High angle close-up view of a senior Caucasian woman's hands drawing Alzheimer's disease cognitive functions clock test with positive results suggesting illness

Half Past Dementia

Drawing a clock has become a standard test of cognitive impairment, but there’s no consensus on who should do it or how.
John G. Neihardt

A Tale of Two Visionaries

What roiled the mind of Nebraska poet John Neihardt with whom Black Elk, the iconic Lakota holy man, shared his story?
Hunters in the Snow (Winter) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Climate Canvasses of the Little Ice Age

Low Country artists of the late Renaissance and Early Baroque eras captured the happiness and hardships of snowy winters—an ever rarer phenomenon now.
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.28550903

How American Librarians Helped Defeat the Nazis

Recruited to the war effort thanks to their deft research skills and technological know-how, librarians used microforms to gather and share intelligence with Allied forces.

Scrub-a-Dub in a Medieval Tub

Contrary to popular misconceptions, Europeans in the Middle Ages took pains to keep themselves clean.
William Carlos Williams, 1921

A Centennial Celebration of Spring and All

William Carlos Williams's hybrid work of poetry and prose both upended narrative conventions and delighted in the wondrous, unifying force of imagination.
A page from The Angolite that features a photograph of a prison guard holding a shotgun while watching prisoners work in a field.

Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation

"Except as punishment for a crime," reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives.
Sa Ga Yeath Pieth Tow, King of the Maquas by John Simon

Indigenous Kings in Londontown

In 1710, Queen Anne of England feted four Native American dignitaries—would-be political allies. Their presence at a performance of Macbeth caused a stir.
The cover of the Song Cave edition of Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses by Ronald Johnson

Lines of Poetry, Rows of Trees

Ronald Johnson’s Valley of the Many-Colored Grasses, newly re-issued, offers entry into the work of a pioneering master collagist.
An image created with Adobe Firefly using the prompt, "a room full of students creating art on computers"

AI and the Creative Process: Part Three

The multifaceted nature of creativity subverts the assumption it’s a human endeavor exclusively—meaning we might need to radically re-think the definition of “art.”