Search Results for: Outside

He & He & He

Longreads Pick

[Not single-page] On the lives of three gay men who live as a “throuple”:

“It is important, perhaps, that each pair within the throuple has a private bond: Jason and Adrian have their history, ­Jason and Benny work together, and ­Benny and Adrian are close in age. Benny tells me there is zero jealousy among the three. ‘That’s probably the thing that leaves people the most incredulous,’ he says. ‘It just doesn’t exist with us. If it did, then our relationship sure as hell would not have lasted as long as it has.’ Sometimes there are pangs of jealousy over guys outside of the relationship. But that, Benny says, is rare.

“Most of the men’s parents are not aware of the arrangement (and so I have agreed not to include Jason’s and Adrian’s full names). In a way, they’ve eloped.”

Published: Jul 29, 2012
Length: 12 minutes (3,137 words)

Rehearsals For Departure

Longreads Pick

A man copes with the loss of his wife:

“Say, for argument’s sake, we hire the car that morning and drive to Busteni, or take the train instead. Say the rental agent is not sick. We are his only business, valued customers in fact, for whom he has a late 90s Peugeot gassed up and ready to go. We make good time out of Bucharest, past the abandoned industrial parks and new farms, and arrive quickly to Busteni. We ride the cable car up the mountain, take photographs under the white cross at the top, poke around a bit. We find an easy day hike across the ridge and back, eat lunch, drink our celebratory beers on the porch outside the basement of the hostel.

“We say that it was good to get out of the city and away from our routines. We should do this more often. On the ride down the mountain, we tell our friend about our weekend in Cali Manesti, for Katie’s birthday, how we hiked near the sulfur springs and got lost in the farm where I surrendered my shoe to a manure pile. Coming down the mountain, the cable car clicks and swings, and stops for a while over the deep valley to wait out the high wind, but it starts again. We do not travel to Busteni three months later. Katie does not die on the ridge of that mountain on a Saturday in late June. The ridge is not made sacred by her violent death. A bear crosses the ridge that day and attacks no one. Instead, that afternoon in March, we cross Busteni off of our list. There are other parts of Romania to visit that summer, for my birthday, before we leave the country for good.”

Source: The Rumpus
Published: Jul 13, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,001 words)

Top 5 Longreads of the Week

This week: SCOTUSblog, Esquire, New York Times Health, Outside magazine, The Classical, fiction from Nathan Englander, winner of the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, plus guest picks from Laura Nelson.

An eight-year-old autistic boy disappears into a densely forested park in Virginia for five days. The frantic search to find a child who doesn’t understand he’s in danger:

Because of his autism, Robert probably didn’t know that he was lost. If he heard people coming through the woods, he might well have taken cover from them, thinking it was a game of hide-and-seek. Or he might not have wanted to be found by a stranger, even one calling out his name. This made efforts to locate him extremely difficult, and it’s how Robert managed to elude what would soon become one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in Virginia history.

When he disappeared that day, Robert began an unlikely adventure that placed him at the center of the newest concern in the search-and-rescue (SAR) world: lost autistic children. Why autistic kids have the tendency to run off is not known, but the urge is strong in half of all children diagnosed with the disorder.

“Catch Me If You Can.” — Dean King, Outside magazine

See more stories about autism

[Fiction] A run-in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer after a rodeo:

Victor saw Nachee and Billy Cosa looking toward the entrance and turned his head to see a Riverside County deputy talking to the manager. Some more law was outside. They’d go around to the kitchen and check on Mexicans without any papers. Victor saw the Riverside deputy look his way. No, he was looking at the white guy at the next table, the guy wearing a straw Stetson he’d fool with, raising the curled brim and setting it close on his eyes again. Never changed his expression. He had size, but looked ten years past herding cows. It was the man’s U.S. Government jacket told Victor he was none of their business.

