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 two people talking
Article

How I Learned to Talk

Conversation once offered entry into other people’s minds. Has that disappeared?

Commonplace Book

Autumn 2019

Sketches by Michelangelo
Arts

Chalking It Up
loading

The ideas Michelangelo committed to paper were themselves glimpses of heaven

Exterior view of a greenhouse lit up at night
Works in Progress

Progress Report, Autumn 2019

Old rice made new, women inventors, cli-fi hits the art world

Brick wall in Cambridge
Web Essays

June 29

Tire fire at a meat market production site in Ghana
Letter From

Ghana: A Burning Problem

How to replace toxic scrap-tire fires with a more sustainable alternative

Book Reviews

Downsized Living

Escaping the city, a writer finds contentment in a small town

A picture of the moon
Tuning Up

Ten Sights (I Wish I’d Seen)

Purple ocean’s majesty, the dodo, and other wonderful things

Running in a meadow
Web Essays

June 22

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

NEWSLETTER

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current issue

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
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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

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