“We still fight with the same Vietnamese stubbornness that is in our blood. I struggle with knowing far more English than Vietnamese. As you age, I fret about the ultimate silence of losing you. Although this dynamic will never go away, there have been new rhetorical tools to soften our challenges. Phrases like ‘I’m sorry’ […]
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The Universe, T-Swift, and This Week’s Top 5
“Growing up it was drilled in me that no word should touch the ground. Words are to be revered no matter what those words might mean. Once my Nana insisted my entire room be reorganized because my bookshelf was stationed such that when I went to bed the backs of my feet faced the books […]
This Week: Rituals, Emoji, and a Cold Case
“Ritual is an urge and an act; it’s an aesthetic gesture. As an adult I established the habit of turning my attention to those subtle seasonal details and recording them. I was loving and honoring the land, but this practice still left something undone. A certain clarity, maybe formality. Something like a frame around a […]
Airbnb Is Spending Millions of Dollars to Make Nightmares Go Away
“When things go horribly wrong during a stay, the company’s secretive safety team jumps in to soothe guests and hosts, help families—and prevent PR disasters.”
The Top 5 Longreads of the Week
This week, we’re highlighting stories by Meagan Gillmore, Teju Cole, Maureen Ryan, Katie Baker, and Imogen West-Knights.
The Crime Victim Who’s Obsessed with True Crime Shows
“Before the shooting, watching true crime shows was a diversion. Afterward, it is no longer simply a genre to me.”
A Couple’s Awakening and the Week’s Top 5
“Both marriage and religion had required exile from ourselves, a systematic suppression of our true identities. It was an adaptation that felt necessary for survival. But as I watched D explore, interrogate, and reinvent womanhood, changing the rules before my eyes, I wondered if I had been wrong.” Happy Friday, even if (in the Northern […]
On Learning Love and Compassion, and the Week’s Top 5 Stories
“The way forward had to be with open eyes and with hearts exposed to injury. We’d seen the price we paid when we failed to bear witness.” Hello, weekend, c’mon in! The light is slowly returning to the Northern Hemisphere, and with it the promise of brighter days ahead. First up, Amory Rowe Salem writes […]
Abandoned Music Dreams and The Week’s Top 5
“It felt like a homecoming but in retrospect seems more like a goodbye: a last great musical act before leaving that period of my life. It felt romantic, anyway, to record in a barn. We set the drums next to the tractor, tried to coax the chickens into cooing for the microphone, and had a […]
A Tasty Award and Our Top 5
“What I’m saying is, in that already suffused space, I don’t feel the need to perfume the air around me with the sweet scent of the ceremonial Sabbath bread. But here, in Ames, Iowa, there is a hollow, an empty space. A void I need to fill.” Happy weekend! First, we have some exciting news: […]


