The National Archives Deletes Our Problematic Past
Slavery, the Holocaust, Japanese internment camps, the birth control pill--all much too messy and confrontational to remember.
Dispatches
The Asian Women Named Mary
Witness the “woman” of “Asian descent.” Is this the face of waiting? Of looking? Of becoming? Of otherizing? Did she shuffle to the chair before sitting? Did she walk quickly?
Saying Grace
It is heartening (and this is a measure of where we have been) to remember that civility is not dead, not abandoned, not impossible, not a waste of breath.
Some Pain, Some Gain
Science says that pain, done right, confers marked benefits. The trick, as in so many realms of life, is finding the right spot on the spectrum between what is chronic and what is manageable.
Pronouns Are Ruining Our Lives
We need to abolish pronouns altogether. And not for the reason you think.
Election Day in a Small Town in Southern Illinois
“Both the media and the politicians benefit from keeping us divided. They push us to the extremes, because that is where the clicks and the money are.”
Conclave Breaks the Seal of Secrecy
This extraordinary film reveals the Vatican’s secretive and shadowy aspect, easily seen as sinister but felt by insiders as plain necessity.
This Sporting Life is Cinema’s Ultimate Portrait of Manhood
Watching ‘This Sporting Life,’ the viewer marvels at how Machin keeps on “winning” at every turn yet still fails to find the elusive victory he craves.
Gossip from the Hôtel Biron, Where Paris’s Later-Famed Artists Were Housemates
Rodin, Camille Claudel, a free-spirited dancer named Isadora Duncan, nineteen-year-old Jean Cocteau, the painter Henri Matisse, and Rainer Maria Rilke--all housemates at a shabby hotel in Paris. Imagine the drama.
The Strangeness in Us
When I was little, I had a recurring nightmare. I would float to the laundry room, a small tiled room next to the kitchen, and open the door. Or try to. I would push the door handle down, throw my body against the wood but it would not budge, only wobble a bit as if something else pushed back. Then wind or an unseen hand would seize and suspend me in the air.