| | | | | The people of this tiny town have had six years to reflect on what a seventeen-year-old boy with a gun did, and how his terrible act has affected them. | | [ view in browser. add esquire@newsletter.esquire.com to your address book ] | | |  |  | | | | Chardon, Ohio | | | Danny Day works six or seven days a week, sometimes twelve-hour days. Warehouses and distribution centers go up around the industrial highways of northeast Ohio, and Danny's company comes in to finish the drywall. He muds the doorframes by hand, working so fast and so long with a knife and pan that at night the pain in his right forearm wakes him up. The white drywall mud disintegrates his leather work boots, so every two or three months he has to buy another pair at Walmart. When the crew sands, the drywall mud turns into dust, and the dust collects in his reddish-brown beard and at his temples, where his hair is already turning silver. He is twenty-three years old. He keeps close to his boss, who brought God into his life, and whom he's come to think of as a father. He is quite certain that, without this job, he wouldn't be here at all. Work is everything: purpose and stability and distraction. The bad thoughts don't come when he's at work. --- Some months back, Danny ran into Brandon Lichtinger, his old English teacher from Chardon High School. It had been years since they'd seen each other. Brandon gave Danny a hug and apologized. He wished he'd known back then what he understood now about loss, Brandon said. But he was a young teacher; he didn't know how to help a kid who'd survived what Danny had. It snuck up on Brandon, the emotional aftermath of what happened. For the first year, he pretended things were normal. It was only later, after his life fell apart, that he realized the trauma belonged not only to the kids but to him, too. He hadn't meant to be in Chardon six years later, living in the same house, teaching at the same school. Some families left afterward. Brandon found he couldn't move. --- Brandon was in the hall at Chardon High School when he heard it. It sounded like construction, like a nail gun. That's when he glimpsed Jen Sprinzl, the principal's secretary, standing at the end of the hall, near the cafeteria. She would come to see that moment outside the cafeteria as the one that separated her life into a before and an after. Afterward, Jen often wanted to quit her job. But her husband would say, "Well, what're you gonna do?" and she knew she had to go back to work and return to her office, where the staff would come in weeping because Jen had always been the school's mama bear. That protective instinct was why she ran out into the hall in the first place, after she heard shots and kids running. It was why she turned the corner when she did, and came face-to-face with the gun. READ MORE | | | | |  |
| | | | | The Tangled Web of Stan Lee's Legacy | | | | When comic-book legend Stan Lee died last week at the age of 95, the world reflected on the legacy he left behind. Though his impact on comics and pop culture was nothing less than seismic, his path to becoming a legendary figure was fraught with disputes over creator rights. In an essay that delves into Lee's career--from 19-year-old Marvel editor in the 1940s to a Hollywood hitmaker later in life--comics writer and critic Rosie Knight wrestles with abuses of power in the comic-book industry and how we look back on a man known for championing inclusion, but who some believe built his career on the work of others? Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Ask Not What You Can Do for Your Country, but What Witchcraft Can Do for You | | | | With The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, The Haunting of Hill House, and a reboot of the '90s favorite Charmed, the occult is having a pop culture moment. Is it all a magical coincidence, or does it speak to our need for mystical escapism during a dark and scary political climate? Anne T. Donahue, author of the recently published essay collection Nobody Cares, examines how stories about witchcraft and witches offer inspiring lessons in harnessing our collective powers for good. Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | You Think You've Seen a Wingnut? Here's a Mississippi Wingnut. | | | | The political landscape has been missing something since Harry Reid beat Sharron Angle in 2010, eliminating for a moment the saliency on the national scene of the problem of paying your doctor with chickens, writes Esquire's Charles P. Pierce. It was a cautionary tale for other Republicans about where the outer limits of tolerable nonsense were, even in modern American politics. But, down in Mississippi, incumbent U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith, the pride of Copiah-Lincoln Community College, is boldly smashing her way past those limits in her run-off with Democratic candidate Mike Espy. Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Mumford & Sons Are Ready to Let You In On Their Very Private Struggles | | | | Fans have long turned to the Mumfords for uplift, and while there remains no single artist better at a festival-sized, throat-ripping refrain anywhere in music the lyrics on their upcoming fourth album Delta are darker and more contemplative than on past outings. Esquire's Madison Vain spent a cool, damp evening with the band, whose lead singer, Marcus Mumford, told her about the record: "It's not a light lunch, It's pretty heavy." Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | An Exhaustive Timeline of Our New Acting Attorney General's Astoundingly Crooked Career | | | | Matthew Whitaker was elevated to acting attorney general after the president shit-canned Jeff Sessions. In Whitaker, Esquire Political Editor Jack Holmes writes, Trump has found a guy to defend him against the investigation who's talked publicly about ways to torpedo it. How, exactly, did we get here? How the hell did Whitaker get anywhere near the attorney general's office, when not too long ago he was peddling hot tubs for a company that was shut down for defrauding customers? Holmes dives into Whitaker's very weird resume. Read On | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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