June 2025

Dedicated to Tim Bayer & Diane Fortenberry, lights of the known world.

From the Publishing-Editor of Hubris: This June, the nothing-to-see-here-normalcy of this publication, appearing as it does, predictably, on the first of the month, just as usual, belies the State of Utter Insanity now obtaining in my birth country. Cultural critic Henry Giroux wrote in 2019: “Fascism begins with the rhetoric of dehumanization, humiliation, and reification, right? It starts with the language of brutality, which it normalizes. It legitimates hatred and racism and violence. It views certain groups through rhetoric as enemies of the American people. It operates off of the rhetoric of war, anti-intellectualism, and white supremacy. It operates off of the language of disposability. That language doesn’t just simply normalize increasingly the notions of white nationalism, white supremacy, racism, and xenophobia; it also enacts policies and it creates a culture of utter stupidity, a culture of ignorance.” Against that blazing backdrop of fascist chaos, we continue here at Hubris—though, most days, I wonder why and how and for how much longer. We lead with a story by Helen Noakes, recalling another mad chapter in the history of modern cruelty, a memory of Shanghai under Mao’s bombs, 1949. Dr. Guy McPherson follows, with tantalizing news regarding recent and surprising discoveries at Israel’s Tinshemet Cave. Next, Poetry Editor Claire Bateman introduces us to the poetry of Dr. Len Lawson. Resident Cartoonist Mark Addison Kershaw then graces us with his mostly nonverbal presence. This June, too, we are honored to welcome on board Hubris New Contributors Mykonos-based Stacey Harris-Papaioannou and Dr. Jason Page, of Ipswich, UK and Homer, NY. Two former Columnists, Dr. Diane Fortenberry, and Dr. William Ramp then return to us via archival posts, and we close with Elizabeth Boleman-Herring’s profile of Antipodean poet Janet Kenny and her remembrnce of her professor at the University of South Carolina, the poet James Dickey.

Our June & July Home Page Artist, Portand-based Lisa Congdon, is best known for her colorful, graphic style and her exploration of themes of joy, liberation, and inclusion. She makes art for clients around the globe, including The Library of Congress, Target, The US Postal Service, “Wired Magazine,” Amazon, Google, Smith Optics, Warby Parker, Method, Comme des Garcons, Peets Coffee, REI, and MoMa, among many others. Congdon exhibits internationally, including solo shows at Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art (California), Chefas Projects (Oregon) and Paradigm Gallery (Philadelphia), along with group shows at Hashimoto Contemporary in Los Angeles, Museum of Design Atlanta and The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. The author of ten books, including Art Inc: The Essential Guide to Building Your Career as an Artist and Find your Artistic Voice: The Essential Guide to Working Your Creative Magic, Congdon is self-taught and didn’t achieve momentum in her career until her late 30s. Despite her untraditional path, Congdon has achieved recognition, not just as an artist, but as a leader in the industry for her work in social justice, mentoring, and teaching. In March of 2021, she was named “One of the 50 Most Inspiring People and Companies According to Industry Creatives” published by AdWeek. Congdon and her team run a popular shop which you can visit here on her website or at Cargo Emporium in Portland Oregon. When she’s not making art, you can find her racing her bike around Oregon. (Nota Bene: Lisa Congdon and Hubris Columnist The Rev. Robin White are first cousins: it’s a multitalented family!)

Waking Point

“Red Shoes,” By Helen Noakes

SAN FRANCISCO California—(Hubris)—June 2025—Everything went quiet. More than quiet, beyond quiet. Nina could hear nothing but the beating of her heart. It was as if her ears were gone. But her eyes took in everything, and what she saw made no sense. She was aware of the cold polished floor beneath her cheek, of light blazing through the window. She was aware of the fact that the street beyond the window, two stories down, had changed. Things, shops, cars, people, were different from just a moment ago. Nothing moved. Nothing. And the stillness, well, the stillness scared her, and she felt that she, too, must not move. (Read more . . .)

