Two years after Breonna Taylor’s death, her family still wants answers: 'We still don’t know what happened’
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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Two years after Breonna Taylor was killed, activists say protests inspired life changes
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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Brett Hankison found not guilty of endangering Breonna Taylor’s neighbors in shooting
FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
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Lethal force? Tasers are meant to save lives, yet hundreds die after their use by police
CONTRIBUTOR FOR USA TODAY
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Injustice From Day One: Shameka Parrish-Wright’s Never-Ending Protest
FOR Louisville magazine
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Coronavirus has exposed a secret underbelly of the travel business: Ponzi-style schemes to pay bookings
CONTRIBUTOR FOR USA TODAY
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‘Violence Is Inevitable’: Cops Shot After Protests Erupt in Louisville
Feed for The Daily Beast
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Inside Chuck Rubin’s Legendary Shop
The man in the yellow paisley chair has been here for a long time. You can tell by the outline of his body in the faded fabric. You can tell by the piles of books and bags and mail, as high as his head on both sides of him and at his feet. You can tell by the sleeping orange tabby cat on his lap, paws tucked under his belly, eyes closed and purring.
For Louisville Magazine
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Disability Rights Advocate Cass Irvin on Coping with Quarantine
“I hate the expression ‘this too will pass,’ but I had an aunt who always said that, and I keep hearing her voice throughout all this. Because of course it does pass. Just keep breathing in and out. That’s really all we can do. Just don’t breathe in and out on each other too much.”
For Louisville Magazine
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Food and Family at Cafe Aroma
Azaeneth climbs down from Hernandez’s hip, and a few wobbly steps later, she falls. Her little arms and legs splay out as the yogurt in her ice cream cone splashes across the floor. Hernandez runs over, picks her back up. “It’s OK, mi amor,” she says, shushing Azaeneth and patting her back. “See? If someone else was taking care of her,” Hernandez says, “I couldn’t be there when she falls.”
For Louisville Magazine
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Taking the Reins
Horses kick up dust as they retrace their steps, carrying young riders inside the round red metal arena at the Louisville Equestrian Center in Taylorsville. A 17-year-old I’ll call Dwayne watches from the nearby tack room, a squeaky overhead fan ticking away the slow summer afternoon seconds before it’s his time to ride.
It’s Friday, the last day of this week’s HOOF (Horses Offering Opportunities for the Future) Academy — a week-long nonprofit summer program that teaches kids how to care for and ride horses. “Are they done yet? Are they done?” Dwayne asks as he cleans bridles hanging from the ceiling. He and a group of teenage boys from Spring Meadows — a residential facility for youth in the state’s care — sing lines from Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” between their impatient questions.
For Louisville Magazine
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Tharin
I’d still love the flatlands of the Midwest, even if I hadn’t grown up there. I remember the sounds of katydids at night, the cicadas that joined them every few years, the soft amber texture of the dwindling prairie, the smudges of green in the distance, trees too far in the distance to give away their heights.
But my favorite part of the Midwest has always been the sky, and maybe that’s because there isn’t much to get in the way of it. You can spend hours, if you want, watching the same cloud move from one side of it to another.
It’s at once empty, lonely, illuminating, and hopeful. A place that seems so easy to escape that it taunts you, dares you to race from one perfectly flat horizon to the next, on and on until something changes. And in a world that values freedom, adventure, and the lure of Someplace Else, many of us do just that.
Illinois-based photographer Tytia Habing knows this feeling, too, though you may not know it from first glance at her work. Her black and white images of family and rural landscapes call out to Sally Mann and Emmett Gowen as influences, shimmering where the light hits dead birds, bug legs, big-eyed nieces and nephews, late-autumn cornfields, and freckles peeking through sun-worn skin. She shoots candidly and at-will, her favorite 50-mm lens allowing her to be intimate with her subjects while making them as vulnerable as that open sky over them.
For Driftless Magazine, Issue 7
Driftless Magazine is a print-only publication. Read the full story here.
Heartbreak, Loss, Stiff Drinks, Fresh Smokes
Halfway through Janet’s second cigarette, a woman walks in. She looks around, but not for a seat in one of the red vinyl booths. And not for a drink from the neon-lit rows of liquor behind the wood panel bar. She’s looking for Janet.
They meet eyes, and the woman strides over the black and white checked linoleum floor, throwing open one of the patio French doors. Making no apologies for interruption, she says, “Steve’s in the hospital. Congestive heart failure and sepsis.” Steve is the woman's son. Janet hops up and escorts her back to the front, where they have a brief, private conversation and a heartfelt embrace.
After Steve’s mother leaves, Janet fixes her tearful eyes on an unknown point in the woods beyond The Cabin’s patio. “They’re not customers,” she says. “My heart breaks for them just the same as my family. These are my people.”
Then she adds, “It must be a Tuesday.”
But it’s not. Not yet.
Just before midnight, a single police siren crescendos as it speeds past The Cabin, traveling south towards the dangerous bend in the road the locals call “Dead Man’s Curve.”
As the wail of a second siren - an ambulance - comes into earshot, Janet looks away. “I quiver,” she says, and she does, the sound tapping into memories from a Tuesday long ago that can't be forgotten.
For Driftless Magazine, Issue 4
Driftless Magazine is a print-only publication. Read the full story here.