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How To Destroy Texas While Helping The Coal Economy

AP Photo/LM Otero, File

Natural gas, wind, and solar power are all cutting into coal’s profitability, so mining companies are looking for ways to reduce expenses, including reducing clean-up efforts. In their three-part collaboration with Grist and The Texas Tribune, journalists Kiah Collier and Naveena Sadasivam expose the ways the good state of Texas allows coal companies to bypass federal laws about land reclamation in order to save millions in clean-up costs. “Coal companies are required to restore land used for coal mining to the shape it was in before they started digging it up,” Collier and Sadasivam write. This process of reclamation is meant to return mined land to its former condition so people can farm, graze, and even live on it again. Unfortunately, that is not happening.

One article tells how a company violated its contract and federal law and ruined large swaths of a family’s 25,000-acre ranch. One looks at how the town of Rockdale pinned its hopes to an old coal mine that was not properly restored, land where supposedly “pristine lakes” are actually old waste-water pools. The other article looks at the free land the Luminant coal company gave to Sulphur Springs, in East Texas, who intends to turn it into parkland ─ except the company is trying to avoid properly removing a huge mound of toxic dirt and a large, acidic wastewater pool. Instead, they want to cover the lake with a bit more dirt, even though that has proven ineffective for containing toxins, and the city wants to let them and turn the mound, which locals call Mount Thermo, into seating for an amphitheater, and the lake into a fishing pond. An amphitheater built atop toxic heavy metals! It’s lunacy! It’s also obviously about money. The free land is worth $25 million, and leaving the mess saves the company an estimated $4 million. To sell the idea to the public, interested parties have framed the toxic mound as a “community asset,” a gift from the company. Well, isn’t that swell?

In a prepared statement, Luminant spokesperson Meranda Cohn said that the company is committed to completing restoration of the property, including addressing the high acidity at the pit. She said the mound is being left in place at the city’s request and that any implication that Luminant’s deal with Sulphur Springs was solely a cost-saving measure was wrong.

“This transformative project would benefit the people of Sulphur Springs and East Texas for decades to come,” Cohn said. “This is a great example of how a public-private partnership between the city, Luminant, and the [Railroad Commission] can be a win for all.”

In 2017, the Texas Mining and Reclamation Association, of which Luminant is a member, honored Maxwell for his vision, granting him its “elected official of the year” award for “leading the charge to breathe new life into this community asset.”

Not everyone’s on board with this toxic plan.

Ryan King, a biologist at Baylor University who has served as an expert witness in half a dozen federal lawsuits against coal companies, said staff concerns over the company’s reclamation plan are well founded.

“The idea of an amphitheater and having a lot of people right where you can potentially have a lot of airborne dust that is almost certainly going to contain toxic materials seems like a very risky situation,” he said. “That community is either uninformed or being misled about the potential hazards of doing such a thing.”

But Maxwell, the city manager, doesn’t see the problem. He said he trusts the Railroad Commission and Luminant will work it out, and that the company will do the right thing. “We don’t see a lot of risk there,” he said.

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Influence: Who Gains It and Who Wields It and Who Abuses It

View from above young couple with smart phones photographing food in cafe
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On our November 8, 2019 roundtable episode of the Longreads Podcast, Head of Audience Catherine Cusick, Head of Fact-Checking Matt Giles, Books Editor Dana Snitzky, and Culture Columnist Soraya Roberts share what they’ve been reading and working on.

This week, the editors discuss the fate of Deadspin, the uncanny canon of Wakefield Press, and recent stories on Airbnb and influencers.


Subscribe and listen now everywhere you get your podcasts.


0:30 What Happened to Deadspin, According to the People Who Were There (Stefan Fatsis and Josh Levin, November 5, 2019, Slate)

10:40 I Accidentally Uncovered a Nationwide Scam on Airbnb (Allie Conti, October 31, 2019, Vice)

19:35 Whitney Houston’s Longtime Confidante Breaks Her Silence (Jon Caramanica, November 7, 2019, The New York Times)

23:14 Under the Influence: White Lies (Soraya Roberts, October 2019, Longreads)

29:51 Dana’s Book Corner: Wakefield Press

* * *

Produced by Longreads and Charts & Leisure.