Planetary Hospice

“Twenty-Seven Miles from Gaza: Beings More Sapiens Than We,” By Dr. Guy McPherson

BELLOWS FALLS Vermont—(Hubris)—June 2025—We are one. We share one fate with other people and with non-human organisms. This essay provides additional evidence as I attempt to drive home this important point. A headline in the 26 March issue of “SciTechDaily” reads: “Rewriting Human History: 110,000-Year-Old Discovery Suggests Neanderthals and Homo sapiens worked together.” Here’s the subhead: “Neanderthals and Homo sapiens shared technology and customs in the Levant, shaping early human culture through cooperation.” That’s correct: through cooperation, not through conquest. (Read more . . .)

Speculative Friction

“The Poetry of Len Lawson,” By Claire Bateman, Poetry Editor

GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Hubris)—June 2025—Poet Len Lawson is the author of Negro Asylum for the Lunatic Insane (Main Street Rag, 2023) and Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), and the editor of The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair Press, 2021). South Carolina Humanities awarded Lawson a 2022 Governor’s Award for Fresh Voices in the Humanities, and he has received fellowships from Tin House Summer Workshop, Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Callaloo Barbados, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, among others. (Read more . . .)

Addison

“Introverted Chair,” By Mark Addison Kershaw

ATLANTA Georgia—(Hubris)—June 2025—Editor’s Note: Even before I received cartoons from Mark Addison Kershaw, zipped up like a late, late Xmas present in my inbox last month, I might well have endowed a chair for him at Hubris: “The Introverted Chair of Single-Panel Studies.” The last six months have been unspeakably hard for Mark; hard for me. We’ve felt caught willy-nilly in a vast, evil game of Musical Chairs. Every time the music stops, one of our God-given rights is pulled out from under us, and we don’t even have time to react before the music starts up again. Trump’s America is an increasingly difficult place in which to be funny; in which to laugh. (Read more . . .)

Seaside Scribbles

“An Ex-pat Patriot in DC: Mourning Our Republic,” By Stacey Harris-Papaioannou

MYKONOS Greece—(Hubris)—June 2025―Tears flowed; I didn’t hold them back. Our guide touched my shoulder hesitantly. She’d heard my quiet sobs as she was standing next to me in the auditorium, where about 50 of us had viewed a short video about the historical significance of the Capitol Building in Washington DC. “Are you alright, M’am?” she asked. Seeing the concern in her eyes, I quickly smiled and responded, “Give me five years with a Democratic Congress and administration and I should be OK again.” (Read more . . .)

Off the Page

“All at C: America’s Changing Relationship with Profanity,” By
Dr. Jason Page

HOMER New York—(Hubris)—June 2025—During a drive to the airport after visiting my family in the UK, my American wife noted how my accent had subtly shifted back to my hometown’s cadences. She also reminded me that, upon returning to the United States, I would need to recalibrate my use of the C-word—either use it less freely than in Britain or, preferably, not at all. Having grown up in a working-class neighborhood where colorful language was embraced, I’ve always felt comfortable with profanity. (Read more . . .)

Outside of a Dog

“Antigone Rising,” By Dr. Diane Fortenberry

Editor’s Note: This essay first appeared here in September 2020. LONDON England—(Hubris)—June 2025—Procne was a young woman recently married to Tereus, king of Thrace. She longed for a visit from her sister, Philomena, and Tereus agreed to accompany his sister-in-law from her home to the palace. On the journey, the king took what he considered his right, and brutally raped his charge. When she threatened to tell Procne what had happened, he cut out her tongue, imprisoned her in a remote hut, and told his wife that she had died. Philomena refused to be silenced, however, and, while the queen mourned, she began to weave. For a year she embroidered the story of her rape and mutilation into a tapestry, and, when it was finished she arranged for it to be sent to Procne. (Read more . . .)

