By U.S. State
By Country
Weaker Than
by Brad Zwiers | Dec 27, 2014 | Placeless
So if a thesis has to be mined from The Weakerthans’ incredible corpus, it must at least mention strength, the loss of it, and its recapture.
My Year in Data
by Griffin Jackson | Dec 26, 2014 | Placeless
I’m all for having a Mint account to track budgets, and I’m certainly a proponent of keeping journals and calendars, but we’re coming to live in an age that is frighteningly invasive in its observation.
A Cormac McCarthy Christmas
by Greg Kim | Dec 25, 2014 | Placeless
In my most profound experience of joy at the Savior’s arrival, perhaps there rang on heaven’s side a blow of sadness and pain wrought from the reality of impending suffering, separation, and death.
Negativity Scene
by Lauren (Boersma) Harris | Dec 24, 2014 | Placeless
It’s okay that you hate Christmas! You’re not the grinch and I’m not Cindy-Lou-Who (first of all, I could never pull off that hairdo). You’re not the villain; I’m not the hero.
Non-Traditional Christmas
by Michael Kelly | Dec 23, 2014 | Placeless
I wouldn’t say that I dislike traditions; it’s amazing to see how long they can last, connecting people of the present, past, and potentially future. However, for me, most traditions quickly lose their appeal.
Sorgy: A Word Study
by Robert Zandstra | Dec 22, 2014 | Placeless
We should be sorry for these things. But we certainly don’t act or even feel sorry. We need more words for negotiating guilt and grief and the multiplicity of affects that accompany them.
Music to My Year
by Gabe Gunnink | Dec 20, 2014 | Placeless
Growing up, I never developed my own music taste. There wasn’t any need for me to. The upper level of my house was consistently filled with my parents’ eclectic blend.
25 Things About Turning 25
by Mary Margaret Healy | Dec 19, 2014 | Placeless
I use words like “tacky” unironically. I’ve gone to wedding showers. I’ve gone to baby showers. Without my mother. I eat breakfast because it jumpstarts my metabolism.
Laura Hubers’s Absolute Definitive List of the Worst Ten Christmas Songs of All Time
by Matt & Laura Hubers | Dec 18, 2014 | Placeless
So. With some overlap with Will’s list (see especially 9 and 7, corresponding to 4 and 10 on his list, plus a couple honorable mentions), here is my Definitive List of the Worst Ten Christmas Songs of All TIme.
Wine Before Breakfast
by Geneva Langeland | Dec 17, 2014 | Placeless
As worshippers trickle into the little sanctuary, we smile and nod our good-mornings. Our collective sleepiness encourages contemplative silence. The low lights glow gold off the bare wood floor.
2014 in Books I Didn’t Read
by Andrew Knot | Dec 16, 2014 | Placeless
It’s December, month of retrospectives and best-ofs and year-in-reviews. My contribution to the conversation is a look back at the unbroken spines and not-yet-dog-eared pages of my 2014 reading list.
Seventy-Seven
by Cassie Westrate | Dec 15, 2014 | Placeless
And yet, when we fail to be our best to those we love and those we hardly know, I find it difficult to believe that it’s how we hurt people or how we’ve been hurt that defines us.
Will Montei’s Unarguable Top 10 List of the Best Christmas Songs of All Time
by Will Montei | Dec 14, 2014 | Placeless
The title is self-explanatory. You may feel the need to argue with my list. That’s fine, but this is the final word. And the final word does not include the Pentatonix.
It’s In The Cards
by Catherine Kramer | Dec 13, 2014 | Placeless
Much like Ron Swanson, I believed that birthdays were invented by Hallmark to sell cards. And if Hallmark sells it, I’m probably not interested. But this year was different.
Talk the Talk
by Abby Zwart | Dec 12, 2014 | Placeless
Sometimes there’s just no better word than “discern” or “redeem” or “vocation,” and it slips out. Maybe you embrace it, or maybe, like me, you cringe.
