The Longreads Blog

The story of a sex abuse scandal inside a Tulsa Christian school, where church leaders were in denial and where the crimes shattered the lives of victims and their families:

No more sleepovers. No more babysitting, or car rides home. No more being alone with children or ‘lingering hugs given to students (especially using your hands to stroke or fondle).’ Aaron Thompson—Coach Thompson to his PE students—sat in the principal’s office at Grace Fellowship Christian School as his bosses went through the four-page Corrective Action Plan point by point. It was October of 2001, the same month Aaron added ‘Teacher of the Week’ to his resume.

Grace’s leader, Bob Yandian—’Pastor Bob’ as everyone calls him—wasn’t there: no need, he had people for this kind of thing. Pastor Bob’s time was better spent sequestered in his study, writing books and radio broadcasts. His lieutenant, Associate Pastor Chip Olin, was a hardnosed guy, ‘ornery as heck,’ people said. Olin brought a USA Today article on the characteristics of child molesters to the meeting. At age 24, Olin explained, Aaron was acting immature and unprofessional, and someone might get the wrong idea.

“Grace in Broken Arrow.” — Kiera Feldman, This Land Press

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Great, Wondrous

[Fiction] The lifelong impact of brief friendships. A woman meets three friends in college who have special gifts:

Charles voice is controlled mortification. You fainted, he says.

One of the girls holds my hand. You totally did, she agrees.

Where are the birds? I say.

They disappeared when you fainted, the other Earring Girl says.

Her face is replaced by a mall paramedic demanding know what year it is, who is president, what my husband’s name is, what my name is.

My husband’s name is Ian, I say.

It is the wrong answer; their faces make this clear.

“Great, Wondrous.” — Marie-Helene Bertino, Five Chapters

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The gifted R&B singer, who’s spent years fighting addiction, attempts a comeback:

Black stardom is rough, dude,” Chris Rock tells me when I reach him to talk about D. “I always say Tom Hanks is an amazing actor and Denzel Washington is a god to his people. If you’re a black ballerina, you represent the race, and you have responsibilities that go beyond your art. How dare you just be excellent?”

After Brown Sugar went platinum, Rock put D’Angelo on The Chris Rock Show. Later, when D was mixing Voodoo, Rock hung out some in the studio. No surprise, then, that the first thing out of Rock’s mouth after “Hello” is a joyful “He’s back!” But he adds a sobering downbeat: “D’Angelo. Chris Tucker. Dave Chappelle. Lauryn Hill. They all hang out on the same island. The island of What Do We Do with All This Talent? It frustrates me.

“Amen! (D’Angelo’s Back).” — Amy Wallace, GQ

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The U.S. is supporting the Honduras government in an effort to crack down on drug trafficking. But are we aiding and arming the wrong side?

In some ways, it was just one more bloody episode in a blood-soaked country. In the early hours of the morning on May 11, a group of indigenous people traveling by canoe on a river in the northeast Mosquitia region of Honduras came under helicopter fire. When the shooting was over, at least four persons lay dead, including, by some accounts, two pregnant women. In Honduras, such grisly violence is no longer out of the ordinary. But what this incident threw into stark relief was the powerful role the United States is playing in a Honduran war.

US officials maintain that the Drug Enforcement Administration commandos on board the helicopters did not fire their weapons that morning; Honduran policemen pulled the triggers. But no one disputes that US forces were heavily involved in the raid, and that the helicopters were owned by the US State Department.

“Honduras: Which Side Is the U.S. On?” — Dana Frank, The Nation

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A story of love and revolution in Cuba. William Morgan was a free-spirited American drawn to Cuba to help Castro fight, only to grow disenchanted with his embrace of communism:

One day in the spring of 1958, while Morgan was visiting a guerrilla camp for a meeting of the Second Front’s chiefs of staff, he encountered a rebel he had never seen before: small and slender, with a face shielded by a cap. Only up close was it evident that the rebel was a woman. She was in her early twenties, with dark eyes and tawny skin, and, to conceal her identity, she had cut her curly light-brown hair short and dyed it black. Though she had a delicate beauty, she locked and loaded a gun with the ease of a bank robber. Morgan later said of a pistol that she carried, “She knows how to use it.”

Her name was Olga Rodríguez.

