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Made To Be Broken

Richard Albert On The Difficulty Of Amending The U.S. Constitution

The way Americans interact with each other now has made it clear that the Constitution was perhaps never deserving of all the praise it’s gotten.

Of History And Hope

We have memorized America, / how it was born and who we have been and where. / In ceremonies and silence we say the words, / telling the stories, singing the old songs. / We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

Sunbeams

They argued about the weather, sports, sex, war, race, politics, and religion; neither of them knew much about the subjects they debated, but it seemed that the less they knew the better they could argue.

Richard Wright, “The Man Who Went to Chicago”

We Were All Just Kids, Really

It was never wholly about music; it was also about being part of a community of like-minded misfits and broken dolls. I felt a responsibility to capture these bands and that world specifically because it seemed like nobody else was.

Sticks And Stones

Yascha Mounk On The Erosion Of Good-Faith Discourse In America

It’s hard to be optimistic about this country overcoming its current political challenges without some disaster happening.

Sunbeams

It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.

Rachel Carson

Sunbeams

Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious will land itself in chaos and may be self-destroyed.

Mahatma Gandhi

Old Friend

I wasn’t good at sports, like he was, but when it was just the two of us, he liked to play pretend. That, I was good at. Whether we were knights or ninjas or mountain men or astronauts or soldiers in Vietnam, he listened with his whole self — intent, leaning in — to whatever story I was telling.