“Ice Man.” — Elmore Leonard, The Atlantic

See more fiction

Ice Man

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A run-in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer after a rodeo:

“Victor saw Nachee and Billy Cosa looking toward the entrance and turned his head to see a Riverside County deputy talking to the manager. Some more law was outside. They’d go around to the kitchen and check on Mexicans without any papers. Victor saw the Riverside deputy look his way. No, he was looking at the white guy at the next table, the guy wearing a straw Stetson he’d fool with, raising the curled brim and setting it close on his eyes again. Never changed his expression. He had size, but looked ten years past herding cows. It was the man’s U.S. Government jacket told Victor he was none of their business.”

Source: The Atlantic
Published: Jun 22, 2012
Length: 9 minutes (2,351 words)

How Udacity, Coursera and other online universities are changing the way we learn—and changing who has access to higher education:

‘It turns out that two-thirds of our students are from outside the United States,’ Stavens, now the CEO of Udacity, said. ‘It’s about a third US, a third from ten other countries you might expect—western Europe, Brazil, east Asia, Canada—and then about a third from 185 other countries. We have 500 students in Latvia. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it actually means more students take our classes in Latvia than take them on Stanford’s campus.’

And that’s just it: Stavens and his co-founders aren’t evangelists out to convert the unwashed masses. They simply minister to those who show up, looking to be saved. ‘Learning is a process a lot like exercise. It has great results, but takes a lot of effort. And maintaining that effort is really hard.’ If you don’t want to learn Python, or how the smartphone game Angry Birds works, fine. There are 500 Latvians who do.

“Professors Without Borders.” — Kevin Charles Redmon, Prospect

More from the Prospect

A look at anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann, and on how it is possible for people to experience the voice of a higher being:

In the name of research, Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews and ‘tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.’ So real, in fact, that members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy.

After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on ‘theory of mind,’ how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice.

“Hearing the Voice of God.” — Jill Wolfson, Stanford Magazine

See more from Stanford Magazine

Hearing the Voice of God

Longreads Pick

A look at anthropologist Tanya Lurhmann, and on how it is possible for people to experience the voice of a higher being:

“In the name of research, Luhrmann attended Sunday church where members danced, swayed, cried and raised their hands as a sign of surrender to God. She attended weekly home prayer groups whose members reported hearing God communicate to them directly. She hung out, participated, took notes, recorded interviews and “tried to understand as an outsider how an insider to this evangelical world was able to experience God as real and personal and intimate.” So real, in fact, that members told her about having coffee with God, seeing angel wings and getting God’s advice on everything from job choice to what shampoo to buy.

“After being introduced jokingly by Van Riesen as Professor Luhrmann to people who have known her for so long as Tanya, she told the group her book does not weigh in on the actual existence of God. Rather, her research focuses on ‘theory of mind,’ how we conceptualize our minds and those of others. In this case, she investigated how the practice of prayer can train a person to hear what they determine to be God’s voice.”

Published: Jul 1, 2012
Length: 12 minutes (3,035 words)

Professors Without Borders

Longreads Pick

How Udacity, Coursera and other online universities are changing the way we learn—and changing who has access to higher education:

“‘It turns out that two-thirds of our students are from outside the United States,’ Stavens, now the CEO of Udacity, said. ‘It’s about a third US, a third from ten other countries you might expect—western Europe, Brazil, east Asia, Canada—and then about a third from 185 other countries. We have 500 students in Latvia. Now that doesn’t sound like a lot, but it actually means more students take our classes in Latvia than take them on Stanford’s campus.’

“And that’s just it: Stavens and his co-founders aren’t evangelists out to convert the unwashed masses. They simply minister to those who show up, looking to be saved. ‘Learning is a process a lot like exercise. It has great results, but takes a lot of effort. And maintaining that effort is really hard.’ If you don’t want to learn Python, or how the smartphone game Angry Birds works, fine. There are 500 Latvians who do.”

Source: Prospect
Published: Jul 5, 2012
Length: 16 minutes (4,129 words)