How the Trailer Park Could Save Us All

Manufactured homes in trailer parks could be an affordable way to house a growing number of seniors on a budget:

“Seniors who can live on their own cost the country relatively little—they even contribute to the economy. But those who move into nursing homes start to run up a significant tab—starting at $52,000 a year. People who are isolated and lonely end up in nursing homes sooner. Hence, finding ways to keep people living on their own, socially engaged, healthy, happy, and out of care isn’t just a personal or family goal—it’s a national priority. Among seniors’ living options, there is one we overlook: mobile homes. Time-tested, inhabited by no fewer than three million seniors already, but notoriously underloved, manufactured-homes can provide organic communities and a lifestyle that is healthy, affordable, and green, and not incidentally, fun. But in order to really see their charms, we need to change a mix of bad policies and prejudice.”

Published: Apr 22, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,775 words)

Inside America’s Dirty Wars

An investigation of the drone strikes that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old American-born son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki:

“One day in early September, Abdulrahman woke up before the rest of the house. He tiptoed into his mother’s bedroom, took 9,000 Yemeni rials—roughly $40—from her purse, and left a note outside her bedroom door. He then snuck out the kitchen window and into the courtyard. Shortly after 6 am, the family’s guard saw the boy leave but didn’t think anything of it. It was Sunday, September 4, 2011, a few days after the Eid al-Fitr holiday marked the end of the holy month of Ramadan. Nine days before, Abdulrahman had turned 16.

“A short while later, Abdulrahman’s mother woke up. She started to rouse his siblings for morning prayers and then went to wake him, but Abdulrahman was not in his bedroom. She called for him and, while searching the house, found his note. In it, he apologized for leaving without telling her and said that he missed his father and wanted to find him. He also said he was sorry for taking the money. ‘When his mother told me about the letter, it was just like a shock for me,’ Abdulrahman’s grandmother Saleha told me. ‘I said, “I think this will be just like bait for his father.”‘ The CIA, she feared, ‘might find his father through him.'”

Source: The Nation
Published: Apr 23, 2013
Length: 20 minutes (5,050 words)

Paying for Finn: A Special-Needs Child

A family confronts the costs of providing for a child who is autistic:

“Now we’re plagued by perpetual guilt that we could — should — do more for our son. But like a lot of families with a disabled child — even families like ours, with some means — we’re faced with a Sophie’s Choice: If we empty the bank for therapy for our disabled child, it necessarily means not spending as much on his ‘neurotypical’ older sister. It’s an awful thing to contemplate: No parents should be forced to compute the ROI on their kid.”

Author: Jeff Howe
Source: Money magazine
Published: Apr 22, 2013
Length: 15 minutes (3,836 words)

Longreads Guest Pick: Emily Keeler on ‘To Err, Divine, so Improvise’ and ‘Afterlife’

Today’s guest pick comes from Emily M. Keeler, a writer, critic, and the editor of Little Brother Magazine. She recommends two stories, “To Err, Divine, so Improvise” by Kaitlin Fontana in Hazlitt and “Afterlife” by Chris Wallace in The Paris Review.

Source: Longreads
Published: Apr 22, 2013

Bionic Hand Fits Young Woman Perfectly, But Does It Suit Her?

A young woman tries out a bionic hand after losing her fingers and toes:

“Her dad wonders if the financial burden of the bionic hand is worth it. A left hand device won’t be considered until that’s clear. If the bionic hand’s too hard or awkward to use, will it collect dust on her nightstand? ‘She’s good without it. She’s so independent,’ he said once in the doctor’s office. ‘She does it all on her own.’

“Tisa’s progress depends on her determination, Bauer, the orthotist, tells them. And she has already come so far.”