The Yankee Comandante — David Grann, The New Yorker

A son’s eulogy for his father:

A few years ago, when my son Mack was a baby, we took the train to Aberdeen, and we made the mistake of counting on the Harford County taxi system to pick us up. It was cold and raining, and the baby was cold and getting rained on. And after half an hour, with the dispatcher still promising a cab in 10 minutes, he loaded an oxygen bottle into the car and headed down West Bel Air Avenue, the oxygen ticking in the passenger side, to get his grandson in out of the rain. 

I remember that oxygen bottle. His pulmonologist explained things this way, once: every day, he was climbing a mountain. He lived at the altitudes where adventurers falter and die. Weeks ago, the doctors saw his CO2 levels and said he would be dead in days. They thought they were dealing with someone from sea level. He had already climbed mountains to teach class, to visit his sister, to see both his sons married. 

He kept climbing. He climbed a mountain to sit at his kitchen table with his wife, and drink his coffee. He climbed mountains to see his younger grandson in his arms. He climbed further than anyone could see.

“John Joseph Scocca, 1940-2012.” — Tom Scocca, TomScocca.com

Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t. A look at what happened to some of Camping’s followers:

I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me this was a prophecy rather than a prediction, maintained that he had never claimed to be certain about May 21. When I read him the transcript of our previous interview, he seemed genuinely surprised that those words had come out of his mouth. It was as if we were discussing a dream he couldn’t quite remember.

Other believers had no trouble recalling what they now viewed as an enormous embarrassment. Once October came and went without incident, the father of three was finished. ‘After October 22, I said “You know what? I think I was part of a cult,”’ he told me. His main concern was how his sons, who were old enough to understand what was going on, would deal with everything: ‘My wife and I joke that when my kids get older they’re going to say that we’re the crazy parents who believed the world was going to end.’

“A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?” — Tom Bartlett, Religion Dispatches

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An examination of one family’s experience with a child who has gender dysphoria:

As a teacher, Stephen knew how cruel kids could be. He imagined his child walking into the social battlefield that is school, insisting she was a boy when under her clothing, she wasn’t.

What about bathrooms? P.E.? The prom? How would all that go?

Despite his resistance, Stephen promised his wife that he would pay closer attention to Kathryn’s behavior and really listen for her ‘I am a boy’ anthem.

It didn’t take long.

‘We were in the car; I was driving,’ Stephen told me.

Kathryn was in the back and grabbed a book off the seat.

‘Daddy, I’m going to read you a story, okay?’ Kathryn said, opening a random book and pretending to read. ‘It’s about a little boy who was born. But he was born like a girl.’

Stephen nearly slammed the brakes, then listened as the story unfolded about how unhappy the little boy was.

‘Okay. I’m listening, Jean,’ he said after he got home.

“Transgender at Five.” — Petula Dvorak, Washington Post

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What is it that makes HBO’s Girls so special? Start with the sex scenes:

Afterward, while she is getting dressed, Hannah jokingly refers to herself as the eleven-year-old girl. Adam looks confused and asks what she’s talking about. Hannah reminds him about his fantasy, but clearly her joke has fallen flat, and the disparity between their respective experiences of sex is further amplified: Adam had been blissfully lost to himself while they were doing it, while Hannah was taking mental notes. It is, among other things, an amusing metaphor for Hannah’s chosen profession: the writer is the one busily jotting in her notebook while other people are having orgasms.

“The Loves of Lena Dunham.” — Elaine Blair, New York Review of Books

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A reflection on a mother’s life, and how advancements in medicine have extended our life expectancy, and have made it more difficult for us to die:

ME: ‘Maybe you could outline the steps you think we might take.’

DOCTOR: ‘Wait and see.’

NEUROLOGIST: ‘Monitor.’

DOCTOR: ‘Change the drugs we’re using.’

MY SISTER: ‘Can we at least try to get a physical therapist, someone who can work her legs, at least. I mean … if she does improve, she’s left without being able to walk.’

NEUROLOGIST: ‘They’ll have to see if she’s a candidate.’

ME: ‘So … okay … where can you reasonably see this ending up?’

NEUROLOGIST: ‘We can help you look at the options.’

ME: ‘The options?’

SOCIAL WORKER (to my sister): ‘Where she might live. We can go over several possibilities.’

ME: ‘Live?’

“A Life Worth Ending.” — Michael Wolff, New York magazine

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