“We Can’t Rush This Kind of Power”: An Educator on Teaching Poetry to High Schoolers During the Pandemic By Cheri Lucas Rowlands “Poetry has a way of forcing one into recognition, or transformation, or both if we’re lucky.”
‘The Price For Your Return to Normal Is My Life’: On Dismantling Layers of the Doll By Cheri Lucas Rowlands “I have to wear all of these dolls, you see, so that Whiteness does not have to wear any.”
No Escape from Online Memories By Carolyn Wells The algorithms that drive Facebook, Pinterest, and a million other apps don’t know when your life changes course — and can keep up a stream of painful memories.
When Refugee Families are Separated, Women Carry the Burden By Longreads The story of a Somali family uprooted by war and separated by America’s broken refugee resettlement system — and the siblings who brought them back together.
Listen to the Sound of My Voice By Seyward Darby How a journalist found her voice as her mother lost hers.
The Silent Farm for Developmental Disabilities By Carolyn Wells “David believes that the men who come to the farm are able to connect deeply with the animals and the natural world, in part because of the way that society has dismissed them.”
Life and Love in the Utah Desert By Carolyn Wells Learning lessons about love while living in a 1961 Artcraft mobile home in Moab, Utah.
Before Donating Your Body Was a Choice By Carolyn Wells Whose nervous system is stretched out in a glass case at Drexel University’s medical campus?
The Deadly Fentanyl Fraud Between the Doctor and the Pharmacist By Krista Stevens “Then, after he was done seeing patients for the day, he’d begin his other work. The work no one could find out about. The work that would destroy his life, along with hundreds of others.”
Why Bumblebees Love Cats and Other Beautiful Relationships By Longreads On the wonders and benefits of natural relationships and what happens when humans meddle with the delicate balance between species.
The Syrian Rebels Who Found Refuge in Books By Carolyn Wells In a town under siege from Assad’s regime, a small group built a library from books rescued from the rubble.
“I Was at a Loss for Any Facts that Would Actually Stick”: An Investigative Reporter on Losing His Mom to QAnon By Cheri Lucas Rowlands At BuzzFeed News, Albert Samaha describes his effort to save his mom from QAnon.
Stand By Your Dictator By Krista Stevens “The UN gave up trying to count the war’s death toll in 2016, when it had already reached nearly half a million. More than 10m Syrians are refugees.”
The Struggle of Having a Pandemic Baby By Carolyn Wells Giving birth in the last year has meant a suffocatingly cloistered, rather than a communal, experience.
Good Naked vs. Bad Naked By Krista Stevens “As marriages go, ours is an infant. Soft-skulled and milk-breathed. We’ve been married for two years, together for five.”
Forget the Sheep, Pass the Dog By Carolyn Wells “The dogs knew the routine: settle down and relax so that the women could cut away their white tresses, shearing the dogs as closely as shearers do sheep.”
Pop Culture Portrays OCD as a Blessing. It’s Not. By Krista Stevens “The Wall Street Journal recently used the headline ‘We All Need OCD Now’ for an article on COVID-19 … Finally, my debilitating mental illness has a timely hook!”
The Joy of a Pointless Walk By Carolyn Wells “Maybe walking into some marshes, and deciding at an undetermined future point to stop walking, was what was available to the Romantics, but I think we can do better.”
Why Mother Maybelle Carter’s Work Was Never Done By Krista Stevens “In a few years’ time, however, she became a different kind of working woman: a musician by trade and one of the hardest working women in country music.”
Congratulations, You Now Own a Newspaper By Krista Stevens “’I think if the town survives, the newspaper will survive. I think we’re so intertwined. It’s not going to be one without the other. Our fates are going to be the same.'”
“Can I Get You a Nice Chianti?” By Carolyn Wells Jodie Foster and Sir Anthony Hopkins talk about “The Silence of the Lambs” for the movie’s 30th anniversary.
When Death Came to Mauritius By Krista Stevens “Black waves bring animals to the town’s shore. Sticky corpses float on the oil.”
Graded by an Algorithm By Carolyn Wells “Algorithms…don’t go on mutant rampages, they only sometimes reveal and amplify the cruddy human biases that underpin them.”
“People are dying waiting” By Krista Stevens “Miguel Jr. and Jeannette are troubled that Miguel’s doctors didn’t present ECMO as an option, and then resisted the idea when the family suggested it.”
“Addiction is a thief of your goodbyes” By Krista Stevens “I got angry, my mother cried, the addicts got high. That became a holiday theme for years to come.”
“The Internet Is Inside Us”: Patricia Lockwood on the Portal, Twitter, and Her New Novel By Cheri Lucas Rowlands In an interview at GQ, Patricia Lockwood talks about the perils of being extremely online.
Taking Your Butt to a Higher Level By Carolyn Wells “Working in concert with the perfect breasts, the perfect bottom turns the body into the shape of an S. ‘It’s the classic hourglass figure,’ said Melissa. ‘That’s what you go after.'”
Dear Mom & Dad: We Need to Talk about QAnon By Seyward Darby Children Of QAnon believers are desperately trying to deradicalize their parents.
The Big Bear Reading List By Carolyn Wells The elusive bear is a thing of fascination, and writers have a lot to say about them.
