The Beautiful Game

On Argentina’s violent—and often corrupt—soccer fan clubs:

“The first murder spawned by Argentinean soccer can be traced to 1924, when a Boca fan shot a Uruguayan rival during a tango-style showdown outside a luxury hotel in Montevideo. Sometime in the 1950s, the fan clubs organized for self-defense. La Doce took its fierce, fistfighting form in the 1970s. Then, around 1981, in the last violent days of Argentina’s military dictatorship, the fan killings accelerated. Journalist Amílcar Romero, who wrote a history of soccer—this country also produces philosophers and artists specializing in the sport—divided the violence into three ­periods. Only 12 fans had been killed during the roughly 30 years following that first hotel murder. In the next three decades there were 102. The next 30 years saw 144 dead.

“But Romero counted only game-day deaths. The antiviolence group Salvemos al Fútbol tallies 269 soccer-related deaths in its running count—with much of the killing moving off-site in recent years. In 2009, for example, the former Lepers leader Roberto ‘Pimpi’ Camino was shot four times while leaving a wine bar late at night. Today the violence often takes place within the fan clubs themselves, in fights to control the barras’ growing incomes and the benefits of their power. ‘They fight over money and women,’ one sportswriter told me. (He insisted on anonymity, saying, ‘No Argentine journalist could write this story,’ for fear of retaliation.)”

Source: Outside
Published: Oct 9, 2012
Length: 24 minutes (6,096 words)

The Semplica-Girl Diaries

[Fiction] A father uses his lottery winnings for an extravagant birthday party for his teenage daughter:

“September 3rd: Having just turned forty, have resolved to embark on grand project of writing every day in this new black book just got at OfficeMax. Exciting to think how in one year, at rate of one page/day, will have written three hundred and sixty-five pages, and what a picture of life and times then available for kids & grandkids, even greatgrandkids, whoever, all are welcome (!) to see how life really was/is now. Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes by that time passé? Will future people know sometimes cats fought in night? Because by that time some chemical invented to make cats not fight? Last night dreamed of two demons having sex and found it was only two cats fighting outside window. Will future people be aware of concept of ‘demons’? Will they find our belief in ‘demons’ quaint? Will ‘windows’ even exist? Interesting to future generations that even sophisticated college grad like me sometimes woke in cold sweat, thinking of demons, believing one possibly under bed? Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading this, if you want to know what a ‘demon’ was, go look it up, in something called an encyclopedia, if you even still have those!

“Am getting off track, due to tired, due to those fighting cats.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 35 minutes (8,979 words)

Those Summers, These Days

A woman who grew up near her grandmother’s farm with a large extended family recalls her childhood, and how things will be different for her children and their children as her family shrinks. (A Best American Essays 2012 notable essay):

“This shift is evident in our family. Counting spouses and not counting our cousins’ kids, I have 17 aunts and uncles and 22 cousins on my side of the family, and Brandon has ten aunts and uncles and 16 cousins on his side. On the other hand, my three kids have two uncles and an aunt on my side, with hopes of cousins, someday, and an aunt and uncle and two cousins on my husband’s side. And that’s it. Our family is gradually shrinking.

“As more families choose to have two or fewer children, the population is beginning to plateau. I don’t know what that means economically, but I know for me it means a growing void. As our family ages and our grandparents pass away, there will come a time when the large extended family will no longer get together for every holiday; with the patriarchs and matriarchs alive only in our jokes and memories, we will eventually begin to celebrate special occasions with our more immediate family. Fifty of my grandma’s descendants attended her 80th birthday party. Today, celebrating my dad’s birthday with just his offspring would include five children and three grandchildren.”

Source: Ascent
Published: Jan 1, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,111 words)

Lost in Space

Searching for love, meaning—and yes, sex—after 10 years in the online hookup scene:

“I am at my local hipster restaurant, in Park Slope. The young straight guys next to me are talking about how the dating website Plenty of Fish has a new GPS-oriented smartphone app that finds women nearby, listing their profiles and proximity, and of course, showing a photo.

“‘Look at this one!’ says one guy, tapping and stroking his phone, ‘I hooked up with her last week.’ They all gather around and look at her. ‘She’s, like, three hundred feet away from here.’ They are practically shivering with excitement at the ease and abundance of potential partners suddenly available to them.

“I sit at the end of the bar and laugh to myself like an old, salty sea captain. Once again, gay guys are a step ahead.”

Author: Mike Albo
Source: narrative.ly
Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,208 words)

A Home at the End of Google Earth

An illiterate child from a small town in India falls asleep on a train and ends up lost in Calcutta, unable to find his way back home. Twenty-five years later, while living with his adoptive family in Australia, he locates his lost hometown using memories and Google Earth:

“This was it, the name of the station where he was separated from his brother that day, a couple hours from his home. Saroo scrolled up the train track looking for the next station. He flew over trees and rooftops, buildings and fields, until he came to the next depot, and his eyes fell on a river beside it—a river that flowed over a dam like a waterfall.

“Saroo felt dizzy, but he wasn’t finished yet. He needed to prove to himself that this was really it, that he had found his home. So, he put himself back into the body of the barefoot five-year-old boy under the waterfall: ‘I said to myself, Well, if you think this is the place, then I want you to prove to yourself that you can make your way back from where the dam is to the city center.’

