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

Black-and-white photo of composer William Levi Dawson
Article

New World Prophecy

Dvořák once predicted that American classical music would be rooted in the black vernacular. Why, then, has the field remained so white?

View from Rue Saint-Georges

Existential Split

On feeling the pull of home

Trees
Web Essays

It’s Not Easy Being Green

In an era of global warming, not all tree-related questions are equal.

Portrait of the Artist

Madeline A. Stratton

Without a Shadow of a Doubt

Read Me a Poem

“Any Case” by Wislawa Szymborska

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Asturias Days

The Bland Act

Smarty Pants Podcast

Fashion Kills

How our hunger for more clothes is killing the environment and exploiting workers

Iceland
Shelf Life

From the Office to Iceland

An Excerpt from Wild Horses of the Summer Sun

Girl sitting at window reading
Web Essays

Uncommon Podcasts

Three outlets for the radically curious

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