It was terribly cold, like the inside of a train station after all the trains have left for the evening. It was the last night of the year, and in its cold and darkness there walked a poor little girl, bareheaded and with naked feet. Her slim frame was out of scale in relation to a normal human body; its lines were so long, so fragile, so exaggerated that she looked like a stylized drawing…

Richard Lawson is divine on Stonewall:

Stonewall insists, with its hokey story about Danny’s personal growth and struggles with his family back home in Indiana, that what actually happened isn’t good enough. That no one will care unless there’s a beautiful young white man at the center of the story. Because who is more wonderful, compelling, appealing than that? Which may sadly be the opinion of certain corners of the market, but…

Previously by Rebecca Shaw: A League of Their Own-Inspired Thinkpieces What the Portrayal Of Secretaries Tells Us About The Pressing Need To Dismantle Gender Roles Doralee Didn’t Sleep With The Boss, But Maybe She Should Have 9 to 5’s Cavalier Attitude Toward Paper Wastage Is An Indictment On Our Destruction Of Old Growth Forests Women, Marijuana, And The Slippery Slope To Violence How Feminism Destroyed America’s Thriving Corporate Culture…

We are sorry, truly and with an overweening sorrow, but we're closed. The two aren't opposing statements. We're sorry and we're closed would be just as correct. We're sorry because we're closed. We're closed, and we're sorry about it, but we're closed just the same. The sorry cannot modify the closing of the thing. Nonetheless. Notwithstanding. For all that. The closing is as real, and as certain, as the sorry. We can offer you both, one in…

There are other ways to throw a good party, too. This is just one example among many. Here are some highlights:

1. There is one man. He is in the corner.

2. People are free to nap, or to watch other people napping, as they see fit.

i'm as upright as i want to be i also want to be this much standing up, alone we're both happy with this situation hooray i'm alone and touching nothing but gold…

A new set of horoscopes by Madame Clairevoyant, formerly of The Rumblr.

Aries: It’s not so much that you’ve been waiting, not that you’ve been holding back all summer, just that all of your growth has been happening quietly, in the dark, under the surface. Things inside you have been changing almost too slowly to notice, but now they might start coming to the surface. This month, things that have been blurry will start

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The original text here. Once there was a little girl who tried very hard not to be born. Her father the king and her mother the king’s wife had six children already – all sons. Together they were happy. As the boys grew and took their first steps from the school-room to the field, the king realized that they would someday turn into men. Six sons were one thing. Six men were quite another.

All I did yesterday was listen to the Hamilton cast recording, which is streaming in full on NPR. It is perfect. I wish only that you could see Daveed Diggs' unbelievably sexy/funny swagger, and Jonathan Groff's...well, here: You'll only take a couple losses if you can't see Hamilton with your own eyes, King George being the biggest. When I saw the show, Jonathan Groff was so absurd he made Leslie Odom Jr., playing Aaron…

Butterfly Pavilion I stand before the cocoons, waiting for a twitch in the shells, a crack revealing a colorful wing. There are none. The cocoons are pinned to cork boards, each dangling from its tip, ordered by species and country of origin. Some look like snails. Some look like tiny black bugs. Some are the green of the first leaves of spring. Nothing today. I turn to the butterflies around me, broken out of their…

"Oh, Amelia Bedelia, your first day of work, and I can't be here. But I made a list for you. You just read the list and you'll be fine," said Mrs. Rogers. Mrs. Rogers got into the car with Mr. Rogers. They drove away. "My, what nice folks. I'm going to like working here," said Amelia Bedelia. Amelia Bedelia went inside. "Such a grand house. These must be rich folks. But I must get to work. Here…

If you’d like to help Tall Man and other blood cancer patients, please donate your bone marrow in the country you live in, and if you have money, they’d love you to give it to Anthony Nolan in the UK or to Be the Match in the US.

Previous installments can be found here.

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I'm the writer, but I do the workout. Writing's not sitting. Sports, I have all of them in my body. Muscles always, for moving. I try the celebrity diets with my mouth, and eat them. I'm always doing the workouts, for my fitness body. I triathlete, I Pilates. I Pi early too. Pushing my body always because my mind, she's so awake with words and language. Pillar of strength, exhausted. Modern urban jungle, it's not…

I became preoccupied not only with the unaccustomed sense of freedom but also with the paralysing horror that had come over me at various times when confronted with the traces of destruction, reaching far back into the past… --W.G. Sebald

Two years ago, I was halfway through earning a degree in history, learning about the kinds of stories people tell in their historical scholarship. I was learning how to write well, and how…