John Joseph Scocca, 1940-2012
A son’s eulogy for his father:
“A few years ago, when my son Mack was a baby, we took the train to Aberdeen, and we made the mistake of counting on the Harford County taxi system to pick us up. It was cold and raining, and the baby was cold and getting rained on. And after half an hour, with the dispatcher still promising a cab in 10 minutes, he loaded an oxygen bottle into the car and headed down West Bel Air Avenue, the oxygen ticking in the passenger side, to get his grandson in out of the rain.
“I remember that oxygen bottle. His pulmonologist explained things this way, once: every day, he was climbing a mountain. He lived at the altitudes where adventurers falter and die. Weeks ago, the doctors saw his CO2 levels and said he would be dead in days. They thought they were dealing with someone from sea level. He had already climbed mountains to teach class, to visit his sister, to see both his sons married.
“He kept climbing. He climbed a mountain to sit at his kitchen table with his wife, and drink his coffee. He climbed mountains to see his younger grandson in his arms. He climbed further than anyone could see.”
The Yankee Comandante
A story of love and revolution in Cuba. William Morgan was a free-spirited American drawn to Cuba to help Castro fight, only to grow disenchanted with his embrace of communism:
“One day in the spring of 1958, while Morgan was visiting a guerrilla camp for a meeting of the Second Front’s chiefs of staff, he encountered a rebel he had never seen before: small and slender, with a face shielded by a cap. Only up close was it evident that the rebel was a woman. She was in her early twenties, with dark eyes and tawny skin, and, to conceal her identity, she had cut her curly light-brown hair short and dyed it black. Though she had a delicate beauty, she locked and loaded a gun with the ease of a bank robber. Morgan later said of a pistol that she carried, “She knows how to use it.”
“Her name was Olga Rodríguez.”
A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now?
Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted the world would end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t. A look at what happened to some of Camping’s followers:
“I was struck by how some believers edited the past in order to avoid acknowledging that they had been mistaken. The engineer in his mid-twenties, the one who told me this was a prophecy rather than a prediction, maintained that he had never claimed to be certain about May 21. When I read him the transcript of our previous interview, he seemed genuinely surprised that those words had come out of his mouth. It was as if we were discussing a dream he couldn’t quite remember.
Other believers had no trouble recalling what they now viewed as an enormous embarrassment. Once October came and went without incident, the father of three was finished. ‘After October 22, I said “You know what? I think I was part of a cult,”‘ he told me. His main concern was how his sons, who were old enough to understand what was going on, would deal with everything: ‘My wife and I joke that when my kids get older they’re going to say that we’re the crazy parents who believed the world was going to end.'”
Transgender at Five
An examination of one family’s experience with a child who has gender dysphoria:
“As a teacher, Stephen knew how cruel kids could be. He imagined his child walking into the social battlefield that is school, insisting she was a boy when under her clothing, she wasn’t.
What about bathrooms? P.E.? The prom? How would all that go?
Despite his resistance, Stephen promised his wife that he would pay closer attention to Kathryn’s behavior and really listen for her ‘I am a boy’ anthem.
It didn’t take long.
‘We were in the car; I was driving,’ Stephen told me.
Kathryn was in the back and grabbed a book off the seat.
‘Daddy, I’m going to read you a story, okay?’ Kathryn said, opening a random book and pretending to read. ‘It’s about a little boy who was born. But he was born like a girl.’
Stephen nearly slammed the brakes, then listened as the story unfolded about how unhappy the little boy was.
‘Okay. I’m listening, Jean,’ he said after he got home.”
A Life Worth Ending
[Not single-page] A reflection on a mother’s life, and how advancements in medicine have extended our life expectancy, and have made it more difficult for us to die:
“ME: ‘Maybe you could outline the steps you think we might take.’
DOCTOR: ‘Wait and see.’
NEUROLOGIST: ‘Monitor.’
DOCTOR: ‘Change the drugs we’re using.’
MY SISTER: ‘Can we at least try to get a physical therapist, someone who can work her legs, at least. I mean … if she does improve, she’s left without being able to walk.’
NEUROLOGIST: ‘They’ll have to see if she’s a candidate.’
ME: ‘So … okay … where can you reasonably see this ending up?’
NEUROLOGIST: ‘We can help you look at the options.’
ME: ‘The options?’
SOCIAL WORKER (to my sister): ‘Where she might live. We can go over several possibilities.’
