Adam Patric Miller: How (Not) to Wear a Keffiyeh to School
Fold the keffiyeh in a triangle, lift it to your face, lift your arms about your head holding the ends of the longest edge, then wrap it so the triangle covers your face, tie the long ends together behind your head, letting the patterns drape over your shoulders.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar: About My Birthday
when the last leaves let go, let go,
have all let go, & it’s almost winter again —
don’t remember my birthday
Baron Wormser: The Loss of Literature
Literature challenges the very idea of right thinking, which is one reason tyrants have suppressed literature, though that suppression is ably carried out by any zealous group of chiding, censorious know-it-alls.
C.P. Kavafy: Che Fece… Il Gran Rifiuto
For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No.
Robert F. Barsky: Noam Chomsky at 96
The linguist, educator, philosopher and public thinker has had a massive intellectual and moral influence.
Joan E. Bauer: 165 Maybery Road
Salka raises money, gathers affidavits
to bring Jews from Europe to safety, finds jobs
for the newcomers, drives them to Farmer’s Market
on Fairfax, a reminder of the Old World.
Video: How to Slow Brain Aging by Two Years
The consumption of blueberries and strawberries is associated with delayed cognitive aging by as much as 2.5 years—thought to be because of brain-localizing anthocyanin phytonutrients, as shown on functional MRI scans.
William Shakespeare: Sonnets 73 & 74
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
Eloise Goldberg: Top 12 US Billionaires Now Control $2 Trillion in Wealth
We see the effects of this growing concentration of wealth and economic inequality everywhere—plutocratic influence on our politics, wealth transfers from the bottom to the top, and the acceleration of climate breakdown.
Jason Baldinger: a people’s history of williamson west virginia
instead we holed up
in a burned-out department store
rechristened junk shop
sifting boxes of ten cent
black and white photos
George Yancy: Cornel West | We Must Keep Our Souls Intact as We Organize Under Trump Again
“Trump is American gangsterism crystallized, honest about itself, unashamed and bold,” says West.
Alexis Rhone Fancher: Watch your back my dead mother warns
I was in my late teens, off to college up north. I’m hoping you’re rid of M for good, my mother said. But he wanted to move north with me, and begged me to move in with him, that we would go to school together. Me, desperate to be a solo act. The look on his face when I turned him down, unforgettable.
Rebecca Gordon: Staring Down Misogyny
What the election means for women (and the rest of us)
David Adès: I
I the stubbornness that brooks no argument,
I the prayer, I the lover, I the blessing and the curse,
I the question, I the answer,
