Valarie Kaur: Forgiveness
Forgiveness was not a substitute for justice; it had energized us in the
fight for justice.
Paul Christensen: The Cornhole Tournament
What happens when a large segment of a population finds itself displaced, bullied off the bench?
Tom Engelhardt: Burning Books (or Rather Book Companies)
Looking Back on My Years in — And out of — Publishing
Paul Christensen: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Twit
I used to wander around on lower Broadway in Manhattan when I was still a teenager. I had a dead-end job at a valve company taking orders from plumbers wanting a gate valve or oversized coupling for an apartment building going up.
Matthew J. Parker: MMPI-5
It’s obvious to all (or damn well should be) that the background checks designed to prevent criminals and/or deeply disturbed individuals from purchasing weapons are pathetically deficient.
Adrienne Maree Brown: Breaking is part of healing
I was in a conversation recently with a friend who had just returned from a meditation retreat. She said one of the ideas shared with her group was that “the teacup is already broken,” a meditation on how the death or ending or brokenness we fear is inevitable.
Tom Engelhardt: Living in a Sci-fi World
Honestly, if you had described this America to me more than half a century ago, I would have laughed in your face.
Paul Christensen: The Breaking of the Sky
We had been waiting for two long, agonizing months for rain to come, for anything to cast a veil over a furious sun that dried out fields, withered up grape vines, even discouraged the cicadas from droning in the pines. Now the rain started falling, thick, icy gobbets of it, drenching us the moment it struck.
Baron Wormser: “Technology is our fate” 
Thus spoke the high-modernist architect Mies van der Rohe in the middle of the twentieth century. Nothing since then has refuted his remark. If anything, a good deal more fuel … Continue reading
Adrienne Maree Brown: Murmurations | Love Looks Like Accountability
Racialized capitalism trains us to expect that some people fall through the cracks into unjust suffering; our cultural individualism tells us this is acceptable, as long as we aren’t the ones at the bottom.
Tom Engelhardt: The Decline and Fall of Everything (Including Me)
I find myself experiencing three versions of that ultimate story: that of my own fall; that of my country; and that of an increasingly overheating planet as a habitable place for us all.
Baron Wormser: Oona
When you have a dog, you get to participate in another creature’s being, a creature who wants to be with you, a human being.
Paul Christensen: What the Heat Demands of Us
We may not make it through this crisis. But no one can say for sure it is too late.
Sam Long: Why I Decided to Come Out to My Students as a Trans Man
Every August, as new students arrive, I wonder whether I want to share this part of myself.
