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“Most people here were trying to find a way to live with events that could have broken their lives: absence, illness, loss, death. How could I fault them for something I also wanted, which was to wring meaning from things that have none?” “Why was I stumbling alongside this mass of the devout?” This is […]

“What could it mean to give yourself the food you need to keep going? No punishing, no guilt, no withholding. Just nourishment.” Well hello, August! C’mon in and make yourself at home. This week, in addition to five stories chosen by the editors for our Top 5, we wanted to share two recent pieces with […]

“It felt like a homecoming but in retrospect seems more like a goodbye: a last great musical act before leaving that period of my life. It felt romantic, anyway, to record in a barn. We set the drums next to the tractor, tried to coax the chickens into cooing for the microphone, and had a […]

“I explain my original plan to catch a ferry into Nova Scotia and ride the Cabot Trail on the province’s northern reaches. I don’t tell him that I can’t go home until I learn something. What, I don’t know. Nevermind how.” Hello and welcome to the weekend! We’ve got a new feature, an excerpt, and […]

“Eating, even eating junk food—sometimes especially eating junk food—is not just a good idea but potentially the difference between life and death, or at the very least the difference between an enjoyable experience and a grueling one. No one has ever opened up a packet of Oreos on a mountaintop and said, ‘I’m being so bad.’” […]

“I came to a shack with a small, white-haired man inside. I assumed he had been guarding Devil’s Bridge for centuries. I answered his riddles three and he gestured for me to sign in. At the end of his hand was a damp pile of papers and a pen on a gray string. Like most […]

“Finally bearing witness to my own life has been significantly more healing than medications or therapy. Every prescribed medication has had unendurable side effects. Therapy gives me brutal anxiety. But that’s okay. I’m finding peace just by envisioning myself through a forgiving lens.” Welcome to the weekend! April is Autism Awareness Month, so this week, […]

“My boating experience was minimal and that section of river was not for beginners, but I had scraped by enough times that my risk assessment was dangerously off-kilter. It was a really, really bad combination.” Congratulations—we made it to the weekend! We’ve got some unforgettable stories for you this week. First, Maggie Slepian recounts her […]

“Despite endless warnings highlighting the dangers of the digital world, there is a growing acceptance that, in return for the speed and convenience of the internet, we must relinquish a little of our privacy.”  In the ’80s, “hacking” wasn’t a familiar concept to most moviegoers. Do you remember watching WarGames for the first time? The […]

“I may never have wanted to be a librarian, but I love this job. This specific job. Not because of any kind of noble commitment to knowledge or love of books. I love it because every day requires me to meet humanity face to face.” What does it mean to be a librarian today? At […]