The Spiritual Path at Fat Camp

George Peters / Getty, Illustration by Homestead Studio

Mona Kirschner | Longreads | November 2019 | 20 minutes (5,102 words)

Day One

I look around the pool as I kick my legs backwards. I wonder how I found myself in a swim cap and a full-piece bathing suit doing water aerobics with eight ladies over 60 at a health retreat that turned out to be an upscale fat camp.

Why is it that we never tire of talking about love? Of analyzing all angles of heartbreak?

No Uber driver’s English is bad enough to deter us, no stranger on an airplane too disengaged for it to all come spilling out, the same story, again and again.

Filling the void, my therapist had said. I always hoped that when I inevitably fell apart, at least I’d be original about it.

The previous day I had rushed down to the waiting taxi, stalling outside the high gates of my apartment building in São Paulo.

I was late, throwing clothes onto the bed and settling for stretchy workout pants and an old blue sweater that was too tight on the arms. The flight was smooth, the two hours going by quickly as I stared out the window in dark sunglasses that covered most of my face.

On the other end, I shuffled through the airport with my head down and bought sweet and salty peanuts after I couldn’t talk myself out of it. I walked outside; the muggy heat relentless, but I kept my sweater on, joining a group of elderly women next to a van stamped with a logo I recognized from the website. This should be good, I thought, making eye contact with no one and finding a seat.

A friend had recommended this place, deep in the countryside of southern Brazil, a short flight from my place of birth and my home for the last 10 years, having moved back after falling in love and dropping out of school in Canada, where I had grown up with my immigrant parents and privileged life.

I was always looking for something. For love, for adventure, for a story worth telling. I shifted happily from a good kid with a scholarship to a bartender in shorts and knee-high boots with no plan, chasing the drama.

And then I fell in love with a man in that way you do when you throw yourself into something so hard, you don’t even recognize yourself when you take a step back. Fully, entirely consumed.

He had green eyes and skin that actually glowed. I saw him for the first time from the side, across a cheesy wedding dance floor. I remember feeling short of breath. I hardly saw his face. Yet I recognized him as if I had known he was coming.

The van bumped along. I watched a series on Netflix on the drive out about an artist from Brooklyn and her many affairs. I noticed how all the actors on it were thin. Something I would have never realized a few months before.

We drove onto the property, a long, winding driveway with cornfields on either side. The sky was a rich shade of blue and the sun peeked out from the clouds, hot and unforgiving.

A purple and yellow butterfly flew next to my window as we drove up. I hated butterflies, always thought of them as the mean girls of insects. All colorful, flashy wings on the same old insect body.

We arrived to a welcome drink of green juice, the glass only filled halfway, hinting at the moderation that was to come. I noticed I was the youngest person there by at least 15 years. They showed me to my room and instructed me to turn up for my doctor’s appointment at 3:15. I let my bag drop off of my shoulder.

Everyone was in their provided white robes, the blue logo embroidered on the left side. I put mine on, noticing gratefully that it hid everything that needed hiding. My thighs chafed in the heat.

The nurse was gentle, especially when asking me to step on a large, rectangular scale.

“That’s a good girl.” She said, making a note on her clipboard. The doctor put me on a diet of 850 calories a day, which sounded absurd. “What caused the weight gain?” he asked.

“Heartbreak.” I shrugged. “Wish it was a more original reason.”

What is it about comfort from strangers that is so soothing? That makes us feel as if our uncertain futures are less terrifying if someone promises they won’t be? Someone who couldn’t possibly know? And yet.

“Do you think I’m going to be okay?” I would ask anyone who would listen.

