Seyward Darby

Cecelia Lewis was asked to apply for a Georgia school district’s first-ever administrator job devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion. A group of parents — coached by local and national anti-CRT groups — had other plans: A district official asked Lewis if she has social media accounts. “Only a LinkedIn,” she replied. (Lewis barely has […]

Maine was the first state to eliminate the possibility of parole. Now, a hard-nosed state legislator and a once-incarcerated PhD student are making the case that parole deserves a second chance: Talk of bringing back parole has intermittently stirred up in Augusta. In the early ’90s, with the corrections department facing overcrowded prisons, the head […]

In Alabama, where sex toys stores are illegal, a church-going grandma, enterprising mom, and sassy granddaughter built a booming business hawking penis pumps and butt plugs — and helping every person find their path to pleasure: One day in 2015, Mary told Christy she wanted to open up a clothing boutique in Muscle Shoals near […]

The historic Maya oriented their lives by the heavens. Today, their descendants and Western scholars team up to understand their sophisticated astronomy: Ixquik Poz Salanic, a lawyer, serves as a daykeeper for her community, which means she keeps track of a 260-day cycle — 20 days counted 13 times — that informs Maya ritual life. […]

An essay about the terrifying funhouse that is Washington, D.C., in the age of Trump, QAnon, and insurrection: Even while conspiracy or paranoia bring the truth of mainstream accounts into question, their main effect is to simplify, not to obscure; to add meaning where there is none, to imagine particles where there may or may […]

In Iceland, traditionally a land of cat lovers, bans and curfews are redefining the human relationship with domestic cats: As a cat owner, I had assumed the six or seven birds Ronja brought inside her first summer was all she had caught. Each time, I was shocked, but it took a wounded whimbrel, a shorebird, […]

The trial for the men accused of attacking the Bataclan theater and other sites in Paris in November 2015, leaving 130 people dead, is only the thirteenth trial in French history in which records can be made of the proceedings. Author Madeleine Schwartz shares her notes from attending the trial, in which there are some […]

Just 7 percent of the people in Los Angeles’s Echo Park encampment found permanent housing after it was cleared. Almost half are missing. Seven are dead. That’s not a failure of homelessness policy; it’s an example of the system working exactly as intended: Officers wielded batons, launched foam bullets at point-blank range, tackled members of […]

An ode to some of the world’s most misunderstood urban spaces: Ever since ancient Uruk, the world’s first major city, founded around 4000 BC in what is now Iraq, alleys have served as a borderland between private and public life. Uruk’s covered lanes, no more than eight feet wide, offered respite from the sun when residents walked […]