Losing the News
The Charleston Gazette-Mail was known as the newspaper that used “sustained outrage” to hold the powerful accountable in West Virginia, a state with a legacy of corruption. Last year, the paper filed for bankruptcy and changed owners; its future as a watchdog remains unclear.
The Meaning Of All Caps—In Texting And In Life
“What’s cool about expressive lengthening is that, although it started as a very literal representation of longer sounds, it’s ended up creating a form of emotional expression that now has no possible spoken equivalent, making it more akin to its typographical cousins, all-caps and italics.”
The weird magic of eiderdown
“In Iceland, the harvesting of these precious feathers has created a peculiar bond between human and duck. What can this unique relationship teach us?”
My Life in Books: A Meditation on the Writer’s Library
All libraries are unique, but a writer’s books give a very personal look at their personality, their peculiarities, influences, and memories.
Reading Lessons
You never stop learning how to read — probably because you also never stop forgetting how to read.
The Crane Wife
Days after calling off her wedding, a writer travels to Texas to study the endangered whooping crane, and learns about the nature of need.
The Man With the Golden Airline Ticket
“That’s what Dad’s AAirpass and ultra-elite flying status yielded for him: lifelong bonds.”
When to Throw a Goodbye Party
A personal essay in which Joy Notoma grapples with: saying goodbye to friends before a move, the complicated grief of shunning, and the way one parting can be a painful reminder of so many others.
It Took Deputies 24 Hours to Find a Body in This California Jail. Its Problems Aren’t Fixed
California has set aside $2.1 billion in funding for construction projects to upgrade old jails, some of which have been branded as having “deplorable” conditions. But a majority of the projects have been delayed due to bureaucratic roadblocks and critical errors in planning. Meanwhile design flaws in the aging facilities have been contributing to deaths of inmates.
On Eve’s Temptation and the Monsters We Make of Hungry Women
In this first piece in a series about women in the Bible and social constructions of feminine power, Nina Li Coomes examines the story of the Garden of Eden: “I first began to think of Eve as a woman punished for hunger in college. At the time, I was a recovering Atheist relapsing into her own disordered eating patterns. One evening, I struck upon this epiphany while staring intensely through the crosshatch glass of my apartment’s oven, willing the verdant kabocha squash (lower calorie count than sweet potatoes) I’d placed there to roast faster.”
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