The Patron Subjects

Who were the Wertheimers, the family that sat for a dozen of John Singer Sargent’s paintings?

A Giant of a Man

The legacy of Willie Mays and the Birmingham ballpark where he first made his mark

Adventures With Jean

Striking up a friendship with an older writer meant accepting the risk of getting hurt

Feels Like Coming Home
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The wonders of the coastal redwood

Free
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The knowledge of approaching death may allow some of us to experience time in new and liberating ways

Riding With Mr. Washington

How my great-grandfather invented himself at the end of Reconstruction

Bards Behind Bars

Reading Sartre aloud inside a maximum-security prison

Just When You Thought It Wasn’t Safe …

How Wilbert Longfellow turned America into a nation of swimmers

Corona Chasers

You never forget your first solar eclipse

For Whom Do We Create?

The conundrum facing so many American artists today

‘HD 11964 d’ by Any Other Name

What to call the planets we find beyond our solar system?

The Most Important Election in History

Is it possible to elect a president without invoking that phrase?

A Most Interesting Young Man

Was that Bob Dylan my sister met on a weir above Woodstock?

Exit No Exit

Whatever happened to existentialism?

Sign Language

At their best, pictograms tell us clearly where to go and what to do; at their worst, things can get interesting

Inshallah

The war in Iraq might leave us a new word to match a new sense of our own limitations

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