The Paramedic Murderer of Narrowsburg, N.Y.
A true crime story in a small town:
“He was gonna do this and save the children,” she testified. “I don’t remember exactly the conversation. He had me convinced that Catherine was the bad guy and he was the good parent and his kids were abused and his kids were miserable and we need to save the kids.”
“Did he tell you anything about what he needed to do about Catherine before Dec. 12?” the district attorney asked her.
“That he needed to kill her.”
Hunger Artist
How Cesar Chavez disserved his dream:
The history of California is a history of will grafted onto the landscape. First came missionaries, building churches out of clay and meting out God’s kingdom to the native peoples. Then came gold and silver, the pursuit of which levelled hills, remade cliffs, and built cities along the Pacific Coast. Water was diverted. Sprawling fields soon followed. By the time Cesar Chavez organized a grape workers’ strike, in 1965, the agriculture business was the largest in the state. People say Chavez fought for justice, which is broadly true. And yet that strike, like many of his efforts, rose more from scrappy pragmatism than from any abstract ideal. “No one in any battle has ever won anything by being on the defensive,” he liked to tell his picketers. High intent was a fine thing, but change would come the way it always came in California: by force of will.
How To Not Seem Rich While Running For Office
A new generation of entitled politicians may not have struggled much. So they’re stealing from their elders.
Candidates have been spinning Horatio Alger stories since the days of Horatio himself, or probably even the days of Great-Great-Grandpa Alger, who for all we know worked his nails to the nub scrubbing the decks of the Mayflower. But politicians of the 20th century were far more likely to have actually struggled than today’s crop — they might have fought wars, grown up during the Depression or at least worked in a family store or on a farm. They were also less likely to have attended college or, if they did, were more likely to have helped pay for it themselves. Harry Truman, who graduated from only high school and fought in World War I, rode a compelling “story” of an Everyman “give ’em hell Harry” who transcended a run of failed business ventures. John Kennedy’s war-hero status mitigated his privileged family background.
Meet the Bagman
How to buy college football players, in the words of a man who delivers the money:
The Bag Man excuses himself to make a call outside, on his “other phone,” to arrange delivery of $500 in cash to a visiting recruit. The player is rated No. 1 at his position nationally and on his way into town. We’re sitting in a popular restaurant near campus almost a week before National Signing Day, talking about how to arrange cash payments for amateur athletes.
“Nah, there’s no way we’re landing him, but you still have to do it,” he says. “It looks good. It’s good for down the road. Same reason my wife reads Yelp. These kids talk to each other. It’s a waste of money, but they’re doing the same thing to our guys right now in [rival school’s town]. Cost of business.”
Looking For Tom Lehrer, Comedy’s Mysterious Genius
On Tom Lehrer, one of the most influential people in comedy who abruptly stepped away from the spotlight:
He began performing internationally in 1959, when the Palace Theatre in London asked him to perform the first two Sundays in May. “In England in 1959, you couldn’t put on a play, [on Sunday] so the theaters were closed,” Robinson recalled. “But you could put on a concert.”
Lehrer filled the 1,400-seat theater both weekends and was a big enough hit that they kept him on through the end of May, after which he booked several more performances throughout England in June and early July.
Yet despite his enormous success, global popularity, and the release of his second album, More Songs by Tom Lehrer that year, it was exactly at this time that Lehrer first told Robinson he wanted to stop performing. Lehrer has told friends and various interviewers that he didn’t enjoy “anonymous affection.” And while his work was widely enjoyed at the time, it was also something of a scandal — the clever songs about math and language were for everyone, but Lehrer’s clear-eyed contemplation of nuclear apocalypse was straightforwardly disturbing.
Naming the Dead from the Desert
It’s the job of a forensics team in Arizona to identify the bodies of migrants found in the desert. Anthropologist Robin Reineke describes how she pieces together the sad jigsaw puzzle of personal attributes and belongings.
Some of the items have unspoken stories.
There was a young kid – he was probably only 15 or 16 years old – and the soles of his shoes were just completely worn off. He had been carrying one orange paper flower.
I remember a man who had a small dead hummingbird in his pocket. I know that for a lot of indigenous North American peoples hummingbirds hold a sacred significance – they represent hope and love and they’re a powerful protective symbol.
Who Are You Calling a Bully?
A 12-year-old Florida girl leaps off a tower to her death. Two of her classmates are arrested, accused of a modern rite of middle school: sending cruel, harassing texts.
Katelyn, now 13, stands outside the chain-link fence at the cement plant where Rebecca jumped to her death. It’s a cloudy January afternoon, some four months after the tragedy, and Katelyn is here with two good friends and her mother. The girls stand together in a silent row, gazing up at the pair of silos, several stories high. It’s a lonely scene, a forgotten lot in a rundown area on the fringe of town. Weathered tributes to Rebecca line the fence — purple plastic poinsettias, a lineup of teddy bears, a Snoopy card. A handwritten note reads, “You were amazing.”
Longreads Is Joining the Automattic Family
We will continue to serve this community just as we always have, and we can’t wait for what’s next.
Busting Out of Online Poker: Our College Pick
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick.
The Truth About Chicago’s Crime Rates
The city’s drop in crime has been nothing short of miraculous. Here’s what’s behind the unbelievable numbers:
Unfortunately for all concerned, January 2013 could not have started out worse. Five people were murdered in Chicago on New Year’s Day. The number hit 17 by the end of the first full week. “This is too much,” Al Wysinger, the police department’s first deputy superintendent, told the crowd in the January 17 CompStat meeting, according to a memo summarizing it. “Last October and November, I kept saying we have to start 2013 off on the right foot. Wrong foot! We can’t reiterate this much clearer.”
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