Meg Pokrass: Summersaulting To Shore
My dark-haired lover explained marriage was like an animal. “There’s a smell when it dies,” he said. I let my marriage trickle out.
Dahr Jamail: Savoring What Remains in an Age of Climate PTSD
Vast numbers of climate scientists are now grieving for the planet and humanity’s future, with some even describing their symptoms as a climate-change version of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.
Andrea Mazzarino: Bearing Witness to the Costs of War
I’m a scholar of the war on terror’s civilian casualties, as well as a military spouse. Until the suffering ends, all of us should bear witness to the costs of war.
Christine Skarbek: A Personal Pantheon of Phenomenal Fellows
On this Thanksgiving, I survey all the deliciously delightful people who have touched my life and kudize them all. However, there are four in my personal pantheon that are absolute standouts. Oddly, they are all men.
Nathan Williams: Experiencing Firsthand Failures of UN Climate Politics, I Realized Civil Disobedience Only Route Left
We exist in the midst of planetary tragedy. A tragedy that demands we face the truth and ask the hardest questions about how we now must live.
Mattea Kramer: Finding Peace Amid the New Opium Wars
I learn so much from people in recovery that sometimes I think my head will explode. Instead what happens is that my heart grows.
George Monbiot: The Unlearning
Boarding school, a peculiarly British form of abuse, has devastating impacts not only on the boarders, but on those they grow up to dominate.
John Samuel Tieman: Thank you for your service
At the gym the other day, a few of us old veterans were talking among ourselves. The subject drifted to how tired we are of that “Thank you for your … Continue reading
Danny Sjursen: Watching My Students Turn Into Soldiers of Empire
A New Generation of West Pointers Joins America’s Hopeless Wars
Eloise Stark: My Autism Journey
Autists are the ultimate square pegs, and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that the hammering is hard work. It’s that you’re destroying the peg.
Allegra Harpootlian: Why I Weep While I Work
A majority of my day is spent bearing witness to the pain, fear, and terror that America’s actions have been causing across the Greater Middle East and North Africa.
Deborah Bogen: Homeless Box
Sometimes we cross to the other side to get away from their carts and tarps, to avoid their dirty murky faces, but mostly we look through them, past them, above them, our eyes seeking the sanctuary of the shiny store windows.
Paul Christensen: The Rain It Raineth Every Day
They say the average cloud weighs about the same as eighty elephants. A big storm such as now darkens the sky overhead must be an infinite parade of elephants milling around in the dark gray pastures above us.
Marco North: The Stairs
Downstairs, there is a pile of kopeks next to the garbage bins. A ruble is far less than a penny, and there are one hundred kopeks to every ruble…. The kopeks are not there to be thrown away. They are for someone who actually needs them. Three hundred of them would buy a potato or two.
