The Sacred and the Dead: ‘Ripple’ Is a Spiritual Manifesto
A stack of amplifiers three stories tall loomed over the 7,000 faithful arrayed on sun-baked…
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The Sacred and the Dead: Truckin’ as a New American Pilgrimage
As the Grateful Dead celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, their historical, cultural, and artistic…
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The Sacred and the Dead: Ten Writers on the End of an American Adventure
Jerry Garcia said once that he didn’t care much for the Western God—but that didn’t…
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The Sacred and the Dead: Deadheads Are Not a Deviant Subculture
A long time ago in a faraway land, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Deadheads. …
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The Sacred and the Dead: Three Ways to American Beauty
One sentence, spoken by an anonymous “usher” to a maverick producer who then riffed to boisterous…
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The Sacred and the Dead: The Trouble with Sugar Magnolia
My childhood home was equidistant between two of the Grateful Dead’s regular Bay Area venues:…
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The Sacred and the Dead: ‘Friend of the Devil’ is a Love Song
Despite its provocative title, the Grateful Dead’s song “Friend of the Devil” actually can be heard…
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The Sacred and the Dead: It’s (Not) Just a Box of Rain
“The Grateful Dead were more than just a band. They were their own planet, populated by…
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“1913: Seeds of Conflict”: New Doc Explores Little-Known History of Palestine
In his 1967 book Israel: An Echo of Eternity, Abraham Joshua Heschel refers to “the jungle…
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Talking Salsa with Douglas Hofstadter, Enigmatic Author of Gödel, Escher, Bach
The cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter is well known for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence,…
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