Video: Dark Chocolate and Artery Function
What do studies not funded by the chocolate industry show about the effect of cocoa on arterial health?
Miriam Levine: On the Steps of the Miami Beach Cinematheque
Soon I’d be eighty. My hip ached,
the thumb he kissed bent with arthritis.
His scent was lime, and the nape
of his neck smooth as summer jade.
Ginger Thompson: A Border Patrol Agent Reveals What It’s Really Like to Guard Migrant Children
With the agency under fire for holding children in deplorable conditions and over racist and misogynistic Facebook posts, one agent speaks about what it’s like to do his job. “Somewhere down the line people just accepted what’s going on as normal.”
Joshua Wilkey: Blessed are the White Trash
I grew up poor. Often, when one reads memoirs or oral histories from folks who grew up where I did — that is, in Appalachia, or in the South, or somewhere … Continue reading
Robert Frost: The Sound of the Trees
Why do we wish to bear
Forever the noise of these
More than another noise
So close to our dwelling place?
Video: Travel Deep Inside a Leaf
To really get to know the tallest trees in the world, start with their leaves.
Sydney Lea: 2019
The gulls that once patrolled the Bay
of Naples, for instance, long since shifted
attention toward the city’s landfill
Aura Bogado: The US is quietly opening shelters for babies and young kids. One has 12 children and no mothers.
One of the infants is just 2 weeks old and was born in the United States, making the child a U.S. citizen in the custody of the federal refugee agency.
Naomi Shihab Nye: Trees Gossip with the Birds
When the orange sun sinks over the AZIZI sign I feel
the darkening world soaking up all the extra noise
Majid Naficy: Great Feast
Death, like a weary actress
Has gone behind the stage
To take off her black dress
And put on her lounging gown.
Mayeta Clark: When Fracking Companies Own the Gas Beneath Your Land
Natural gas companies have cut down forests and paved over farms on West Virginia private lands, calling it “reasonably necessary” to access subsurface gas they own the rights to. A legal battle with property owners has ensued.
Michael T. Klare: The Missing Three-Letter Word in the Iran Crisis
If the United States goes to war with Iran, you are unlikely to hear the word “oil” uttered by top Trump administration officials, but make no mistake: that three-letter word lies at the root of the present crisis, not to speak of the world’s long-term fate.
Elizabeth Romero: Route Six
A bad time is coming we agree
I peer ahead at the changing shades of gray
On the road ahead
A light rain falls
Video: An Ode to Envy — Parul Sehgal
What is envy? What drives it, and why do we secretly love it? No study has ever been able to capture its “loneliness, longevity, grim thrill” — that is, says Parul Sehgal, except for fiction.
Paul Christensen: Second Sight
My mother was Italian, a passionate, sensuous woman who believed in fortune telling and heeding the voice of intuition, which was very strong inside her. She told me she had been born under a veil, meaning the amniotic sack at birth, and that this was the sign of her prophetic powers.
