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Farmhouse By The Highway

The hardest thing about death, my mother said, is when you stop remembering what drove you mad. Like the way my father typed one key at a time, or how he spit in his hands to smooth cowlicks in his hair.

Perfectly Built Spaces

To help me fall asleep at night, I try to think about soothing subjects. This is why, since I turned fifty several years ago, I have found myself renovating houses in my head. . . . I am particularly interested in renovating the houses of my childhood.

Invasion Of Privacy

Khiara M. Bridges On Poverty And Reproductive Justice

Three of the nine justices have publicly articulated their position that the Constitution does not contain a right to privacy — at least, when it comes to matters involving contraception. . . . And that’s just the three we know about.

Ohashi Bridge In The Rain

When we met for lunch, she wore a dark silk dress and red lipstick. At the school where we both taught, she always dressed practically: plastic boots, a raincoat over a faded blue sweatshirt, a white sailor’s cap.

A Thousand Words

A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.

Sunbeams

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. . . . Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

The Thistle Steps

I have recently made a new enemy. She is a black, curly-haired cocker spaniel walking a man holding a leash. We pass each other sometimes on the steep, narrow public stairs called the Thistle Steps. . . . I could try talking to the man, but I’m never wearing my hearing aids when we meet, so I wouldn’t be able to hear his reply.

Sunbeams

The roots of a child’s ability to cope and thrive, regardless of circumstance, lie in that child’s having had at least a small, safe place (an apartment? a room? a lap?) in which, in the companionship of a loving person, that child could discover that he or she was lovable and capable of loving in return.

Fred Rogers

Plastic: A Personal History

How can I find a way to praise / it? Do the early inventors & embracers / churn with regret?