Novelty is what Americans are said to crave, yet it terrifies policy wonks, CEOs, art dealers, and almost everybody else. This is no time for experiments, we mutter, sharply aware of how precarious profit, amicable coexistence, and life itself are now. It is safer to follow a recipe exactly.
More than half a century later, a sign was placed on the shore of the Tallahatchie at the spot where Emmett’s body was found. The sign was ripped from the ground and probably thrown into the river as forcefully as his body had been. By the time its replacement was removed, it had been punctured by 317 bullet holes.
Bask in a sunny garden and watch the birds. Hike slowly through the woods and listen for their calls. Pull up the new, free Merlin app to find out which bird sings that song. Gradually, you will learn intimate details about the lives of these “winged dinosaurs that have given up stored fat, hollowed their bones,” to fly.
Dying is something we all do. Saints, film stars, Olympic athletes, con artists. I feel calmer every time another cool friend pulls it off; if all these smart, funny people have managed to die, could it be so awful to share their fate? Yet much of what we call culture is created to deny death, or at least distract us from it.
Ross Gay’s point is that “joy and pain are fundamentally tangled up with one another.” What if, he says, joy is what bubbles forth when “we help each other carry our heartbreak?” To know that, though, we have to invite sorrow in. We welcome it with open (not crossed) arms. And once we stop resisting sorrow, guess what? We no longer resist or brush aside joy.
"Bosnian St. Louis" reminds us how beautiful Bosnia and Herzegovina was, and how readily people of different faiths and ethnic backgrounds intermarried and socialized. This small country with a mouthful of a name was first part of Yugoslavia—and it was the only Yugoslav republic established purely by geography and history, not ethnicity.
For a solid year, Christian Okeke works twelve hours a day—doing construction, working in a factory, mopping up spilled beer and sticky foam at a bar—to buy his own cello. It arrives naked—no strings, no pegs, and no bridge—so his cellist friend helps him find all he needs.
The experiences that are possible in Berlin are powerful and unsettling; they grab hold, forcing you to wrestle with them.
Diane von Furstenberg has always known she was meant to be here, meant to design. Back in high school, she was writing papers exploring beauty as a defense against death.
Researchers are not exactly sure how it will all play out. Some say that warmer temperatures will mean longer growing seasons, so a later start to fall foliage. Others say that if trees start photosynthesizing earlier, they may turn color sooner.
Maybe the crueler sorts of shame are having a resurgence not just because we have the technology but because we feel out of control. Maybe we are desperately hoping there is still a common moral standard to which others can be held. Or maybe we still believe, deep in our gut, that shame works, no matter how much pain it causes.
Heaving a heavy sigh makes an eloquent statement. A full and heartfelt sigh is done with the mouth open, but that quick, gusty sigh through the nostrils? That is contempt.