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

View from Rue Saint-Georges

Priceless Moments

How having children focuses a writer’s mind

Portrait of the Artist

Sarah G. Carter

Patterned Fields

Read Me a Poem

“We Real Cool” by Gwendolyn Brooks

Poems read aloud, beautifully

Smarty Pants Podcast

One Job Should Be Enough

How workers’ voices were silenced in America—and how they’re fighting back

Asturias Days

Hello, Goodbye

Storm clouds on the Chesapeake Bay
Web Essays

Trouble on the Chesapeake

A new proposal to clean up the bay raises old questions for environmental reformers

View from Rue Saint-Georges

Life on a Razor’s Edge

The hidden joys of shaving

Picture of a newsstand
Web Essays

Better on Paper

What the success of a small local newspaper can tell us about the future of print

Asturias Days

Playing

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