Gaby Garcia: Heat
When the world burns, we will be like the women
of Pompeii who left their bread loaves to bake—
our laundry mid-cycle, newspapers turned
to the op-eds, windows open to catch a breeze.
Barrett Swanson: The Soldier and the Soil
Their prose often stood head and shoulders above the standard freshman drivel, exhibiting a certain rigor of thought and depth of feeling that perhaps comes from having witnessed whole anthologies of trauma—entire villages razed by fire, wide-eyed children draped in gore, wives screaming beside mutilated husbands.
Doug Anderson: Burning Man
Burning man comes from an instinct and need for carnival, a masking of the respectable self in order to release the animal/imaginative self, but with ritualized decorum and boundaries.
Sydney Lea: Spring Poem in the Season of Corona
I’ve lived enough to expect odd snow-squalls, slapped
To anger by nasty winds. I predict more hours
In which we’re sealed in rooms foursquare and flat,
Where we’ll dream of the past…
Stephanie Hiller: COVID-19 Sparks a Rebirth of the Local Farm Movement
Could this be the beginning of a new food economy?
Christine Skarbek: Musings with the Nightingale
A friend in Connecticut has lost
over 40 friends and relatives to covid-19.
Overwhelmed with grief,
he can no longer speak.
Luara Ferracioli: For a child, being carefree is intrinsic to a well-lived life
Is being carefree a special good of childhood? Is it something that confers meaning on the life of a child, without doing the same for adults? Or do adults need to be more carefree, and so be more like children, in order for their lives to go well?
Michael Simms: Ten things I should have figured out before now
Love is complicated. Courtesy is simple. Start with courtesy.
Lise Ragbir: How Coronavirus Will Shape a Generation
This generation now collectively understands that one’s daily existence can change overnight.
Carolyn Gregory: Listening
Compassion unfolds her bright blue
wings and shelters us.
Pilar Lopez-Cantero: Your love story is a narrative that gets written in tandem
By coming to recognise the degree to which overlapping and different narratives shape our expectations in love, we can avoid some of the worst outcomes.
Jacob Stegenga: Gentle medicine could radically transform medical practice
Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
Pam Uschuk: Like Obsidian’s Idea of Itself | Operation Uplift During the Pandemic
Each day my friend asks us to share
evidence of grace, photo trails of kids laughing,
prayer flags strung with petals
Michelle D. Holmes, M.D: Re-opening America
As health professionals prepare for a second wave of the pandemic, a Harvard epidemiologist discusses the injustices arising from rationing medical equipment in America.
