For Women Musicians, Maybelle Carter Set The Standard And Broke The Mold

“If Maybelle Carter — mother of country music, without whom country and rock and roll guitar would not exist — can’t make the great guitar player list, how can women musicians expect to be seen at all?”

Source: NPR
Published: Aug 13, 2019
Length: 7 minutes (1,951 words)

Woodstock: My Queer Love Story

Kate Walter recalls attending Woodstock in 1969 with her boyfriend — a few years before they split up and both came out.

Source: Longreads
Published: Aug 15, 2019
Length: 7 minutes (1,800 words)

Deep Brain Stimulation

In 2017, the US medical device company Medtronic announced that it had implanted deep brain stimulation (DBS) equipment in 150,000 patients worldwide to reduce debilitating tremors. This is a powerful therapy, but have the risks proved to outweigh the benefits?

Source: Aeon
Published: Aug 14, 2019
Length: 13 minutes (3,300 words)

The Case That Made an Ex-ICE Attorney Realize the Government Was Relying on False “Evidence” Against Migrants

The story of former Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer Laura Peña — who went to work defending the migrants she used to prosecute — and a family separation case she recently fought in which false “evidence” had been used to detain her client.

Source: Pro Publica
Published: Aug 14, 2019
Length: 22 minutes (5,636 words)

Mysteries of Menopause

In this personal essay, Lesley Hazleton not only makes peace with menopause, she sings its praises as a source of liberation from “want,” aka sexual desire.

Source: The Stranger
Published: Aug 14, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,630 words)

The Teacher. The Basketball Coach. The Dead Rat In the Mail.

How the Me Too Movement came to little Merced, California.

Source: Medium
Published: Jul 25, 2019
Length: 40 minutes (10,082 words)

Our Democracy’s Founding Ideals Were False When They Were Written. Black Americans Have Fought to Make Them True.

As part of the New York Times Magazine‘s 1619 package commemorating the 400th anniversary of the beginning of slavery in America, Nikole Hannah Jones writes about the crucial influence of black Americans — through resistance, and a never ending fight for equal rights for all — on democracy in this country. “More than any other group in this country’s history, we have served, generation after generation, in an overlooked but vital role: It is we who have been the perfecters of this democracy.”

Published: Aug 14, 2019
Length: 30 minutes (7,675 words)

The 1619 Project

With essays, poems, timelines, and photography, the New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project commemorates the 400th anniversary of American slavery, retelling the story of America’s origins by “placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center.”

Published: Aug 14, 2019
Length: 149 minutes (37,272 words)

Day Trip

“On Sunday we drive to prison. I have packed snacks for the children. They have charged their phones. We start early, when the roads are empty. I used to cry on this drive. Now I don’t. I don’t seethe anymore, either. And I’ve stopped hoping. Everything that could go wrong already did. No more detours are possible around the scorched landscape of our life. All I can do is witness.”

Source: The Rumpus
Published: Aug 13, 2019
Length: 12 minutes (3,240 words)

For the Love of Orange

“But orange’s pop and fizz and alarming brightness still sparks in me — a reminder of how it feels to begin. It feels like joy, like the kick of a starting gun, like a banner flapping in the breeze.”

Published: Aug 13, 2019
Length: 9 minutes (2,376 words)