GEN

“The city feels simultaneously attacked, abandoned, and bereft of competent leadership. It also feels very, very alive.” In an essay at GEN, Glynnis MacNicol explores New York City’s #NoFilter era.

A broken window and a gun led to the death of James Scurlock outside a bar in Omaha. The search for justice began, and another death followed.

“Till was murdered 65 years ago. Sites of commemoration across the Mississippi Delta still struggle with what’s history and what’s hearsay.”

“The girlboss didn’t change the system; she thrived within it. Now that system is cracking, and so is this icon of millennial hustle.”

He raped and tortured her for years. He had a gun; he “showed her diagrams of the human brain… the place that would allow her to live but without speech or memory. ‘Wouldn’t that be convenient, he said.'” She shot him, to save herself and her kids. And according to the prosecutor, jury, and judge, she’s a premeditated murderer who deserves her 20-year prison sentence.

How Covid-19 could stop the move toward density and bustling urban centers.

“A portrait of a modern family undone by the political zeitgeist.”

“What unites the two Americas — the sick and those who are staying home.”

In this pandemic-inspired variation on the Goodbye to All That essay, Glynnis MacNicol writes about what it’s like to have stayed in the current ghost town version of New York City when so many other New Yorkers have departed for greener pastures, and considers the city’s, and city-dwellers’ history of resilience through hard times.

In Tijuana, uninsured freelancers Amy Martyn and her husband Aaron pursue inexpensive orthopedic surgery for his doubly broken ankle. For both better and worse, they get what they paid for.