Search Results for: The Atlantic

In the Grand Scheme of Things

Illustration by: Kjell Reigstad

Hana Schank | From ‘The Edge of Normal’ | June 2015 | 11 minutes (2,634 words)

 

The following is an excerpt from The Edge of Normal, Hana Schank’s story about what it’s like to raise a child with albinism, a genetic condition whose most striking characteristic is white blonde hair and pale skin. Many people with albinism are also legally blind. Writes Schank, “The story is not just one of life with an unusual special need, but also the story of how I’ve changed, and continue to change, as I help my daughter navigate the world.”

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Two weeks after the pediatrician had introduced the word “albinism” to my vocabulary, my husband and I sat in the stuffy waiting room at the neurologist’s, gently rocking my daughter’s car seat. This was the man who would tell us what was going on with my perfect-imperfect daughter. There was still a chance the pediatrician was wrong. After all, everyone else agreed it was probably nothing. Or a brain tumor or cancer. Those were also things that could cause nystagmus or visual impairment. But it was probably nothing. Or albinism. Or nothing. It was probably nothing. Read more…

It’s Not Just About the Minimum Wage: Barbara Ehrenreich Revisits Her Book

So what is the solution to the poverty of so many of America’s working people? Ten years ago, when Nickel and Dimed first came out, I often responded with the standard liberal wish list — a higher minimum wage, universal health care, affordable housing, good schools, reliable public transportation, and all the other things we, uniquely among the developed nations, have neglected to do.

Today, the answer seems both more modest and more challenging: if we want to reduce poverty, we have to stop doing the things that make people poor and keep them that way. Stop underpaying people for the jobs they do. Stop treating working people as potential criminals and let them have the right to organize for better wages and working conditions.

Stop the institutional harassment of those who turn to the government for help or find themselves destitute in the streets. Maybe, as so many Americans seem to believe today, we can’t afford the kinds of public programs that would genuinely alleviate poverty — though I would argue otherwise. But at least we should decide, as a bare minimum principle, to stop kicking people when they’re down.

—From Barbara Ehrenreich’s 2011 TomDispatch essay, which was adapted from the afterword of the 10th anniversary edition of her bestselling 2001 book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. When she worked on the book, Ehrenreich took jobs as a waitress, nursing-home aide, hotel housekeeper, Wal-Mart associate, and maid with a house-cleaning service. “I did not choose these jobs because they were low-paying. I chose them because these are the entry-level jobs most readily available to women,” she explained in an article last year for The Atlantic. Concern about income inequality has encouraged cities and states to raise the minimum wage, and the push has been gaining prominence in the presidential campaign.

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Pirates on the ‘Postmodern Ocean’ Are Getting More Professional

Piracy and armed robbery at sea are on the rise, according to Deutsche Welle, which noted “the increasing professionalism of the pirates” in a recent report focused on Southeast Asia. “The Outlaw Ocean,” Ian Urbina’s ongoing New York Times series chronicling lawlessness at sea, says many merchant vessels have been hiring private security as protection. William Langewiesche captured pirates’ sophistication in his 2003 story for The Atlantic, “Anarchy at Sea,” part of his coverage that led to his 2004 book The Outlaw Sea:

The pirates involved are ambitious and well organized, and should be distinguished from the larger number of petty opportunists whose presence has always afflicted remote ports and coastlines. The new pirates have emerged on a postmodern ocean where identities have been mixed and blurred, and the rules of nationality have been subverted. Scornful of boundaries, they are organized into multi-ethnic gangs that communicate by satellite and cell phone, and are capable of cynically appraising competing jurisdictions and laws. They choose their targets patiently, and then assemble, strike, and dissipate. They have been known to carry heavy weapons, including shoulder-launched missiles, but they are not determined aggressors, and will back off from stiff resistance, regroup, and find another way. Usually they succeed with only guns and knives. Box cutters would probably serve them just as well. Their goal in general is to hijack entire ships: they kill or maroon the crews, sell the cargoes, and in the most elaborate schemes turn the hijacked vessels into “phantoms,” which pose as legitimate ships, pick up new cargoes, and disappear.

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A Commercial Surrogacy Gone Wrong in Thailand

It seems as if everyone is a victim in this story: The commissioning parents, the surrogate mother and the baby, too. Maneenuchanert disagrees. “I don’t feel sad for them,” she says. “Patidta is the only victim here, because they don’t allow her to see the baby. They see the baby as a product that comes from the supermarket. They’re only sad because their product has been damaged. And now they’re trying to intimidate her, tell her she’ll end up in prison if she doesn’t honor her contract.”