Small Things Recollected

“Heroes, Archetypes & Politics, Redux,” By Dr. William Ramp

Editor’s Note: This essay first appeared here in March 2017. LETHBRIDGE, ALBERTA Canada—(Hubris)—June 2025— He stands at a crossroads in the midst of desolate mulberry fields; squints at the sky, picks up a stick and tosses it into the air. The direction it points when it falls into the dust at his feet gives him the path he takes. Silhouetted against an empty horizon, his robe flapping in the wind, he is a lone figure striding through a minimalist, empty landscape. I will follow him, in search of some archetypal and ordinary heroes and their political meanings. (Read more . . .)

Book Review

“The Poet Janet Kenny,” By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—June 2025—Born a New Zealand banker’s daughter in 1936, Janet Kenny (née Stevens) was expected to embark upon a career more serious than painting and singing, which came naturally to her. Growing up, Kenny had an aunt who was a poet. “None of the rest of my family appreciated her but, in a way, she was quite famous,” she says. Kenny defied her family by going to art school, where she met her life companion, whose deep understanding of music and the visual arts would sustain her for 66 years. (Read more . . .)

Hapax Legomenon

“The Toad in My Word Garden,” By Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

Editor’s Note: This essay first appeared here in July 2018.  PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—June 2025—Several Sundays ago, I heard Jim Dickey read again, at Manuel’s Tavern here in Atlanta; and the old anger flared up. Can this thing die, I thought, this rage? You wouldn’t know I’m an angry person. I don’t look the part. It’s hard, too, for anyone who’s ever owned an eyelash curler and/or spent night after sleepless night working on the “turn” in a sonnet to articulate anger. But I’m a person with a veritable pilot light in my soul, whose phthalo-blue flame never goes out. Hearing Dickey just eased the thermostat around from “Simmer” to “Boil.” (Read more . . .)

Wing + Prayer

“Digging in the Dirt (John 8 & 9),” By Rev. Robin White

PENDLETON South Carolina—(Hubris)—May 2025—All I have wanted to do these past several weeks, is to get down on my knees and sink my hands in dirt. It is, for me, a kind of prayer. Digging in the soil, mixing with my hands old, dead, and depleted soil with new, dark and saturated, enriched with compost soil. It is so satisfying to participate in the transformation—with the hope of new life; seeds gently pressed into the amalgam. Dirty fingernails and an aching back have been life-giving. The hope of sprouting seeds and blossoming plants have sustained me as I try to balance the horror of daily news with an attempt at some order in the midst of chaos. It is reported that exposure to microorganisms in dirt protects us from anxiety and depression, boosts concentration and focus, and stimulates the body’s production of serotonin. (Read more . . .)

Book Excerpt

“From Understory:  An Ecologist’s Memoir of Loss & Hope,” By Dr. Kevin Van Tighem

HIGH RIVER, ALBERTA Canada—(Hubris)—May 2025―There is more than one way to lose one’s hearing. When the sounds of life vanish on their own, that’s the worst. Gordon Ruddy, a Jasper friend, wrote me a note one day: “I’m getting old enough to see that there are a lot of birds just missing. That some birds were plentiful but are rare now. I try very hard not to get down. It’s hard.” I know that grief. It’s how I felt as I watched my mother’s final breaths; the same sorrow washes over me sometimes even now when fishing one of Dad’s old streams. The difference is this: we expected them to go, but we expected the world that made them to carry on. Now we grieve a far greater (Read more . . .)

While I Draw Breath

“Robin Song,” By Dr. Kevin Van Tighem

HIGH RIVER, ALBERTA Canada—(Hubris)—May 2025―Mornings now are full of robins, some high in the weeping birch where they glow in the sunrise, others in the shadowed backyard oak, but most of them hidden in the big spruce trees that are scattered through the neighborhoods. Later they will drop into mountain ash trees to feed on wizened fruit or explore snow-free patches of ground to hunt awakening insects, but at first light they huddle in their roosts and sing together. Some sing the familiar territorial robin song but most sing variants, like a kind of avian jazz improvisation. Collectively, it’s like a frenzied chorus of excitement but if you spot one, as often as not it will seem entranced, nearly immobile. Only its beak moves. What are they singing for? (Read more . . .)

