My 85-Year-Old Single Mother |
"Dave, have you ever had a taco?" My mom dropped this question in the middle of a four-minute voicemail she left a couple of weeks ago. If she calls and I can't pick up, she leaves messages that are exactly four minutes long, because four minutes is when the voicemail cuts you off. So I get all sorts of news, uninterrupted, like the fact that my 85-year-old mother has just had her first taco. "Because you really should if you haven't. Delicious." Mom's trying a lot of new things now that she's a widow. This past New Year's Eve, her husband, my father, passed away. They started dating when she was 17 years old. "Hard tacos or soft?" I asked her when I called back. "How can you tell?" "The shell, Ma. Was the tortilla shell crunchy or chewy?" "Chewy." "Soft, then. You had soft tacos." "Dee-yee-licious." |
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Jeff Tweedy Knows Good Days |
It's a sunny day and I'm crying as Wilco's "Darkness is Cheap," a track off their new album Cruel Country, plays off a crappy bluetooth speaker on the dining room table that doubles as my desk. There are birds outside fighting at the feeder and the sky is blue after days of rain and the endless gray that defined spring in Chicago this year. Frontman Jeff Tweedy's brittle voice fills gaps between the sparse instrumentation. A horn, a piano, a guitar. It's beautiful and sad the way so many things are nowadays. Before I realize it, tears are rolling down my cheeks. It's been a long few years. For me, for you, for Jeff Tweedy. |
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My camp counselor Heavy breathed into my ear, squeezing my nine-year-old shoulders and pushing me through the cabin door, into a dim-lit room. "Don't come out until she tell you to come out!" I slowly stepped forward into the room. A song I heard too many times—at block parties and cookouts—whispered out of a small black-and-gray plastic radio with a wire-hanger antenna sitting on the dresser. Back to life, back to reality, back to the here and now... "Boy, stop lookin' all stupid and close the door," a raspy voice shouted over the music. "Lock it." I followed her directions without facing her, holding the thin door, wiggling it shut, latching it. And then I stood there, paralyzed, waiting for another order. She brushed past me on her way to the bed, bumping my shoulder. Finally, I saw her. She was a woman, but about my height. Her thighs thicker than my torso. Her odor, like stale minty-musty sweat, filled the room. |
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The 10 Most-Banned Books in America |
The culture war has found a new frontline—and it's coming to a school library near you. In 2021, attempts to ban books in the United States surged to their highest level since the American Library Association began tracking book challenges over two decades ago. We owe it all to right-wing agitators who've taken up book banning as the latest cudgel in their war to suppress inclusive conversations about race, gender, and sexuality. From Senator Ted Cruz crying about racist babies in a congressional hearing to the more insidious efforts of grassroots groups challenging books in their school libraries, the frenzy highlights a long history of conservative censorship in the United States, with some troubling new tricks. If you're among the 87% of Americans who reject banning books, you've come to the right place. We've compiled a list of the ten most-challenged books of 2021, along with the supposed rationale behind the controversies they've sparked. Share these books with the young people in your life, or enjoy them on your own—each one is a moving paean to self-knowledge, inclusivity, and the strength we find in embracing difference, both in ourselves and others. So go ahead and get reading. It'll make Ted Cruz's day. |
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Someone Should've Saved Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness From Itself |
Multiverse of Madness is, count 'em, the 28th Marvel Cinematic Universe entry. The film follows Marvel's resident sorcerer, Stephen Strange, in the aftermath of saving the universe in Avengers: Endgame and nearly destroying it in No Way Home. When we catch up with Strange here, he's putting on his best pouty face at Christine Palmer's (Rachel McAdams) wedding, before the multiverse of, you know, madness comes for him. America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez) poofs into Strange's universe, showing off her ability to kick star-shaped holes in the multiverse. Our old friend Wanda Maximoff, always in every -verse and about a year removed from WandaVision's finale, wants to steal Chavez's power for herself, so that she can live with her children somewhere in the depths of the multiverse. Antics, they ensue! For years now, Marvel hyped Multiverse of Madness as a Godzilla vs. Kong situation. The clash of two beloved titans we've been following for years. So it's frustrating, after WandaVision gave Wanda much-needed depth, to see Mulitverse of Madness pull a stunt reminiscent of Jeremy Renner's brainwashing in The Avengers. |
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My mother wore the mink for years. She wore it through the horizontal period and into another vertical period, but it never became fashionable again; by the time vertical skins were back, furriers were cutting minks close and fitted. Eventually, she stopped wearing it and went back to cloth coats. She and my father had moved back to New York and she had less patience than ever for shopping. And then she was sick and went to bed. One Thanksgiving she was too sick to come to the table. My mother loved Thanksgiving almost as much as she loved making a show of normal family life. After she died, most of her clothes were sent to charity. And the evening dresses, the beautiful chiffon Galanos dresses my father had bought her, were too big for any of us. But there was the mink. And there I was. The eldest. The most grown-up. It occurred to me I could cut it down to size or line another coat with it. Something. I took it. |
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