“Saroo moved his cursor over the streets on-screen: a left here, a right there, until he arrived at the heart of the town—and the satellite image of a fountain, the same fountain where he had scarred his leg climbing over the fence 25 years before.”

Source: Vanity Fair
Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 20 minutes (5,109 words)

The Tragedy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi

A lawyer and his pastor brother-in-law worked tirelessly to fight the Nazis from inside Germany—helping victims and even plotting to assassinate Hitler:

“Dietrich, embattled and frustrated, thought of going abroad, as he had in 1934 and 1935; perhaps some work in America might serve as a temporary alternative to military service—a dreaded, morally unacceptable prospect. His mentor Reinhold Niebuhr arranged a job for him in New York, where he arrived in late June 1939. But at once he was in spiritual turmoil: How could he contemplate living in a foreign country, at peace, when his own country was on the brink of war and desolation? He decided he must go back to Europe, explaining to Niebuhr:

“‘I must live through this difficult period of our national history with the Christian people of Germany…. Christians in Germany are going to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose.'”

Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 19 minutes (4,776 words)

If Only T. Boone Pickens Had Died

The billionaire oilman had the perfect plan to help his alma mater Oklahoma State University raise money—by taking out $10 million life insurance policies on him and 27 other people:

“Unfortunately for Oklahoma State, Pickens, and the other men and women who thought their demise would benefit their favorite university, Gift of a Lifetime has turned into the Present from Hell. First it fell apart. Then came the lawsuits. And this past March came a decision from a federal judge who declared that not only was the university not entitled to a refund of $33 million in premium payments, it was also responsible for the court costs incurred by the people it had sued.

“So how did a sure bet turn into a lost cause? Pickens and the school aren’t talking, as they’ve since appealed the judge’s decision. Neither are the insurance brokers and agency that sold the policies. Yet because it’s a matter of interest in federal court, the arc of Gift of a Lifetime’s downfall can be traced in the thousands of pages of internal e-mails and deposition testimony that are now a part of the public record. Those documents reveal a plan sunk by impatience, hubris, and a belief that the hour of death could be predicted. One that all began when Pickens took his shirt off.”

Source: Businessweek
Published: Oct 4, 2012
Length: 10 minutes (2,646 words)

Cold Pastoral

[Fiction] A college student grapples with the death of her on-and-off boyfriend:

“We were in the stage where we couldn’t make serious eye contact for fear of implying we were too invested. We used euphemisms like ‘I miss you’ and ‘I like you’ and smiled every time our noses got too close. I was staying over at his place two or three nights a week and met his parents at an awkward brunch in Burlington. A lot of time was spent being consciously romantic: making sushi, walking places, waiting too long before responding to texts. I fluctuated between adding songs to his playlist and wondering if I should stop hooking up with people I was eighty per cent into and finally spend some time alone. (Read the books I was embarrassed I hadn’t read.) (Call my mother.) The thing is, I like being liked, and a lot of my friends had graduated and moved to cities. I’d thought about ending things but my roommate Charlotte advised me against it. Brian was handsome and smoked the same amount as me, and sometimes in the morning, I’d wake up and smile first thing because he made me feel safe.

“In March, he died. I was microwaving instant Thai soup when I got a call from his best friend, asking if I knew which hospital he was at.

“‘Who?’ I said. ‘Brian,’ he said. ‘You haven’t heard?'”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 5, 2012
Length: 28 minutes (7,023 words)

Life of a Salesman: Selling Success, When the American Dream is Downsized

A pool salesman struggles to cope with a weak economy, which has forced him to rethink the meaning of the American Dream:

“‘You can’t be too safe or too smart about money with the economy now,’ Tyler said. ‘I want to save up and make the smart investments.’

“‘You’ll make them,’ Frank said, nodding.

“‘I want to have that absolute stability,’ Tyler said.

“‘You’ll have it.’

“They stayed out on the deck until the sun disappeared behind the townhouses. Frank went to bed just before midnight and awoke at 4. He always had been a sound sleeper, but lately he had been putting himself to bed with Tylenol PM and stirring awake to questions in the middle of the night. When had stability become the goal in America? What kind of dream was that? And in the economy of 2012, was it even attainable?”

Author: Eli Saslow
Source: Washington Post
Published: Oct 7, 2012
Length: 23 minutes (5,949 words)

Andres’ Story

A man terminally ill with cancer and his friendship with a hospice worker:

“Andres was in his brother’s living room on the Northside last August as he told his story. A small group of family and friends was his audience. No one flinched as he covered the tougher parts – everyone there knew the story. When he finished, though, he turned toward an empty spot in the room and said something that made the room go silent.

“‘There’s just one thing I can’t understand,’ he said. ‘They can fix all these people. But they can’t fix me.’

“Kelly Racine broke the silence. She is a psychosocial specialist with Community Hospice who was on one of her weekly visits to see Andres. Hearing him talk about things that can’t be explained, she asked him what he had decided to do despite the incurable disease. His eyebrows lifted.

“‘Make people laugh,’ he said.

“‘And what is your word?’ she said.

“‘Survive,’ he said, and his mood brightened a little.”

Published: Sep 29, 2012
Length: 7 minutes (1,775 words)