Browse Topics
Aging
Time in the Shape of Hills
My bones wake me up at night. It was my hips at first, then my femurs screaming. Now my ankles. But my doctor won’t listen. It started last year when my son and I walked the Camino de Santiago, the ancient pilgrimage route that runs through Spain. I’m sure that’s why my bones hurt—from all the walking.
January 2025Sunbeams
August 2024The body is a sacred garment. It’s your first and your last garment; it is what you enter life in and what you depart life with, and it should be treated with honor, and with joy and with fear as well. But always, though, with blessing.
A Thousand Words
A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
June 2024The Wisdom Package
I ask the youngish eye doctor why my eyes itch / and burn and why new floaty bits / of paramecium-shaped debris swim // through my view each day
June 2024Sunbeams
June 2024There are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers, those who currently are caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers.
Charity
Life is funny. For some it’s quickly snuffed out. For others it burns on and on, like a fire fed by kerosene. Stella can’t seem to die. Though she’s eighty-four and can’t walk, and her weight is almost the same as her age, still her heart beats on and her blood courses through her body, the cells scrubbing and knitting like faithful housewives.
June 2024Home Sick
Emily Kenway on the Health-Care Crisis No One’s Talking About
Once we start to recognize that most of us will, at some point, have to step out of our professional role to provide care, then we have to transform how we’re running our economies. At the moment, our economies are relying on these hidden tragedies that befall women behind closed doors. All to keep the wheels of industry turning.
June 2024Pink Suede Boots
Decades old now, / but the leather’s held up, and the curve / of the instep is still elegant. / I gave them away to my goddaughter, sixteen / and blossoming.
April 2024Abandon All Expectations
The fish is now thrashing at the surface. Unlike every other captain I have seen, Cuervo uses a net, not a gaff, to bring it aboard. He has enough experience to know that, by the time a full-grown yellowtail is brought to the boat, it has essentially fought itself to death. Rich lets the captain take over, and Cuervo handles the marvelous creature with a tenderness that has been missing from most of my charter-fishing experiences.
January 2024A Letter From Sy’s Desk
In January my implausible idea of working at the magazine for fifty years will have come to pass, and I will comfortably step into a new role as editor emeritus. That having been said, it’s hard for me to say goodbye.
December 2023Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
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