The Fair Fields

Only rarely did the outside world intrude on an idyllic Connecticut childhood, but in the tumultuous 1960s, that intrusion included an encounter with evil

Just Yesterday

“The Frog Prince” by Stevie Smith

Poems read aloud, beautifully

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

That Common Heart

Finding unity and faith in the fiction of Marilynne Robinson

Keep Your Enemies Close

And they just might become your friends

Six Ways Forward

Karen Kinder

Bucolic Bovines

Drought

Hard earth and hard truths

Top of the Tots

What child prodigies have to tell us about our achievement obsession

And This Was My Country

Anton Webern’s “Wiese im Park”

“Sit down, be humble”

The inspiring example of one of rap’s modest and thoughtful heroes

On Gratitude

How a simple thank you can lift the spirits

The Minister of Loneliness

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