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Latest — Apr 25, 2025

What's As Contagious As Fear

On a quiet spring morning, the man in well-worn flannel eases himself down to sit on his front stoop. At his feet, there is a large cat. The news today is all tectonic plates shifting, shattering. But here is this gentle pair in a shaft of April light. The man

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Two Things We Can Do to Strengthen Democracy Today

A few insights to set the mood: "The only recognizable feature of hope is action." Grace Paley, short story writer. "What if the mightiest word is love?" Elizabeth Alexander, a poet who once taught at the University of Chicago, where she met a community organizer who

How to Find Comfort in a Discomforting Season

When my Mum was diagnosed with cancer, lentil soup showed up on her porch. Friends picked her bouquets from their gardens, baked her bread from their sourdough starter, sent letters quoting Rumi and Wendell Berry, which she perched on her windowsills. And my mother whose spine was straight and fierce

For When We Don't Know What to Pay Attention To

When the mail comes, it's easily clear what's junk and what's to be read. The window washing flyers and hearing aid discounts (a mailing list I somehow got added to when I turned 21) go into recycling. The handwritten notes, the health insurance notifications

How Good Policy Will Be Made This Year

Hello Dear Reader, I'm getting over an old-fashioned spring head cold, so reposting a favorite from the archives. Until next week! Caitie How Good Policy Will Be Made This Year The first sunrise of 2000, I was on a ferry off the coast of Maine and a guy

Where the Saviors Are

"K-I-D!" Coach Murphy bellowed from the pool deck at swim meets when I would ask him how our team was doing. "Don't WASTE my time with that. Go swim your heart out and get me a BETTER score." So I'd refasten my

A Few Essential Words to Understand this Moment

If there's one thing politicians love it's getting elected. And if there are two things politicians love they are getting elected and then talking about what they're doing in elected office with words that make zero sense to the people who elected them. Words

How to Go On Offense When the Powerful Want Us On Defense

"This will be our reply to violence," wrote New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein after President Kennedy was assassinated, "to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before." The night before, Mr. Bernstein had led the Philharmonic in Mahler’s Second Symphony, known

Two Words Good Politicians Don't Hear Enough Right Now

My inbox is a big mountain of demands, the Congressional staffer told me. Make a statement about this now, introduce this bill, join that caucus, just plain stop the madness. And the kicker, she continued, is when we do what someone asks of us, nine times out of 10, we

A Strategic Way to May Your Voice Heard with Congress (From Someone Who Used to Work There)

First, let's address the elephant sitting in many rooms right now: Congress still matters. Yes, they pass an unadmirable number of bills (1-2%), making it hard to figure out what the combined 535 members (100 Senators, 435 House members) of this august body do most of the time.