a way that we could travel and experience life in other parts of the world.
Simultaneously, one of my bigger “ends-in-a-zero” birthdays was approaching, and I really wanted to mark it with accomplishing a life goal or two. We were already on mid-career work sabbaticals (I’m a file clerk and librarian, and Gareth’s worked as an electric station operator), so this seemed the perfect time to do some living abroad.
THE ANTHROW CIRCUS TEAM
In our latest A/V Club episode, our editor, Kami Rice, talks with our assistant editor, Heather Surls, about Heather’s just-released book, Beyond the Jordan. Some of the book’s chapters got their start as Anthrow Circus articles! Recorded this summer in Arizona, this conversation takes you behind the scenes of book creation and the realities of living and writing long-term in the Middle East. p>
LETTERS BY TERESA VANHATTEN-GRANATH
On Aug. 5, 2023, my son, Kyle Granath, passed away of an overdose. He was found near the baseball stadium in downtown Denver, Colorado. He was alone. He was 18 years old.
A week later, I stood up at his funeral to share a eulogy in the form of a letter I wrote to him. More letters to Kyle followed in each subsequent month. I learned that our story can help others who are struggling, so I’m sharing my letters to Kyle here.
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A COLLECTION BY AJ JOHNSON
Already—before the recent changes—one of the things living in France had taught me was a story of America’s greatness, as seen from the outside. The way France’s newscasters follow our elections with careful explanations of the electoral college and graphics showing states turning blue or red. The way the world follows each pronouncement uttered by our leaders, because those pronouncements will affect that world, the world outside America that doesn’t vote for U.S. leaders but lives in those leaders’ downstream impact.p>
A COLLECTION BY AJ JOHNSON
Already—before the recent changes—one of the things living in France had taught me was a story of America’s greatness, as seen from the outside. The way France’s newscasters follow our elections with careful explanations of the electoral college and graphics showing states turning blue or red. The way the world follows each pronouncement uttered by our leaders, because those pronouncements will affect that world, the world outside America that doesn’t vote for U.S. leaders but lives in those leaders’ downstream impact.p>
THE ANTHROW CIRCUS TEAM
n honor of the upcoming Nashville Hot Chicken Festival, our team did some hot chicken taste tests. Join us as we taste and discuss the history of Nashville Hot Chicken, a culinary phenomenon that has gained a following fair afield of its regional Music City roots.
Thank you to Pepperfire for providing us with our taste test.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DANE MALZAHN
While many of the world’s major cities have neighborhoods with certain vibes—think New York’s Upper East Side or London’s Soho district—neighborhoods in Japan’s capital city feel like distinctive towns existing under the collective name, Tokyo.
There’s the sophisticated Ginza district filled with the flagship stores for some of the world’s top luxury brands. The Kappabashi Dougu-gai is nicknamed “Kitchen Town” for its vast selection of cooking utensils and cookware. And there’s the Ryogoku district, the epicenter of Japan’s national sport, sumo wrestling.
STORY BY ERIC WISHART
The launch of Generative Artificial Intelligence tools capable of producing high quality text and images has triggered much discussion about their impact on the future of journalism.
AI was seen for many years as a useful tool that spared journalists from the drudgery of mundane tasks such as typing out company results and transcribing interviews.
That changed with the arrival of generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, which seemed to pose an existential threat to the journalism profession.
Who needs reporters when you can upload the minutes of a town council meeting and ask ChatGPT to produce a news story focusing on a particular angle of community interest? Who needs photojournalists when a text-to-image generator can produce photorealistic images to illustrate a story?
POEM BY VAGRANT MOON
PHOTO BY JC JOHNSON
Ocean bays that face westward inspire a strong fascination. My European ancestors left such anchorages to travel to the New World, and as a youth I found my way across the U.S. from Gary, Indiana, to Monterey, California. This city and its bay remain the dream of my green years.
From January to April 1966, I lived in Monterey at taxpayer expense while I roamed the coastline, visited the coffee shops, and enjoyed the city’s ambiance. At that time I earned my living as a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier—enrolled in a three-month Spanish course in the Defense Language Institute (DLI) at the Spanish-built Presidio of Monterey. I was destined for the 8th Special Forces Group in the Canal Zone of Panama.
STORY BY HEATHER M. SURLS
The day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, Rania Walid Alyousef checked her social media feeds often. The wife and mother of three, who has lived in Amman, Jordan, since 2013, was apprehensive.
Last year, she and her husband, Mohammed Basim Alkurdi, known as Basel, had connected with a group of Americans willing to sponsor their family’s resettlement through Welcome Corps, a private sponsorship program. The family’s and their sponsors’ applications were progressing, and the family’s move to the U.S. seemed within reach.
