Finding refuge and resilience in America’s most reviled landscapes.
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Strong Mothers, Boundless Lives, and the Week’s Top 5
Have you read Craig Brown’s Hello Goodbye Hello? It’s a blast: “a circle of 101 remarkable meetings,” as the jacket says, with each chapter a pithy, intimate encounter between two figures from history
When Horror Is the Truth-teller
“It is hard, in the era of the AR-15, to fear a vampire.”
Mulling Desire, Honoring Murdered Women, and Our Top 5
I had no idea that the hot, tingly pain of blood returning to a frozen extremity is called the screaming barfies, until I read “What Is a Body For?” by Diana Saverin.
How Does a Magician Trick Other Magicians? We Went to Find Out
“At the ‘magic Olympics,’ magicians from around the world compete to be deemed the world’s best. To win, they must fool each other.”
In 1848, An Enslaved Couple Fled to Boston in One of History’s Most Daring Escapes
“Risking their lives for liberty and for love, Ellen and William Craft devised a bold plan: They’d don disguises — she as a white man — and embark on the perilous journey north.”
What the Journey Brings, and Our Weekly Top 5
“I-95 is an artery of ambition, movement, and flight. A place where millions of people hurry toward love and loss, carrying their hope, their grief, their ordinary Tuesdays, all at 70 miles per hour.” A favorite program of mine is Race Across the World. The concept is simple: Teams must cross entire countries without flying, armed only […]
The Joy of New Words and the Week’s Top 5
“Yet I still doggy paddle in impostor syndrome. For I am not a biologist or cetologist, nor an oceanographer. I am just a woman with a pen, a profound love for water, and an eye for noticing patterns in the currents, eddies, and swirls of living.” Sometimes words aren’t enough. Or, at least, existing words […]
There Are No Seasons: A Reading List on Loss, Love, and Living with Fire in California
Six personal essays about or inspired by wildfire.
How to Quit Cars
“The history of transportation will always be social history, writ large.”