Bud Lake and Manuel Santos deny all of this. They’re getting ready to fight for Carmen the only place they can—in a Thai court. They hope to show that they’re better parents to Carmen than Kusongsaang would be, more financially and emotionally stable. Lake gives the example of a post on Kusongsaang’s Facebook page where she’s cradling a pistol. He says he’s been encouraged by the meetings he’s held with Thai Social Services who seem sympathetic. Still, Lake says all the lawyers they’ve talked to say their chances of winning in a Thai court are less than ten percent.

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And the thing that gets lost here—because of the Baby Gammy case and that of the Japanese Johnny Appleseed too—is that commercial surrogacy in Thailand has worked for many people, people who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to have children or afford to hire a surrogate. And it has worked for many surrogates too. Better regulation here—any regulation here—might have helped prevent both the Baby Gammy case and that of the Japanese Johnny Appleseed. But instead of regulation there’s now prohibition.

—from Michael Sullivan’s recent story “Outside the Womb,” part of the podcast series “Life of the Law.” Sullivan tells the nuanced tale of a gay couple whose surrogate mother reneged on her contract in Thailand, where the military-led government banned commercial surrogacy for international couples earlier this year. The Atlantic’s “The Hidden Costs of International Surrogacy,” by Darlena Cunha, dug into the industry last year.

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Photo: Matt

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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‘The World Is Full of Obvious Things’: A Sherlock Holmes Reading List

Image by Julian Breme (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Sherlock Holmes feels uncannily contemporary these days — from his dizzying array of post-hipsterish quirks (Cocaine user! Virtuosic violin player! Exotic tobacco aficionado!) to a social aloofness that feels straight out of a Millennial INTP‘s playbook. (His knack for Twitter-ready aphorisms doesn’t hurt, either.) I’ve been rereading Conan Doyle’s stories for almost 20 years, and the guy has never felt more fresh.

After more than a century of massive, ever-splintering fandom, Holmes is still a commercial juggernaut, a literary character at once instantly recognizable and endlessly customizable. How many fictional creations could plausibly be portrayed, in the span of four years, by Robert Downey, Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, and Ian McKellan (whose Mr. Holmes will be out in theaters later this month)?

The Holmes universe has long fractured into an ever-expanding multiverse, one in which the original canon is but one galaxy (and a minor one, at that) among many apocryphal ones. From Sherlockian cosplay in the Swiss alps to a family’s archives in Illinois, here are five stories that speak to the ubiquity and longevity of one Victorian detective.

1. “Sherlock Holmes And The Adventure Of The Impudent Scholars.” (Jenny Hendrix, The Awl, November 2011)

What do Franklin Roosevelt, Isaac Asimov, and Neil Gaiman have in common? They were (and in Gaiman and Asimov’s case, still are) members of the Baker Street Irregulars, a semi-secret, tightly-knit scholarly society dedicated to The Game — the study of Sherlock Holmes as if he were a real, non-fictional figure. Jenny Hendrix digs into the history of this strange literary club.

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‘We Have to Do Better’: A Reading List on the Charleston Church Massacre

Yesterday, Marc Lamont Hill tweeted, “I’m going to need all White people to denounce this ugly act of racist domestic terrorism.” This reading list is me denouncing the actions of a white supremacist terrorist, who visited a Wednesday night Bible study at one of the most important, sacred sites of Black religious and political freedom with the exclusive intention of killing attendees in cold blood. White people: we have to do better. We can’t deflect responsibility for this tragedy; we can’t blame this on mental illness (many of my friends and I deal with mental illness every day; none of us have murdered anyone). We have to demand accountability from one another and stand up for people of color—in the streets, in our Facebook feeds, in our offices and homes.

1. “Charleston Church Massacre: The Violence White America Must Answer For.” (Chauncey Devega, Salon, June 2015)

White Americans will not have to look in the mirror and ask, “what does it feel like to be a problem.” In the aftermath of recurring mass shooting events, and right-wing domestic terrorism, it is essential that they start to practice such acts of introspection in the interest of the Common Good.

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The Boy Who Loved Transit

Photo via mtaphotos (Edited)

Jeff Tietz | Harper’s | May 2002 | 35 minutes (8,722 words)

 

This essay by Jeff Tietz first appeared in the May 2002 issue of Harper’s and was later anthologized in The Best American Crime Writing: 2003 Edition. Tietz has written for Rolling Stone, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award, the Pushcart Prize, and the Livingston Journalism Award. His work has appeared in Best American Magazine Writing, Best American Crime Writing, Best American Business Writing, and The CAFO Reader. Our thanks to Tietz for allowing us to reprint it here. For those interested in an update on Darius McCollum’s story, see this 2013 The Wall Street Journal piece (subscription req’d).

