The end of the year is a time for lists. Our Ten Favorite Books, Twelve Movies We Loved, Twenty-Seven TikToks that Perfectly Captured the National Mood in 2022. We’re a society obsessed with rankings — with the quantification of media, the comparison of culture, the litanization of everything. We writers are the worst of the […]
Month: December 2022
I wrote this on January 1, 2018. A lot had happened already, and more has happened since. At the time, I wasn’t sure what I was writing about but I see now more clearly that it’s about living with the memories of what’s happened. So I’ll repeat my wish of walking, memories and all, into […]
Say what you will about 2022, but for me, it’s been a great year of reading. By that I mean, I’ve read a lot of really good books. I keep my yearly book list only for myself, and I try not to get competitive about racking up numbers. The reading itself is the point. That […]
Before they head south for the winter, sandhill cranes like to get together and fatten up. One of the places they do this is near the town of Jackson, Michigan. So on a recent visit to Ann Arbor, my dad and I drove over one day to look for them. They weren’t hard to find; […]
Finally, we’re nearing the year’s end — a time to rest, reset, and reflect. Even the apps on my phone are eager to review my year, feeding my own data back to me: Strava tells me how many miles I’ve biked, Reddit shows me the number of posts I’ve read, and Spotify feeds me a […]
This is Part II of my heart-filling conversation with Sabrina Imbler (they/them), a poet, essayist, science writer, and author of the forthcoming collection HOW FAR THE LIGHT REACHES: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures. If you missed Part I last month, you can read it here. Kate: What was the fact-checking process like for this […]
Last night I spent time with a friend who doesn’t have a cell phone. Can you imagine that? He shrugged and said he finds he doesn’t really need one. He had a flip phone for a while, then 3G went offline and he decided not to re-up. I wanted to cling to the hem of […]