Tarence Ray

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Zachary Siegel |Tarence Ray |Nevin Kallepalli

To express the ambient feeling that “things are getting worse,” there exists, of course, a meme. It plots iterations of a chart, and on its x-axis floats the disembodied, smiling face of President Ronald Reagan. After his inauguration, watch the data veer up and off into oblivion: from health care spending, executive pay, and the size of the federal government, to the privatization of public services, social isolation, and economic inequality.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | Donald Morrison |Tarence Ray |Maz Do

It has been close to ten years since I’ve ridden a bike through downtown Portland, Oregon. I was born and raised just outside the city, in a quiet suburb called Tigard, and I have vivid memories of taking my father’s bike as a teenager, loading it onto the TriMet bus, and riding an hour north, where I’d deboard and cruise the lush, green streets. I’d stop for water, needles, and dope—before settling down somewhere along the Willamette River to get high.

Jun 3, 2024 | thebaffler.com | J.w. McCormack |Kaila Philo |Tarence Ray |Sammy Feldblum

“Clouds passing over,” wrote Matsuo Bashō during the Edo period, “a dog peeing on the run / village winter shower.” Dogs guard the gates of Hades, weigh the discordant hearts of pharaohs, and accompany the Wild Hunt in Germanic mythology. Patient Argos crapped out at the homecoming of brave Ulysses, Virginia Woolf immortalized the Brownings’ cocker spaniel in Flush: A Biography, and Kenneth Koch wrote that a barking dog in the snow means good weather is coming.

Nov 9, 2023 | thebaffler.com | Tarence Ray

About three weeks after Eastern Kentucky’s disastrous July 2022 flood, I met a disabled older woman named Paula who lived in a particularly isolated part of rural Letcher County. She needed help. Her house had been destroyed by the raging floodwaters, along with most everything she owned: furniture, heirlooms, appliances, photographs. She had no electricity, running water, or Internet access.

Mar 15, 2023 | thebaffler.com | Tarence Ray

You’ve seen it before. An industrial disaster poisons a town’s food or water supply. Residents get angry. Public officials try to dispel that anger through a public act of self-sacrifice, of reassurance. They convene a press conference, whereupon some hapless courtier brings forth a chalice of the supposedly poisoned material. And then, in front of God and the television cameras, the public official imbibes. Examples from recent history abound.