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Before leaving his girlfriend’s apartment in Crown Heights, on the morning of his nineteenth arrest for impersonating and performing the functions of New York City Transit Authority employees, Darius McCollum put on an NYCTA subway conductor’s uniform and reflector vest. Over his feet he pulled transit-issue boots with lace guards and soles designed to withstand third-rail jolts. He took transit-issue work gloves and protective goggles. He put a transit-issue hard hat on his head. In his pockets he carried NYCTA work orders and rerouting schedules and newspaper clippings describing his previous arrests: for driving subway trains and buses and various other vehicles without authorization, possessing stolen property, flagging traffic around NYCTA construction sites, forging documents. He also carried a signed letter on NYCTA letterhead:

To: All Concerned Departments

From: Thomas Calandrella Chief Track Officer

Re: Darius McCollum Effective this date of January 10, 2000, Darius McCollum is a member of a special twelve member Special Study Group; and will analyze the operations of track safety and track operations. SSG will report directly to this office and will be issued all related gear for the respected purposes of this department and will receive assistance of any relating department.

To his belt Darius clipped a flashlight and a key ring the size of a choker. From this ring six smaller rings hung like pendants. Along the curves of the small rings, 139 keys climbed symmetrical and fanlike. Each key granted access to a secure area of the train, bus, or subway system of the New York City Transit Authority. The collection was equivalent to the number of keys an employee would acquire through forty years of steady promotions. Just before he left the apartment, Darius picked up an orange emergency-response lantern.

Six weeks earlier, Darius had been paroled from the Elmira Correctional Facility, near Binghamton, New York, where he had served two years for attempted grand larceny—”attempted” because he had signed out NYCTA vehicles for surface use (extinguishing track fires, supervising maintenance projects) and then signed them back in according to procedure. Darius has never worked for the NYCTA; he has never held a steady job. He is thirty-seven and has spent a third of his adult life in prison for victim-less offenses related to transit systems. Read more…

Slavery and Freedom in New York City

"A Ride for Liberty," by Eastman Johnson (1862).

Eric Foner | Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad | W. W. Norton & Company | January 2015 | 31 minutes (8,362 words)

Below is an excerpt from the book Gateway to Freedom, by Eric Foner, as recommended by Longreads contributing editor Dana Snitzky.

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The history of slavery, and of fugitive slaves, in New York City begins in the earliest days of colonial settlement. Under Dutch rule, from 1624 to 1664, the town of New Amsterdam was a tiny outpost of a seaborne empire that stretched across the globe. The Dutch dominated the Atlantic slave trade in the early seventeenth century, and they introduced slaves into their North American colony, New Netherland, as a matter of course. The numbers remained small, but in 1650 New Netherland’s 500 slaves outnumbered those in Virginia and Maryland. The Dutch West India Company, which governed the colony, used slave labor to build fortifications and other buildings, and settlers employed them on family farms and for household and craft labor. Slavery was only loosely codified. Slaves sued and were sued in local courts, drilled in the militia, fought in Indian wars, and married in the Dutch Reformed Church. When the British seized the colony in 1664, New Amsterdam had a population of around 1,500, including 375 slaves. Read more…

How Halston’s Death Galvanized the Fashion Industry to Take Action Against AIDS

But not all AIDS deaths were hushed up; indeed, there was a backlash against the conspiracy of silence. Before Way Bandy—one of the industry’s top makeup artists—died on August 13, 1986, he directed his executors to announce his death as AIDS-related. And Halston acknowledged the cause of his own death on March 26, 1990, in the classiest possible way, leaving instructions for his prized Rolls-Royce to be auctioned off and the proceeds donated to AIDS research.

In Halston, fashion found its Rock Hudson: a superstar who could put a familiar face to the dreaded disease. Both Time and People addressed AIDS and fashion in their next issues; People put a smiling Halston on its cover, flanked by Liza Minnelli and Elizabeth Taylor. “He put American fashion on the map,” the cover line read. “He died last week of AIDS, a broken man.” Halston’s death finally galvanized the industry to take real action against the disease; later that year, the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) staged its first Seventh on Sale fundraiser, inspiring similar events in Paris and Milan. But no one fooled themselves into thinking that it couldn’t get any worse. As CFDA president Carolyne Roehm told People: “I shudder to think how many more we may lose.”

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell writing in The Atlantic about how the fashion industry grappled with the AIDS crisis, and Chester Weinberg, the first fashion designer to succumb to the disease. Weinberg died in April 1985.

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