I missed him. I could feel his hands, the callouses on his palms. The softness of the finer hair on the nape of his neck. The smell of his shirts. I could see the wrinkles on the side of his eyes when he laughed. I could hear his voice. My chest on his. Could feel him pinching my side when he thought something was funny. I’d say his name aloud.

They say our brains label pain, give it a face. He had a beautiful face.

How do you determine the difference between love and fear? Should it feel so similar?

The love had been there, at some point. Perhaps it was passion. It faded. The fear was constant. I was afraid of the fights, I was afraid of staying, I was afraid of leaving. I was afraid of being alone, of regretting it, of missing him, of realizing there’d be nothing better.

We introduced ourselves at the welcome address, our names, where we’re from, why we were there. I sat in the back. They assigned each one of us a table that we’d sit at for the week. Mealtimes clearly required military-level control. I looked down at the sad six grapes in front of me and tried to concentrate on chewing whatever absurd amount of times was recommended by one of the many (thin) doctors who gave a painfully slow speech before we could eat. Was it 40 times?

My ex and I used to get kicked out of bars for our screaming matches. He was jealous, I was hysterical. I thought it was romantic. I ended it after almost 10 years. He was my first love, all I knew. It was my decision. Courage and strength showed up suddenly, like unannounced dinner guests to an otherwise lonely affair.

He loved me. But he was terrible to me. We were terrible to each other. I plotted and hoped for my freedom for years. Yet the loss, the gaping hole felt like it was only getting bigger.

Love or fear?

They gave a tour of the grounds, the clinic, the vegetable garden, the main house.

I set my stack of books on the bedside table. I looked at the clean, neatly made single bed and sighed. I listened to Miles Davis.

Dinner was pea soup.
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‘I’m a Big Fan of Writing To Find Out What You Don’t Know.’

Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!), oil on canvas, Henri Rousseau, 1891. (Imagno/Getty Images)

Adam Morgan | Longreads | November 2019 | 11 minutes (2,861 words)

 

The deceptively slim Reinhardt’s Garden, Mark Haber’s astonishing novella, is composed of a single paragraph, one that meanders across 150 pages and several hemispheres, from the ramparts of an oddly constructed German castle (it’s full of fake walls and trap doors) to a fictional jungle in Uruguay (Uruguay is, in actuality, a country of rolling hills called the Pampas). At the center of this web of fun-house geographies and architectures, lost in that fictional jungle in the year 1907, Croatian scholar and megalomaniac Jacov Reinhardt is searching for his lifelong obsession — not a city of gold or a fountain of youth, like in the doomed adventurers of Aguirre, the Wrath of God or The Lost City of Z, but a man: Emiliano Gomez Carasquilla, “a lost philosopher of melancholy” last seen somewhere in Colombia or Brazil. Melancholy, as Jacov’s long-suffering servant (and the book’s narrator) explains, is “not a feeling but a mood, not a color but a shade, not depression but not happiness either,” an elusive emotion Jacov has pursued to the ends of the earth. Read more…

Tom Junod Remembers Fred Rogers: “You Were a Child Once, Too”

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At the Atlantic, Tom Junod recalls his friendship with Fred Rogers 16 years after Fred’s death. Junod and Rogers traded 70 emails around the time Junod’s Esquire profile of Rogers, ‘Can You Say…”Hero”?’ was published in 1998. The author considers the movies made about Rogers’ life, as well as how Fred would have responded to today’s routine mass violence and the growing lack of civility in political discourse.

As for Fred: It’s true that he lost, and that the digitization of all human endeavor has devoured his legacy as eagerly as it has devoured everything else. But that he stands at the height of his reputation 16 years after his death shows the persistence of a certain kind of human hunger—the hunger for goodness. He had faith in us, and even if his faith turns out to have been misplaced, even if we have abandoned him, he somehow endures, standing between us and our electrified antipathies and recriminations like the Tank Man of Tiananmen Square in a red sweater. He is a warrior, all right, because he is not just unarmed, outgunned, outnumbered; he is long gone, and yet he keeps up the fight.

