Longreads Best of 2020: Profiles By Krista Stevens Here’s a selection of profiles that resonated with us this year.
Plastic’s Broken Promise By Krista Stevens “The first one I saw was on the path outside my house: a single white plastic glove, the fingers curled inward like a sleeping animal.”
“Over a Glass of Wine and a Pint on a Quiet Friday Night” By Krista Stevens “Impending parenthood makes you reconsider the context of your own upbringing, and puts the work your parents did into a new light.”
The Dark Side of Birding By Krista Stevens “Undeniably, eBird … brings birders together and allows for rapid information sharing. It’s also created new—and sometimes contentious—etiquette and social dynamics.”
Loving Molly, and Mourning Her: A Husband’s Extraordinary Essay By Seyward Darby Blake Butler writes movingly about his late wife, poet Molly Brodak.
Longreads Best of 2020: Sports and Games By Krista Stevens With leagues across the world undergoing cancellations for much of the year, 2020 has been an interesting one in the world of sports. Here are some stories that resonated with us.
On Trees as Social Creatures and Fungi as the ‘Fabric of the Forest’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Trees were previously seen as individual and solitary organisms. But the research of Suzanne Simard shows otherwise.
Longreads Best of 2020: Music Writing By Krista Stevens Music has been a salve this year, helping us cope with the myriad challenges that 2020 brought. Here are some favorite pieces of music writing we picked in 2020.
The Hungry Bears By Carolyn Wells “For the bears, the lack of salmon was a catastrophe on top of many others.”
The Alarmist: Is One of the Pandemic’s Loudest Scientific Voices Helping or Hurting Public Health? By Seyward Darby Meet Eric Feigl-Ding, the town crier of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trapped in Limbo Down Under By Seyward Darby In Australia, some 30,000 people live in a state of legal uncertainty crafted by politicians.
A Box of Meat and $100 For Your Life By Krista Stevens “Workers who worked Monday through Saturday without missing a day were given a bonus of $50, later raised to $100, which was accompanied by a box of meat valued at $200 to $300.”
‘Joe Biden Reeks of Decency’ By Krista Stevens “Joey is going to be President someday. He was made to be in the White House. There is no one else who can lead the country. Just you wait and see.”
A Fond Farewell to a Friend: the Arecibo Telescope By Krista Stevens “Exploring the cosmos is a way for us to know ourselves. Each time we look up, in some way we are making contact with each other, with our past, present, and future.”
Open the Door to the Political World of Narnia By Carolyn Wells “One road unquestionably leads from Narnia to Brexit. Lewis would have hated the notion of a superstate with all the extra ‘meddling’ that implies.”
‘Anyone Can Walk in the Woods, But Who Truly Knows Them?’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Tristan McConnell writes about the forests of Mount Kenya, and the people there with a deep understanding of the land and the trees.
The Digital Security Threat Inside Jameson Rich’s Body By Krista Stevens “It’s a feeling instead of living as a guinea pig for an opaque set of private interests, and a feeling that I can’t trust an industry that would ever put unsecure devices inside patients in the first place.”
How Should We Talk About Suicide Online? By Seyward Darby “People are dying after joining a “pro-choice” suicide forum. How much is the site to blame?”
The Secret Group Trying to Topple North Korea’s Regime By Seyward Darby Has the U.S. government already betrayed the activists seeking regime change in North Korea?
‘Transforming Craft Into An Act of Protest’: Embroidery In Response to Femicide in Mexico By Cheri Lucas Rowlands An embroidery collective in Mexico sews the stories of slain women.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers on Helping Elderly Black People to Vote in 1976 By Krista Stevens “I called out the names, and they’d tell me who they wanted to vote for. Then, very carefully, I put my finger by each name they’d chosen.”
The Price of a Baby By Carolyn Wells “When we arrived, she was sitting with a baby girl who she said was five months old and she had just snatched moments before, after winning the mother’s trust.”
Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Electric Guitar Pioneer By Krista Stevens “She wielded her guitar like a weapon and distorted the sound: a guitar technique that was completely original at the time and would be copied by legions of rock guitarists in the decades after.”
A Reading List on Travel Influencers and the Politics of a Place By Cheri Lucas Rowlands A reading list on travel influencers and the implications of Instagram on tourism and politics.
‘My Tongue Swallowing the Taste of Home Soil’: On Filipino Food, Family, and Identity By Cheri Lucas Rowlands “Far from our barrios, mountains, and islands, we cook, so that we may practice swallowing our undesirable truths, acidic and blood-heavy.”
There She Goes: How to ‘Feminize’ a Face By Seyward Darby How a trans woman found the surgery that could restore her sense of self.
‘Writing Was a Way to Have My Say’: An Interview with Author Sejal Shah By Krista Stevens “I didn’t know at first what I was doing. I was just trying to represent the inside of the feeling.”
‘Social Media Managers Are First Responders’ By Cheri Lucas Rowlands “They’re on the front lines of a relentless and overwhelming news cycle that is pushing them to the edge.”