But after Trump’s November reelection, Rania recognized that renewed travel bans and cuts to immigration were possible, given the way Trump halved refugee admissions in 2017. So when news of the president’s executive order halting refugee programs came across her screen, she was upset and saddened but not surprised.
BY KAMI L. RICE
It’s been a wearying couple weeks for volunteers working with Afghans pursuing pathways to safety in the United States. In addition to being the editor of this fine publication, I count among those volunteers, assisting Afghans resettling in the U.S. and Europe as part of the NGO Allied Shepherd. This work began “accidentally” three and a half years ago when Kabul fell to the Taliban and journalists needed help to reach safety.
The day after President Trump’s inauguration, I woke up to messages from devastated Afghan friends as word of the president’s executive orders spread across the globe. Two of these orders in particular affect America’s wartime Afghan allies. The new president’s right to review policies and expenditures isn’t disputed, but advocates for Afghans are disheartened by the slash and burn governance method that is endangering people who, in the case of Afghans, literally protected American lives and supported America’s values.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY CAROL LARREY
The train running 150 miles east to ancient Carcassonne from my home in southwestern France was, unusually, only one euro. Given that my husband was absorbed by projects in his office, I decided to spend the euro and head east for a stroll by myself around the famous citadel. The cheap ticket would provide a chance to do some things I’d never done before, such as walk the Canal du Midi from one lock to another and climb the 232 stairs of the Saint Vincent belfry to enjoy a view of the Cité from a mile away.
Plans taking shape, I further discovered that entrances to the restored castle and its battlements were free that day, as well as the art museum downtown. It seemed like a fun day was ahead. Of course, Carcassonne is more than just a cool setting for the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves—it’s also a reminder of historical tragedies. So “fun” might not be the right word.
POEM BY RACHEL JOY WELCHER
PHOTO BY EJ BOWMAN
A VIDEO REPORT BY BILL DIEM
The leg of lamb, or “gigot” in French, is slowly disappearing from French tables. Fewer lambs are being raised in the country, and the stronger taste of the meat is less appealing to young people. And yet, because of its traditional role as a special meal, this dish still has the power to bring people together around the table. Lamb is associated with the Christian holidays of Easter and Christmas and the Islamic holiday of Eid ul-Adha, and the gigot is the choice cut.
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PHOTO ESSAY BY ELSA WOLMAN KATANA
Other cities in the world speak to me—Amsterdam, Beijing, London, and San Francisco—but Jerusalem is my favorite. In love and solidarity, and seeking some serious emotional, mental, and spiritual R&R, I made two different trips in the last year from my current home in Baltimore. As a Jew and an Israeli, only in Israel could I find refuge from the general refusal of the world to acknowledge the atrocities of October 7, 2023. In Jerusalem, my world spins on center.
STORY BY HEATHER M. SURLS
PHOTOS BY MARY VENDEGNA & KAMI RICE
Rain spattered the windshield as Austin turned into the Water Wheel Trail parking lot. Driving the two-lane highway here from Payson, we had seen charcoal clouds emitting a fine scrim of rain, but we’d decided to hike even if it were sprinkling when we arrived. In the passenger’s seat, I folded down my striped socks, pulled on my sneakers. We would not be stopped. Not when our boys were overnight with their grandparents for the first time. Not on our first getaway in two years.
STORY BY JOANNA MARSH
PHOTOS COURTESY OF DYNAMIC AGENCY
Ever since he was a young boy in Crimea, music filled Teodor Doré’s life. At four years old, he would come next to his mother, a pianist, while she was practicing, and he would try to imitate her on the keyboard as best as he could.
Not too long after, he composed his first piece for the choir his grandmother conducted. He set the poem The Birch Tree by Russian poet Sergei Yesenin to four voices.
STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAMI RICE
It had rained all morning. Poured. Despite this, I arrived to a large crowd at the Mémorial de Montormel just as the first plane, trailing black smoke, puttered dramatically overhead. The clouds were low, but the airshow went on. Five post-war planes took turns swooping and banking in the open air, sometimes in formation, sometimes alone, sometimes teasing us into thinking the show was over before reappearing to make another pass in front of hundreds of upturned faces.
Standing in that umbrellaed crowd on the bluff above the pastoral Dives Valley, with the D-Day Ladies playing swing tunes on a stage behind us and cows dotting the fields below us, I felt transported. Located around 35 miles inland from the historic Normandy beaches breached by the Allies on June 6, 1944, this rural farmland around Mont-Ormel was the final pocket of the Normandy region to be liberated from the Germans in late August 1944. The music and planes, the reenactors and exhibits were assembled to commemorate the last violent gasps of WWII in this part of France.