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Kissed a Girl

David Bohrer / Getty, Aunt Lute Books

Vickie Vértiz | Excerpted from Graffiti, the inaugural anthology from POC United | November 2019 | 8 minutes (2,111 words)

Spring break in LA is one long day at Magic Mountain. My friend Moses parks his 1985 Caprice Classic next to our chain-link gate. The engine clicks off and the Led Zeppelin guitar goes quiet. He brought Eva, Rudy, and my boyfriend Beto to pick me up. We’ll be on roller coasters if only we can get out of the alley I live in. From the family bedroom, I hear all four doors close. Rudy jokes with Amá. She’s letting them into our cement yard. Then, no more laughing.

I grab my jacket and go outside as soon as I can, but not fast enough. Amá is standing in her apron facing her wall of pink geraniums. That’s when she thanks them for being my friends, especially after “that thing that happened.”

“What thing?” my boyfriend asks. Beto pushes up his glasses on his nose as if it will help him hear better.
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‘I Was Trapped Forever In This Present Tense’: Carmen Maria Machado on Surviving Abuse

“At this the whole pack rose up into the air, and came flying down upon her.” Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, color lithograph by Arthur Rackham, 1907. (Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

Hope Reese | Longreads | November 2019 | 8 minutes (2,125 words)

“The nature of archival silence is that certain people’s narratives and their nuances are swallowed by history,” Carmen Maria Machado writes in her memoir In the Dream House. “We see only what pokes through because it is sufficiently salacious for the majority to pay attention.” In this new book, which draws attention to the rarely-written issue of abuse in queer relationships, she hopes to provide an antidote to the problem.

In her elegant and piercing story, Machado, whose 2017 collection Her Body And Other Parties was a finalist for the National Book Award, fits fragmented memories together to tell her own story of abuse (chapters appear as vignettes, with titles such as “The Dream House as Utopia,” or “The Dream House as Diagnosis”).

“The Dream House” — although entirely real — is a bit fantastical, and Machado writes in the second person to turn the lens around. Her partner is, simply, “the woman in the dream house.” And Machado’s use of footnotes from the Motif Index of Folk Literature is uniquely striking. Read more…

California Burning

Illustration by Wenjia Tang

Tessa Love | Longreads | November 2019 | 15 minutes (4,384 words)

The way a fire starts is simple. When a flammable material is exposed to a high enough temperature and fed by an oxidizer, you get flame. It’s called the fire triangle, the chemical combination of oxygen, fuel, and heat, which generates the first wisp of burning. Take one of these elements away, and the fire goes out, or doesn’t ignite in the first place. 

Then there’s fire behavior, or the way it moves. By nature, fire seeks to keep itself alive. It unfurls from the center of its own heat and consumes a forest or structure or city by way of the trinity of fuel, weather, and topography. If more combustible material can be licked by flame, and wind can direct and feed its heat, a fire can rage. It can burn so hot it melts aluminum. It can move so fast that it destroys a town in minutes. It can clog the air with so much smoke, there is nothing left to breathe.

Fire cannot exist or move without all of these elements in place and in the right proportions. Like anything, fire is a set of conditions ignited by chance. It fuels change. 

This is where it stops being simple. Read more…

Whose Boots on the Ground

military boots against the background of small identical tombstones
Illustration by Homestead Studio

Kiley Bense | Longreads | November 2019 | 14 minutes (3,580 words)

 

What I notice are the boots: two pairs in worn black leather, lined up beneath a bookcase, their heels pressed against the turquoise-painted baseboard. They look as if their owner had stowed them there in one careless motion, after yanking them off his feet. The toes of one pair turn slightly into each other, just kissing, and the others face off-kilter toward the corner of the room.

