SPOTLIGHT

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

By Stephanie Bastek Friday, January 17, 2025

SPOTLIGHT

Keepers of the Old Ways

Eliot Stein on the people keeping cultural traditions alive

By Stephanie Bastek Friday, January 17, 2025

Asturias Days

Las Tetas de Liérganes

Smarty Pants Podcast

The Banjo and the Ballot Box

How country music has been used on the campaign trail—and in political office

Measure by Measure

Visions of Another Realm

Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius

View from Rue Saint-Georges

Language Unbound

How the words we use influence how we think

Grocery store aisle
Shelf Life

Food Fights

An excerpt from The Poison Squad

Smarty Pants Podcast

What Makes a Refugee?

A writer explores how displaced people, and adopted countries, should respond to the highest levels of displacement on record

Asturias Days

Please Release Me

Read Me a Poem

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot

In honor of the poet’s 131st birthday

View from Rue Saint-Georges

On the Turning Away

Our tendency to ignore human suffering

Next Line, Please

Above the River of Your Longing

Two new prompts

Asturias Days

Casa Gorín

Read Me a Poem

“The Purse-Seine” by Robinson Jeffers

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Book Reviews

Island Royalty

A new biography of a Caribbean revolutionary

Article

The Writer in the Family

The fiction of E. L. Doctorow gave a young man hope of connecting his father and his literary hero

Asturias Days

Birthday Boy

Read Me a Poem

“The Horses” by Ted Hughes

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Portrait of the Artist

Amy Wetsch

Life, magnified

Article

The Weight of a Stone

Searching for stability in an erratic world led Oliver Sacks and other writers to the realms of geology

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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)
Book Reviews

Divided Providence

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

Article

The Fair Fields
loading

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

Poetry

The Art of Tuning In

Celebrating 20 years of poetry in the Scholar

Commonplace Book

Winter 2025