Words & Wonder

“Chaos & Catastrophe,” By Kathryn E. Livingston

BOGOTA New Jersey—(Hubris)—May 2025—Back on January 9, I was watching President Jimmy Carter’s funeral on my laptop when my husband entered the room. He stopped short, peered at my screen, and gasped, “Are you crying over Jimmy Carter?” “No,” I sobbed. “He was a wonderful man and he led a long life. I’m not crying over him.” Mitch seemed baffled, for I’m not one to cry over TV funerals (corny commercials are another matter). “It just seems like our country is in that casket there!” I wailed. And so, perhaps, it was. On that day that now seems so long ago, I watched as Republicans and Democrats rose to sing Carter’s praises (among them the sons of former president Gerald Ford and former VP Walter Mondale). (Read more . . .)

Skip the B.S.

“The Kabuff: My Desk,” By Dr. Skip Eisiminger, aka The Wordspinner

CLEMSON South Carolina—(Hubris)—May 2025—Over the 42 years I taught English and interdisciplinary humanities at Clemson University, students arriving at my office door were greeted by what must have been a bewildering array of passive-aggressive cartoons, photographs, and quotations. These were taped, glued, and thumb-tacked to my door, door frame, and bulletin board. I’m not sure where the impulse arose, but it might have been Emerson’s advice to write “whim” on “the lintel of your door post.” I had no such romantic pretense; I only wanted to introduce myself to those waiting for an audience in my chambers. Many times, I arrived, and finding students perusing my door, I was reluctant to interrupt them. (Read more . . .)

Plant People

“Natives of The Deep South,” By Jenks Farmer

COLUMBIA South Carolina—(Hubris)—May 2025—Where I grew up, we revered our native plants. We grew them for beauty, fascination, food, and shade, knowing that our plants captured the imagination of the rest of the world. Our native plants appear in literature, paintings, movies, and even comic books. Native plants of the Deep South have inspired emotion and provided nursery income for centuries—they even played pivotal roles in the country’s founding. Recently, a young horticulturist said to me, “Y’all (meaning older horticulturists) focused on pretty flowers and pretty gardens. It’s time to think about plants that do more. Time to give native plants an important place in the nursery industry and in home landscapes.” That sort of got my dander up because it’s flat-out wrong and more than a little dismissive of my career. (Read more . . .)

Speculative Friction

“The Poetry of Tamara Miles,” By Claire Bateman, Poetry Editor

GREENVILLE South Carolina—(Hubris)—May 2025—Tamara Miles says she has always loved poetry and all forms of literature, which is why she became a college English teacher. Her work has been published in a variety of journals and anthologies, including Fall Lines, Oyster River Pages, and The Tishman Review, among others. She has had many wonderful opportunities to read publicly, both in the US and abroad. For the last few years, she has served as the president of the Poetry Society of South Carolina. Miles’ approach to writing poems is to choose something to examine, to celebrate, or to grieve, because this is how memory serves us. (Read more . . .)

Pinhead Angel

“My Better Half (Revisited),” By Burt Kempner

GAINESVILLE Florida—(Hubris)—April 2020—She was fluent in kindness and spoke several dialects of compassion. When playgrounds taunts and threats reduced me to impotent tears, she gave me comfort. When my imaginary friend came to visit, she set out an extra place setting. She wouldn’t let me pass a flower without stopping to linger over its shape and color. When it rained hard and worms writhed helplessly on the surface and I raised my foot to strike, she halted me in mid-stomp. She taught me how to laugh at things that were funny, not cruel. I think I was six or seven when she began to die, when others started telling me she wasn’t a suitable playmate. Even my parents turned on her, gently but insistently. “Boys don’t . . .” “Boys never . . .” Her outline grew fainter, her voice thinner as her influence began receding farther and farther into the distance. (Read more . . .)