The Epic Viking Saga of the Everyday

Eleanor Barraclough on the ordinary people of Norse history

All Talk

Ease of communication will not save us

Superbloom: How Technologies of Connection Tear Us Apart by Nicholas Carr

Burned

“The White Heart of God” by Jack Gilbert

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Paige Ledom

Out of the ordinary

The Brahmin and His Imaginary Friend

How a classic paean to the honest virtues of a Maine fisherman obscured several ugly truths

Old Christ Church in Alexandria. Virginia, attended by General Robert E. Lee in his youth and pictured here in 1911 (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign/Wikimedia Commons)

Divided Providence

Faith’s pivotal role in the outcome of the Civil War

Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union by Richard Carwardine

“The Terrorist, He’s Watching” by Wislawa Szymborska

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

Above the River of Your Longing

Two new prompts

Rebecca Gaal Photo Opener

A Beautiful Vision

Peggy’s War

A pioneering American journalist traveled the world while fighting her own battles at home

Perry: Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola

If You Frame It Like That

So much depends on the way a work is formatted

Carr: The Future of...

Our Heads in the Cloud

Oceanfront

Living in the Song

Shea: An Alaskan husky named Laban

The Barents Sea: Land of Perpetual Night

As we traveled northward, the twilight diminished, the sky grew darker, until finally our ship crossed into polar night

We’ve Got a Fight on Our Hands

Why petty conflicts are so important

Bernstein-Machlay: The human egg cherry-picks the precise sperm it wants

Why the Egg Matters

A meditation on remembrance, family, and time

Poissant: Fiction essay- Solstice

Solstice

We couldn’t advertise our grief, lest, years from now, friends and family would watch us sideways, waiting for an explosion from the bomb that never went off.

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