Longreads

This had been happening: Person At A Party Or Something: Neat, travel writing! Which country are you going to next? Me: Texas. West Texas, actually. The Panhandle. P.A.A.P.O.S.: . . . [painful…

Minsk, the capital of Belarus and a former Soviet satellite, harbors Beatles cover bands, bookish bohemians feasting on salo and vodka, and the curious legacy of Lee Harvey Oswald:

"The next night in Minsk, I had dinner with my writer friend Siarhiej Kalenda. As I dug into a plate of machanka—chunks of tender pork and potatoes, with a thick gravy that diners sop up with pancakes—I told Kalenda it seemed to me that many of his fellow young Belarusians had fallen into a state of apathy. They seemed to take it for granted that there were no decent opposition figures that could challenge Lukashenko. So they accepted him as the leader of the country. Kalenda didn’t disagree."