Dispatches

Essays

St. Louis snow of January 2025

St. Louis under Eight Inches of Snow

As St. Louis is freezing, Los Angeles is burning. While a fake image of a burning Hollywood Sign circulates on social media, the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office is trying to debunk a local hoax on Facebook that says there is a serial killer in Hillsboro. The killer, the post warns, “goes around knocking on peoples’ [sic] doors claiming to be homeless & he attacks you after you let him in. He’s ruthless and very dangerous.” The sheriff says not to share the post; people do anyway.

The Thankful Poor by Henry Ossawa Tanner

Exercising the Prayer Muscle

Prayer attempts to control—or at least come to peace with—the uncontrollable. It is an aspiration but also an assent: you are believing in something, acknowledging something, hoping for something. You have given shape to what is amorphous and uncertain. Psychologically, prayer is a survival tactic.

Mathias Reding

My Friend Chooses How and When to Die

Hope changes form as we age. We are no longer hoping for new things or adventures or lovers or careers. We are not “living for” any particular cause or project. We are simply living. Hope is now a compact with the universe: a resolve to keep trying, keep giving, keep reaching out. So when the world tells us it would rather we die already, that we are about to become a great deal of bother, why would we not bow out gracefully?