ME: ‘Live?'”
Caballo Blanco’s Last Run: The Micah True Story
A look back at the life, and disappearance, of the ultrarunner known as “Caballo Blanco,” who gained fame from the 2009 best-selling book Born to Run:
“Ray Molina, 44, had not learned of the disappearance until Friday. He rushed to the Gila in his beat-up 1979 Mercedes with two friends, Jessica Haines and Dean Bannon. They were agreeable to joining the organized search. But by 10 on Saturday morning, they were among a handful yet to be assigned to a team.
“The hell with this, Molina concluded. He and his friends lightened their backpacks of unnecessary gear and went off on their own, simply walking a short distance down the access road, crossing the Gila River and scurrying into the nearest arroyo.
“This strategy, while not entirely random, was hardly well conceived. They were assisted only by a folded-up map and their own instincts and whims.
“They rambled and they ran and they climbed. They called out, ‘Caballo!'”
The Loves of Lena Dunham
What is it that makes HBO’s Girls so special? Start with the sex scenes:
“Afterward, while she is getting dressed, Hannah jokingly refers to herself as the eleven-year-old girl. Adam looks confused and asks what she’s talking about. Hannah reminds him about his fantasy, but clearly her joke has fallen flat, and the disparity between their respective experiences of sex is further amplified: Adam had been blissfully lost to himself while they were doing it, while Hannah was taking mental notes. It is, among other things, an amusing metaphor for Hannah’s chosen profession: the writer is the one busily jotting in her notebook while other people are having orgasms.”
Pacifists in the Cross-Fire: The Kabul Hospital That Treats All Sides
Inside the Emergency Surgical Center for War Victims, a hospital in Afghanistan that’s funded by an Italian NGO and is committed to helping all victims:
“Last year, Emergency’s three hospitals and 34 clinics across Afghanistan treated nearly 360,000 patients. During the course of reporting this article, after visiting these facilities and meeting a number of these patients, I began to wonder how such a responsibility had fallen to a small, modestly financed Italian NGO. This, of course, was connected to a larger question: What is our responsibility to the Afghans who are maimed, burned, disabled and disfigured by a war we started and can’t seem to end?
“According to NATO, even civilians who are injured during operations by U.S. or other coalition forces are only ‘entitled to receive emergency care if there is threat to their life, limb or eyesight.’ In such cases, ‘discharge or transfer to an appropriate Afghan civilian facility is recommended as soon as the patient is stabilized.’ On paper, this might appear to make sense; after all, the United States and other foreign donors have invested vast sums of money in Afghanistan’s public health system. But given the poor quality of care, scarcity of equipment and pervasive graft that still defines most government hospitals, ‘discharge or transfer’ can look a lot like abandonment.”
Fresno
A history of sprawl and escape routes in a Central California town, from the perspective of one family searching for its own escape:
“As I started high school my mom became convinced my dad had ruined her life. They’d married quickly, and for superficial reasons. Two immigrants from the same country, raised in the manacles of an obscure religion, who both had a hunger to build a familial kingdom of their own. It could have been done with anyone. As my brother and I neared adulthood, the fervor of kingdom-building had subsided, and so too the optimistic glow it had brought. My parents had their dream careers, their dream family, and had just built their dream house. There was nothing more to want except each other. But they didn’t like each other.”
Can a Better Vibrator Inspire an Age of Great American Sex?
Ethan Imboden is founder of Jimmyjane, a Bay Area company that is aiming to bring design standards and mainstream acceptance to a product that has long been hidden away from the public:
“Within Sharper Image, that neck massager became known jokingly as ‘the Sex and the City vibrator,’ but in 2007, Imboden approached the company with the Form 6. Literally the sixth in a series of vibrator sketches — Imboden believes in minimalist names — the Form 6 has a curved, organic shape that is suggestive without being representational. It is wrapped completely in soft, platinum silicone, making it completely water-resistant, and charges on a wall-powered base station through a narrow stainless steel band, a novel cordless recharging system that Imboden patented. For these features, the Form 6 earned an International Design Excellence Award, the first time a sex toy had earned such a distinction. It comes in hot pink, deep plum or slate–non-primary, poppy colors that he believes convey sophistication. It is packaged in a hard plastic case inside a bright white box — ‘literally and figuratively bringing these products out of the shadows,’ Imboden said. And it has a 3-year warranty (this may not seem remarkable, but is for a sex toy).”
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