This room is a shrine made by freezing the contents of a life in time. It belonged to a French soldier, Hubert Rochereau, who was killed during World War I at the age of 22. His parents sealed off his bedroom intact, and when they sold the house the deed included a stipulation that the new owners leave the room untouched for 500 years.

The wallpaper in the room is a pale pink-and-white stripe, the bedspread a fading snowflake-patterned lace. The books have cloth covers and paper labels taped over their spines. There are framed photographs on the shelf, and on the desk sit an iron-wrought key and a tarnished pipe. A tattered soldier’s coat hangs beside the desk, all its brass buttons dulled with age, the blue fabric fraying.

I got stuck on those boots and on this room vibrating with the memory of a man gone more than a century, because here was a memorial for a soldier that didn’t erase him as an individual: a young man with a serious gaze and dark hair.

When we remember our war dead, we often do so en masse. We visit fields where rows of white headstones radiate outward in straight lines, touching the horizon. We pin red poppies to our lapels and stick yellow ribbons to our bumpers, hoping to express our collective grief. We hold a minute of silence, or two, marking thousands of vanished souls with an absence of sound. We leave a wreath at the base of a monument inscribed with so many names that it would be impossible to linger on any one of them, let alone understand and feel the pain that each of their deaths meant to those they left behind.

Last month, at a rally in Minnesota, as he talked about his decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, Donald Trump invoked the deaths of service members and his own feelings about meeting their families as they waited to greet the coffins of their loved ones at Dover Air Force Base. He called visits there “a very tough experience.” “We meet them, and we talked to them, and their son or daughter is being flown in from some far away place in a coffin, and these things are just impossible. I don’t know how parents can do it, even […] I see parents make sounds, that were just 20 minutes ago absolutely fine, make sounds, scream and cry like you’ve never seen before,” he said. Trump noted how surprised he was by this display of emotion, how he hadn’t expected it because the mourners seemed “okay” before the caskets arrived. He didn’t mention any of the families or soldiers by name.
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The Beauty of “Bl-Bl-Bl-Blue Moon”

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Barry Yeoman, a man with a lifelong stutter, suggests that while society mostly views a stutter as a disability, stammering really isn’t the problem at all. At the Baffler, he argues that the real problem to cure is the assumption that those who stutter are somehow deficient.

Like virtually all disabilities, stuttering has long been viewed through a medical lens—as a pathology in search of neutralization, an obstacle to a successful life. That lens is embedded in the language of speech impediments and speech pathologists. At best, stuttering has been framed as a “despite” condition: we can be happy and productive despite how we talk.

Some of us, though, have been trying to flip the paradigm, to reframe stuttering as a trait that confers transformative powers. We wear our vulnerability on the outside, and that invites emotional intimacy with others. We slow down conversations, fostering patience. We give texture to language. We gauge character by our listeners’ reactions. We are good listeners ourselves.

“There’s something interesting about stuttering in a world that moves at increasingly breakneck speed,” says St. Pierre, the Alberta professor. For most of human history, we measured time in lunar cycles, menstrual cycles, agricultural cycles. Today we rely on “clock time,” standardized and designed for industrial production. Clock time values efficiency; it has no patience for silences and repeated syllables. “Stuttering highlights that fact: that clock time runs roughshod over all these other ways of creating time, but that they still persist and are still important,” he says. “Stuttering interrupts this hegemonic order of time.”

Alpern wrote an essay for Stammering Pride and Prejudice, an anthology published this year in the United Kingdom. (The British use “stammering” as a synonym for “stuttering.”) St. Pierre has a chapter; so does Constantino, who is one of the book’s editors. In hers, Alpern tells the story of ordering a “Bl-Bl-Bl-Blue Moon” at a bar and finding unexpected pleasure in the extra syllables. Part of the delight is in using a voice that is uniquely hers; part is the hard-earned absence of shame.

Part is physical: “that little loss of control that resolves itself so beautifully sometimes,” she writes. “I am falling through the air for an instant, then catching the ground again, like Fred Astaire pretending to trip when he dances.”

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