Posted inEditor's Pick

Futures From Ruins

Bombay Beach was once a vibrant resort town on the Salton Sea until agricultural pollution, drought, and toxic air led to its demise. Today, an art movement and emerging community hope to bring it back. In this Noema essay, writer Johanna Hoffman and photographer Tao Ruspoli show how a town in ruins is experiencing a […]

Posted inEditor's Pick

They Call Her Lamb Mom

A gentle essay, that still manages to be gut-wrenching. AC Shilton tells this story of two sickly lambs with compassion and beauty. For a single day, though, I showed a disabled lamb the freedom of movement, one of the greatest joys of my former life as an endurance athlete. More importantly, in Sebastian’s last hours, […]

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Parks and Re-Creation (and the Week’s Top 5)

“In spite of my confidence in cooking, I’ve never brought mulukhiyah into my urban kitchen. Eating it without my family’s elbows pressed against mine doesn’t make sense to me. I know I’d feel like an impostor, inserting myself into the sacred and altering it irreparably, as I can’t help but reinvent recipes with my own improvised […]

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Posted inEditor's Pick

False Passives

As she travels north through Ethiopia, Anna Badkhen speaks with people who are looking for a way to escape — to cross the Gulf of Aden toward Yemen — and ruminates on the plight of refugees and vulnerable populations around the world. When does a journey begin? When droughts parch the land, or mudslides take entire farms […]

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