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

Leaving Alabama

The joy and agony of crossing state lines

Songs of the Earth

Michael Tippett’s The Rose Lake

Being Black

Considering the veil of race

“Come live with me and be my love”

Lynn Boggess

Wild West Virginia

How to Die

An excerpt from James Romm’s compilation of Seneca’s writings on death

Take It, But Be Prepared to Lose It

Love is the thing we most hope for

A Revolutionary Change of Heart

How a moving essay on war and suffering sprang from a childhood book

Doppelgängers

What does Schubert sound like on a jazzy bass trombone?

Banishing our Biases

The happy possibilities of letting them go

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