The Worst
by Elaine Schnabel | Dec 11, 2014 | Placeless
O Dear Sweet Christmas Tree of the many pine needles, whom we all ignored eleven and a half months of the year but for whom we have so much love that we have to chop down and murder.
Rosie
by Katie Van Zanen | Dec 10, 2014 | Egypt
I’m not confident you can earn crowns in heaven—but I’ll petition God that Rosie get them, mostly for her other deeds of righteousness, but also for taking good care of the clueless, quirky American.
“Look On My Works Ye Mighty, and Despair”
by Bart Tocci | Dec 9, 2014 | Placeless
I don’t have to dress up to go to work! HA! You rat-racers. You penguin-suited pieces of—what?! You don’t have to dress up either? Wait, you work and talk with real humans?
Baby Mamu
by Paul Menn | Dec 8, 2014 | Hungary
Sometimes I wonder what happened to all of those kids. To little Mamu and Japuca. And I’m sad that they didn’t grow up with all the love and happiness that my niece has.
arts & leisure
by Caroline (Higgins) Nyczak | Dec 7, 2014 | Placeless
home is where the Times is./pieces of yesterday, scattered sections of weeks ago–/a slice of October still sits in the living room./seasoned with eraser crumbs (crossword abandoned.)
Sitting In the Aisle
by Josh deLacy | Dec 6, 2014 | Michigan, Washington, Washington, D.C.
You don’t talk to people on the Metro. You don’t talk to coworkers, you don’t talk to friends, and you especially don’t talk to strangers. Talking is the mark of the tourist.
Longing for Roots
by Alissa Anderson | Dec 5, 2014 | Indiana, Michigan, New York, Oregon
So what do I have? I have my ancestors. I can’t visit them, anyway—most are long dead—so distance doesn’t matter. Still, though, this litany of names acts as a sort of symbolic rootedness.
A Nighttime Trip
by Ben Rietema | Dec 4, 2014 | New Zealand
And yes I’ve been reading a terrible lot of The Lord of the Rings, so you’re going to be dealing with lots of long winded nature imagery and intensive moon stage analyses.
Imagine all the People
by Sabrina Lee | Dec 3, 2014 | Placeless
We—that glorious, plural pronoun. At the end of the service, we sang “Oseh Shalom,” a Jewish blessing, but the chorus was John Lennon’s “Imagine,” a song we dreamers all knew.
Little Inconveniences
by Jacob Schepers | Dec 2, 2014 | Placeless
Our car—our little-sedan-that-could—broke down last month. Yes, it seems our green Chevy Impala finally uttered those three fateful words: “I can’t even.” Requiscat in pace.
An Infinite Succession
by Amy (Allen) Frieson | Dec 1, 2014 | Placeless
It’s easy to make a choice to leave something that’s hard. But it’s difficult to actually start over—because the problems you tried to leave behind are not necessarily gone. They might be inside you.
Supporting Law Enforcement?
by Daniel José Camacho | Nov 30, 2014 | New York
It would not make sense to place cops above scrutiny, above the moral expectations we have for other people and occupations. I think we need to better understand how police departments work.
Incomprehensible Light
by Trenton Heille | Nov 29, 2014 | Placeless
What can be said about a light that fails to illuminate, or an illumination that leaves the witnesses blind? What use is light to creatures who’ve adapted to life in the darkness of a cave?
The Shirt of Your Back
by Bekah (Williamson) Medendorp | Nov 28, 2014 | Pennsylvania
Dinner consists of the apple crisp I smelled. The apples are hand-picked and the crisp hand mixed from Grandma Shenks’ special recipe. Seriously, that’s dinner.
Power Crazy Redux
by Brad Zwiers | Nov 27, 2014 | California
See the thing about power is, God, we love to critique it but when it’s ours, we hold that shit so tightly it would cost us our life to let go.
