• AMERICA'S TRIALS

    A Special Report from Journal of the Plague Year After the last presidential debate, we all realized that the immediate crisis could very well come to an end Nov. 3. Dire predictions of civil war turn out to be fantasies. America's basic structures withstand the greatest threat they've faced, a concatenation of historical trends that are destabilizing countries around the world turbocharged by our own darkness, anger, dislocation, trauma and grief that in the words of one of our contributors, hark back to the damaged souls who landed at Plymouth Rock. This week, we publish a series of essays and articles linked to the release of Aaron Sorkin's The Trial of the Chicago Seven. The movie draws parallels between the 1960s and the present. Our writers, who range in age from 22 to 70-something (but who's counting?) bring distinct sensibilities to the question of where we go from here.

    October 29, 2020
    In 1985, I was a scruffy, activist/student living in a semi-abandoned warehouse in downtown...
    Bruce Bauman I watched “The Trial of the Chicago 7” with modest expectations and unsurprisingly...
    October 27, 2020
    Rex Weiner No one who doesn’t know Hollywood will ever understand how movies and TV shows get...
  • The Old Salt

    Tell It, Matey

    Joseph Houlihan, who writes the Ferry Dock Scribbler for the Block Island Times in Rhode Island, taught high school English and worked as a ferryboat loader. He's the author of the short story collection The Monkey's Fist. (It means something different from what you might think.)

  • Special Section

    The Year That Was (and Kinda Wasn't)

    Journal of the Plague Year's Anniversary 

     Seven Stories Mark a Year of Fear, Anger, Love, and Friendship