Revolt of the Delivery Workers

“For Cesar and many other delivery workers, the thefts broke something loose. Some started protesting and lobbying, partnering with nonprofits and city officials to propose legislation. Cesar and the Deliveryboys took another tack, forming a civil guard reminiscent of the one that patrolled San Juan Puerto Montaña, the small, mostly Indigenous Me’phaa village where they are from.”

Source: Curbed
Published: Sep 13, 2021
Length: 29 minutes (7,479 words)

OK, Seriously: Teen Vogue‘s Complicated Political Transformation

“The anxieties that Teen Vogue seems to awaken in the general public have proved to be analogous to how America sees teen girls, so frequently flattened into either Greta Thunberg–like saviors or overly woke children who need to be saved.”

Author: Clio Chang
Published: Sep 13, 2021
Length: 25 minutes (6,328 words)

Who Shot Walker Daugherty?

“Culture warriors had shaped dueling narratives from an incident that, while horrific for the few people involved, would not have been a blip on the national consciousness if it had occurred anywhere but the U.S.-Mexico border. Even now, nearly five years later, the question of who shot Walker Daugherty still feels like a political Rorschach test.”

Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Sep 13, 2021
Length: 30 minutes (7,541 words)

The Profound Beauty of Firefly Tourism

“Visitors to Appalachia are seeking out fireflies and finding solace in these dark times.”

Published: Sep 7, 2021
Length: 14 minutes (3,575 words)

Hawai‘i Is Not Our Playground

“To most outsiders, Hawai‘i is defined by the lei-draped, aloha-dispensing, honeymooner-welcoming image of the place. There’s no room for another version to emerge.”

Source: AFAR
Published: Sep 2, 2021
Length: 11 minutes (2,943 words)

Love and Loss in the Mountains

“He has a story he wants to share, about what life looks like afterward. It does not offer Five Easy Steps to Bury Your Pain. He knows how deeply loss can cleave a person. But he also learned that we need other people to help pull us clear of the wreckage.”

Source: Outside
Published: Aug 2, 2021
Length: 9 minutes (2,355 words)

Rain Boots, Turning Tides, and the Search for a Missing Boy

“When Jason and Ashley put up a memorial for Dylan in Bible Hill’s Holy Well Park—a blanket laden with teddy bears, a toy fishing rod, the boy’s first-ever pair of rain boots hanging from the tree overhead—locals tore it apart and dug a hole beneath it, looking for bones.”

Source: Wired
Published: Sep 9, 2021
Length: 26 minutes (6,700 words)

The Ambiguous Loss of (Probably) Not Selling My Novel

In a period of trying to sell her novel, Danielle Lazarin reflects on art, waiting, and the space between grief and hope.

Source: LitHub
Published: Sep 2, 2021
Length: 9 minutes (2,382 words)

The Last Glimpses of California’s Vanishing Hippie Utopias

“When members trickle out of a commune but retain their stake in the property, ownership can become a tricky issue. Often co-owners will refuse to sell their share because of ideological reasons—many members of Northern California’s communes acquired land to liberate it from logging and developers. This is why large, expensive swaths of land sometimes remain uninhabited even after all members of a commune have long since decamped.”

Source: GQ
Published: Sep 9, 2021
Length: 24 minutes (6,078 words)

The Other Afghan Women

“In the countryside, the endless killing of civilians turned women against the occupiers who claimed to be helping them.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 6, 2021
Length: 39 minutes (9,900 words)