Source: Tampa Bay Times
Published: Apr 14, 2013
Length: 6 minutes (1,745 words)

How I Met My Dead Parents

The writer gains a new perspective on who her parents were after examining old photos and letters they left behind after they died:

“As I worked on my blog, I read these and similar letters again and again, and wondered how the man I thought my father was could have written these words, words that are so romantic that I melt on my mother’s behalf when I read them. How could my father have been the person that I knew, the person I was happy to have dead, and the person in these letters, a person who was articulate, generous, and so, so loving? And how could my mother, who never seemed very happy with him, love him so much in return? Didn’t she know he was a monster?”

Source: BuzzFeed
Published: Apr 18, 2013
Length: 26 minutes (6,740 words)

Multiplayer Game ‘Eve Online’ Cultivates a Most Devoted Following

A visit to Iceland and CCP Games, the company behind the sci-fi video game Eve Online. The game has grown to 500,000 users and $65 million in revenue:

“Economists have written dozens of papers celebrating the sophistication of Eve’s economy and the amazing level of industry among the players, who basically create everything within the game from scratch. ‘It feels like a real economy instead of one rigged by a gaming company,’ says Vili Lehdonvirta, a researcher at the London School of Economics who’s studied virtual games since 2004. ‘Since there’s no legal system, the economy resembles that of a developing nation where people trade based on trust and social relations.’

“The thought of Eve advancing economic teaching provides some measure of comfort for Icelanders who’ve grown to detest the presumed economic whizzes in the real world. Just down the road from the CCP headquarters, the Harpa, a giant glass opera house, glows in different colors at night. It symbolized Iceland’s banking boom. Now it may have to be torn down, because it’s too expensive for the country to maintain. CCP held its most recent Christmas party there.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Apr 19, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,872 words)

Sea Oak

[Fiction] From the short story collection Pastoralia. A family in the near future copes with poverty, loss, and magical-realism-caliber consequences:

“Aunt Bernie’s a peacemaker. She doesn’t like trouble. Once this guy backed over her foot at FoodKing and she walked home with ten broken bones. She never got married, because Grandpa needed her to keep house after Grandma died. Then he died and left all his money to a woman none of us had ever heard of, and Aunt Bernie started in at DrugTown. But she’s not bitter. Sometimes she’s so nonbitter it gets on my nerves. When I say Sea Oak’s a pit she says she’s just glad to have a roof over her head. When I say I’m tired of being broke she says Grandpa once gave her pencils for Christmas and she was so thrilled she sat around sketching horses all day on the backs of used envelopes. Once I asked was she sorry she never had kids and she said no, not at all, and besides, weren’t we were her kids?

“And I said yes we were.

“But of course we’re not.”

Published: Oct 1, 2000
Length: 35 minutes (8,956 words)

When Our Kids Own America

The U.S. is experiencing significant demographic changes. In 2011, people of color made up more than half of all the country’s births. A look at the cultural shift that’s occurring as young people begin to inherit the country:

“Demographic changes — even seismic changes like those the U.S. is going through — happen over decades. It will be a long time before this young, much more plural America starts to fully reveal patterns of employment, migration, housing and wealth. But these young folks are already starting to create culture, and it bears taking a close look at what they’re making to see what it might augur about the world they’re going to inherit.”

Author: Gene Demby
Source: NPR
Published: Apr 15, 2013
Length: 19 minutes (4,915 words)

Ana Montes: The Most Important Spy You’ve Never Heard Of

How a U.S. intelligence analyst ended up spying for Cuba for 17 years—all while surrounded by family members who also worked for the FBI:

“Montes must have seemed a godsend. She was a leftist with a soft spot for bullied nations. She was bilingual and had dazzled her DOJ supervisors with her ambition and smarts. But most important, she had top-secret security clearance and was on the inside. ‘I hadn’t thought about actually doing anything until I was propositioned,’ Montes would later admit to investigators. The Cubans, she revealed, ‘tried to appeal to my conviction that what I was doing was right.'”

Author: Jim Popkin
Source: Washington Post
Published: Apr 18, 2013
Length: 24 minutes (6,016 words)