“Emboldened and ever grateful for the advances in modern medicine, I find myself longing for more than a joint replacement. Suffice to say, 5 November broke me, and I have been unable, on…

“Some go to J-school to become better writers, to become investigative reporters, to learn how to interview well, and write clearly. Others head straight to newsrooms or combat zones. All this takes time,…

“When disaster strikes, it’s all we see. The despair and horror come from seeing the end of what we thought we knew and loved, and the certain knowledge that there can be no…

“For me, it all began with Chester Drawers, but let me go back even further, to another befuddled listener, James Thurber, whose maid, Delia, announced to him one Christmas, ‘They are here with…

“I have been told that on islands like Rhodes and Kos, where there are hourly flights from Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen, the kamakis are organized. They know that the bars with the most…

“In the dispiriting wake of a dispiriting election season, I felt the only sustainable way forward would be to choose kindness and love—the soft power of water—not the obdurate hardness of anger and…

“At the level of society, there is very little any of us can do. However, I can think of one job that is worth our collective attention. There may be others. Working to…

“In this issue’s compilation, the cartoonist asks us to ponder the relationship between a man (?) got up as a bird (and his/her/their spouse, perhaps, un-got-up-as-anything, yet); a gathering of not-very-nighthawkish diner-diners; a…

“I had the pleasure of attending a Kamala Harris rally in South Carolina, invited to the meet-and-greet by a member of a congregation I was serving at that time. I had admired Harris…

“The ant altered everything that was evaluated, including the dynamics between the largest terrestrial animals on Earth and the structure of the plant community. Along the way, the tiny, mighty ant has demonstrated—again—that…