“What they searched for wouldn’t look like a body, not anymore.”
California
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘This Place Belongs to You’
“Joshua Tree National Park is synonymous with the desert. Yet record numbers of guests threaten to overwhelm its beauty, wildlife, and small staff.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
No Way to Live
“As Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass declares a state of emergency on housing, residents like Sarah Fay live on the brink of being unhoused.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Of Tacos y Heartbreak
“The tacos I eat here in the U.S. are not the tacos my family eats in Mexico. They come close but there’s something missing. Maybe it’s the salt.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
There are Trees in the Future, Or, A Case for Staying
“Why struggle to stay?” In an essay at Protean, Lupita Limón Corrales weaves her reflections about pandemic life, new ways of living, and leaving California, especially through the lens of the remote work revolution. Writing about the first year of the pandemic — and the collective show of solidarity during 2020’s summer of racial reckoning, […]
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Unsettled: The Afghan Refugee Crisis Collides with the American Housing Disaster
Part of The Verge‘s Homeland series, this feature by Makena Kelly on resettlement programs in the U.S. shows what Afghan families are facing from day to day, particularly in communities of the San Francisco Bay Area where the housing crisis is dire. Ongoing support and aid comes from local nonprofits, overworked volunteers, and generous families […]
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How the Yurok Tribe Is Bringing Back the California Condor
Condor 746, on loan from a captive breeding program in Idaho, traveled to California in spring 2022. He’s the first California condor in over a century to reach the ancestral land of the Yurok Tribe, and made the journey to mentor four young birds in a condor facility in Redwood National Park. Condors are very […]
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Joan Didion’s Magic Trick
Caitlin Flanagan goes on a road trip through California — including Sacramento, Berkeley, and Malibu — visiting the homes of the late Joan Didion and exploring why her writing has had such a powerful effect on people. Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album created a new vocabulary of essay writing, one whose influence is […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Dislodged
In this beautiful personal essay, Josh McColough recounts a road trip with his daughter along the coast of California and makes poignant observations about humanity and our vulnerable environment. Still, we too often move through life not considering our size and stature relative to forces and objects that humble us. Geologic time. Plate tectonics. A […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
A Future for Susanville
Prisons such as the California Correctional Center in Susanville, California, drive the local economy in the rural town, and its residents are just as tied to these facilities as the incarcerated ones. Piper French offers a nuanced portrait of the town, as locals in support of CCC, incarcerated organizers on the inside, and urban abolitionist […]