MLK Day 2026: Hierarchical Chaos or Equitable Community?

 

MLK Day Parade and March, Chattanooga, TN (Jan. 19, 2026)

Since last year’s MLK Day post was called “Where Do We Go From Here?” I thought I’d continue alluding to King’s 1967 book by calling this one “Chaos or Community?” 

New Year's 2026: Stuff I Saw On My Walk That a Normal Person Probably Wouldn’t Take a Picture Of

I had to postpone my traditional New Year’s Day walk for the best possible reason: New Year’s D&D with friends! So I took my New Year's Day walk today, Jan. 2. 

On this walk I like to go down some streets I’ve never walked down before, thinking of this quote from Ursula Le Guin's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness:

In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find—if it’s a good novel—that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changed a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it’s very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.

While I was on the walk I hatched the idea for a photo essay called “Stuff I Saw On My Walk That a Normal Person Probably Wouldn’t Take a Picture Of.” Here it is without further elaboration!

A Quasi-Scrooge Enjoys Holiday Horror 2025

 

I donʻt hate Christmas. I really donʻt. But I wouldnʻt say I love it, either.

For several years, Iʻve been watching holiday horror movies. Does this make me a "quasi-Scrooge" as I referred to myself a few years ago?

Iʻm all for peace on Earth and goodwill toward humanity (at least more than the people who run the world these days). But I find myself ambivalent this time of year. And since horror is a genre that allows me to deal with the fact that life isnʻt all puppy dogs and rainbows, it makes sense to me that one way to face my ambivalence about the holidays is to watch movies about homicidal Santas and eldritch elves. 

Holiday Review of Reviews 2025

 

Dear reader, I haven't been posting book reviews here on the blog as much as I would like the last few months. I've still been writing some reviews over on Goodreads, but I haven't even been keeping up over there. It has been a busy few months, and the energy for blogging has often been elusive.

I could keep castigating myself, or I could just post the reviews! 

After I post this, I have two more reviews to finish of Death's End by Cixin Liu and Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King. I may also return to a holiday tradition from my past: reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings! I may even read A Christmas Carol, which I've been thinking about the last few years in line with my tradition of watching holiday horror movies.

Anyway, here are my reviews of The Reformatory by Tananarive Due, Books of Blood, Vol. 3 by Clive Barker, The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, Speculative Whiteness by Jordan S. Carroll, The Witching Hour by Anne Rice, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, The Fall of Gilead (graphic novel inspired by Stephen King's Dark Tower), and The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

Happy Holidays to you and all sentient beings! May all beings be jolly!

MLK Day 2025: We Do We Go From Here?

 

MLK Day Parade, Chattanooga, TN, Jan. 20, 2025

Today the United States simultaneously observes two things: 1. A holiday honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. and, 2. The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second, non-consecutive term as US President. This coincidence offers as succinct a summary of where my country is morally and politically as anything I could imagine: many of my fellow Americans both claim to admire Martin Luther King, Jr. and voted for Donald Trump. 

How did we get here? And drawing on the title of King’ s most challenging book, where do we go from here?

MLK Day Parade Photos 2025

The Chattanooga MLK Day Parade wraps up with the Howard High School Marching Band near the mural at the corner of MLK Blvd. and Peeples St. (Jan. 20, 2025)

 

It's a chilly afternoon here in Chattanooga, TN, and I went down to watch our local MLK Day Parade. It's in the low 20's Fahrenheit (around -5 Celsius), which is considerably colder than usual for this part of the world, so the turnout was lower than usual. In the past, I've participated in the parade with my local chapter of United Campus Workers, but we didn't get organized in time this year. Since MLK Day is my favorite holiday and there's a weirdness this year as it coincides with a Presidential Inauguration, I figured I'd just go down by myself.

I took some pictures! And here they are, along with a bit of commentary. I will have a lot more commentary on the day and the state of US politics in another post, coming soon.

It has often amused me that we have a King and King intersection along the parade route.

Lookout Mountain (mentioned in the "I Have a Dream" speech from the parking lot of the church that did not hire King as pastor in the mid-1950's. Don't worry, he went down to Montgomery and down in history afterwards.

The Bessie Smith Center (the parade goes right by it)

The parade begins!

A good MLK quote for the parade

Another mural on the parade route

Obligatory selfie (I only break out the warm hat and scarf a couple days around these parts, but today was one of those days)

I also took a video of the Howard High School Marching Band's performance, but apparently Blogger is not cooperating with video uploads today. Oh, well.

So there you have it! Happy MLK Day!

Holiday Horror 2024

I'm getting to my Holiday Horror post a little later than last year's post, but it's New Year's Eve and it's still Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, all of which I include under the banner of "the holidays," so it's not actually late (although I seem to have watched mostly Christmas-specific movies this year). What better way to deal with my conflicted feelings about this Most Wonderful Time of the year than lots of blood and guts and tinsel?

Thanksgiving Horror 2024: Black Friday Edition

 

In recent years (see here and here) I've made a tradition of watching Thanksgiving horror movies around US Thanksgiving. As with other holiday horror, this is a fun way to process my complex thoughts and feelings about this horrific, delicious holiday. And this year I discovered a film about that most uniquely American of holidays, Black Friday, in which we trample each other to buy stuff we don't need immediately after a holiday about giving thanks for what we already have.

I'll start and end with the movies I watched for the first time with a nice leftover sandwich of movies I've watched in the past. And for some reason, lighting in the films seems to be on my mind lately. Go figure.

I should acknowledge that today is also Native American Heritage Day, which in a peak American contrast, is always also the Friday after Thanksgiving.

Considering Our "Inescapable Network of Mutuality": MLK Day 2024

 

I had a great time at Chattacon this weekend, which included a fun panel on Dune and Philosophy!

Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the US. I was looking forward to following up my Chattacon experience with my local MLK Day march and parade, but today we're having some winter weather. The local MLK Day festivities have been postponed.

Holiday Horror 2023, Part Two!

 

Is it too late for Part 2 of my Holiday Horror 2023? I don't know, but I'm doing it anyway! It may be early January, but the true horror of the holidays is with us all year, so check out some thoughts on Night of the Comet, I Trapped the Devil, The Sacrifice Game, and There's Something in the Barn ... and because I count New Year's as part of "the holidays," Strange Days, and Midnight Kiss.

Review of Reviews: December 2023

 

It's the week between Christmas and New Year's, that blank time filled with cheese, sugar, and not knowing what day of the week it is. I've been having fun reading, but I have been somewhat remiss when it comes to writing reviews. Lest I disappoint the small handful of humans and bots who will read this, here are my reviews of some of what I've been reading lately: Transcendent by Stephen Baxter, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee, and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I also recently finished A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers, but I need more time to process how much I loved everything about it. I'm also returning to an old favorite, The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, which I'm loving just as much if not more than I did when I first read it ten years ago. Anyway, on to this Review of Reviews: December 2023!

Holiday Horror 2023

 

Here at Examined Worlds we have a tradition of writing about holiday horror movies. I guess it's my way of dealing with my complicated feelings about the Most Wonderful/Horrific Time of the Year. It's not that I hate the holidays, really. It's just that it's all a bit much sometimes: the pressure to produce holiday magic at all times through food, cheer, and cheesy decorations, the rampant commercialization that makes you feel like an asshole if you don't buy your loved ones new cars and expensive jewelry, hearing a million versions of the same songs over and over and over and over, each one more insipid than the last ...

Okay, no need to rehash all that. On to the movies!