All of a writer’s fears, in one place. Ford reflects on writing out of a hole, and what keeps him from “going full-bore bananacakes” with his work:
“I have dug a number of limbic trenches, mental pathways that lead to stress and anxiety. I have a mixed (but steadily improving) record on substances, especially food. And if I allow the book and my writing to become a proxy for myself, as a sort of external version of my identity, I’m in trouble. But if I let these things be products, if I let them exist outside of me, don’t worry how people react to them, just let what wants to happen, happen—well, then I stand a chance of doing good work, without having to disgorge that work from myself seppuku-style using a rusty sword with a hilt of guilt and a dull blade forged from procrastination. That is, I need to make writing something besides a daily referendum on my worth as a human. Which it has become, for reasons.”
Zambia has no dictators, child soldiers, nor widespread occurrences of crime or violence, yet more than half its population lives on $1 per day. Why? An international development NGO worker examines the various economic drivers that is keeping Zambia poor:
“Just when you think you’ve got the right narrative, another one comes bursting out of the footnotes. It’s the informality. No, it’s the taxes. No, it’s the mining companies. No, it’s the regulators.
“And that’s what makes fixing it so difficult. Does Zambia need better schools? Debt relief? Microfinance? Nicer mining companies? Better laws? Stronger enforcement? Yes. All of them. And all at the same time.”
A young scientist retraces the work of Edward Taylor, a prolific herpetologist (a zoologist who studies reptiles and amphibians) who also led a double life as a spy:
“Taylor was called to duty again in 1944, when he was 54 and war raged in the Pacific. According to records in the US National Archives, he joined the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), a precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to train agents in Sri Lanka — then a British territory that provided ready access to Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and other areas that the Japanese had infiltrated. Scientific work, an OSS officer explained to one of Taylor’s superiors, was ‘excellent cover.’
“Taylor taught jungle survival at Camp Y, a steamy settlement on the coast. With a penetrating stare and a lantern jaw, he seemed more imposing than his 1.8 metres. In his spare time, he occasionally dodged gunfire to nab specimens, which he studied for two monographs published after the war. ‘Have just described five new forms of blind snakes from the island,’ he wrote to S. Dillon Ripley, a young ornithologist who served with him and would later lead the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. In a later letter, he offered ‘some 500 species’ of mollusc shells to the Smithsonian.”
Below is an excerpt from the book The Faithful Executioners, by Joel F. Harrington, which was recently featured as a Longreads Member Pick. Thanks to our Longreads Members for making these stories possible—sign up to join Longreads to contribute to our story fund.
A profile of Chris Bolyard, chef de cuisine at Sidney Street Cafe in St. Louis, who works under celebrity chef Kevin Nashan:
“Living outside the spotlight is nothing new for Bolyard. As the chef de cuisine of St. Louis’ Sidney Street Cafe in Benton Park, he has long worked alongside its celebrated owner and executive chef, Kevin Nashan. While the story itself has been told many times – talented chef laboring quietly behind the scenes – Bolyard’s tale is different because of its length. He’s worked for Nashan for nearly a decade, playing right-hand man to a boss who collects James Beard nominations like Pokémon cards.
“When it comes to food, chefs, by their nature, are a narcissistic bunch, and many in Bolyard’s position would’ve left to spread their own culinary gospel. An executive chef position here. A small bistro there. But Bolyard has stayed rooted, happy in a situation that is not far from ideal.”
The U.S. government is increasingly facing cyber threats that could affect our national security and economy. As a result, the government is courting hackers for cyber security jobs, but needs to overhaul its image to lure young talent, who can easily find well paid jobs in Silicon Valley and private security firms:
“To get a sense of just how weak our cyberdefenses are, I take a trip with Jayson Street, Chief Chaos Coordinator for another firm, Krypton Security, into the basement of a hotel in South Beach. We breeze past an open door with a taped sign that reads, ‘Doors must be closed at all times!!!’ This is where the brains of the building live – the computer network, the alarm system, the hard drives of credit-card numbers – but, as Street tells a brawny security guard, he’s here on the job, ‘doing a Wi-Fi assessment.’ Street, a paunchy, 45-year-old Oklahoman in a black T-shirt and jeans, flashes the hulk some indecipherable graphs on his tablet and says, ‘We’re good,’ as he continues into another restricted room.
“The doors aren’t locked. No one seems to be monitoring the security cameras. The wires for the burglar-alarm system are exposed, ready for an intruder to snip. We make our way to the unmanned computer room, where, in seconds, Street could install malware to swipe every credit-card number coming through the system if he wanted to. ‘They’re like every other hotel I’ve tried to go into,’ he tells me. ‘They fail.'”
How our environment, our sense of support, and our feelings of loneliness can activate or turn off specific genes in our bodies that affect things like how we fight or heal wounds. An examination of the “social science of genetics”:
“Scientists have known for decades that genes can vary their level of activity, as if controlled by dimmer switches. Most cells in your body contain every one of your 22,000 or so genes. But in any given cell at any given time, only a tiny percentage of those genes is active, sending out chemical messages that affect the activity of the cell. This variable gene activity, called gene expression, is how your body does most of its work.
“Sometimes these turns of the dimmer switch correspond to basic biological events, as when you develop tissues in the womb, enter puberty, or stop growing. At other times gene activity cranks up or spins down in response to changes in your environment. Thus certain genes switch on to fight infection or heal your wounds—or, running amok, give you cancer or burn your brain with fever. Changes in gene expression can make you thin, fat, or strikingly different from your supposedly identical twin. When it comes down to it, really, genes don’t make you who you are. Gene expression does. And gene expression varies depending on the life you live.”
After the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling overturned the mandate that “separate but equal” facilities were constitutional, Prince Edward County in Virginia closed its public schools to resist integration. The story behind the small town that resisted integration and the legal battles that ensued during the Civil Rights movement:
“After the 1954 Brown ruling, there were efforts across the South to block integration. In Virginia, the governor closed public schools in several cities to prevent them from integrating. In 1959, the courts ruled that the closings were unconstitutional, and those schools reopened—at the same time, Prince Edward County refused to integrate and locked its doors.
“For five years, Prince Edward schools remained closed while legal challenges bounced between courts. During that time, most white children attended the new private school created by segregationist leaders and funded by state tuition grants and private donations. About 1,700 black and lower-income white students tried to find schooling elsewhere or stayed home, waiting.”
Emily Perper is a word-writing human for hire. She blogs about her favorite longreads at Diet Coker.
“One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things,” wrote Henry Miller. Travel changes the traveler, obviously. Here, authors look at themselves, their societies, and their conceptions of home.
I’ve followed Anderson’s adventures as she’s navigated the weird waters of serving abroad and intersectional feminism. Here’s her latest, a beautiful, articulate exploration of how fat is treated in Indonesia.
“My nose was pressed up against a glass window all right, but there was an iron vise at the back of my neck forcing my head to stay in place.” Kincaid describes the problematic relationship between her Antiguan childhood and England’s colonization thereof.
Rosen documents his adventures in different—you guessed it—airports in Africa and the Middle East, from the eerie Somalian stopover to the grandiosity of Jordan.
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick:
Stories about people outside the margins of convention can have a “Check out these weirdos!” leitmotif. We write about these people because they are different. But a clumsy writer accentuates the differences instead of finding the common humanity. In her examination of the “unschooling” practice, Allison Pohle of the University of Missouri found families who seem pretty average, except in the educational choices they make for their children. There’s no eye rolling in this story, and it’s the mark of a writer who isn’t jaded. Try to stay that way.
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