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Juneteenth
You’ll likely lose any love you ever had for this beast of a man, and with it will go any unconditional respect you have for the establishment of America as a country.
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“News is the first rough draft of history”
I went to see The Post on Friday with Ben. I have a lot of feelings about it. It’s a wonderfully made movie. I mean, obviously. You don’t pick Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks, Bradley Whitford and Bob Odenkirk just to make a funny little romp that goes nowhere and does nothing. I don’t really feel like a person qualified to discuss the virtue of Spielberg’s cinematography choices, and that doesn’t really interest me too much either. Like I said, it was a movie wonderfully made, and my tastes are such that that’s enough for me. The story is what interests me. The story they chose to tell it, the way they…
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An Almost-Century in the Making
Born in April of 1925, my dad turned ninety-two years old this year. My dad lived through The Great Depression and World War II.
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How Their Stories Became Mine
The US eventually emerged from The Great Depression, but my grandmother did not.
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The History of #Hashtag
If you’re like me, up until a few years ago, when someone said the word “hash” to you, your brain would autocomplete by adding the word “brown” after it. And if you’re like me, you would inevitably start to salivate and search the surrounding area for said potatoey goodness. (Side note: what is it about potatoes that makes them delicious in every cooked form? But alas, this is a history lesson, not a science lesson, and, coincidentally, it has nothing to do with potatoes.) Of course now things are a bit different. Intelligent people do still crave fried potatoes of course, but the word “hash” is more frequently followed by…
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An Ode to Adapters
Such a sentence reminds the world that everything is a living art, every idea can be made new again, every stone can have the moss pulled off and be rolled back down a hill.
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You Already Time Travel
What if I told you there is a way to travel through time instantly using only items you already own? What if I told you that you probably already time travel several times a week?
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“…viele Mauern abzubauen”
We were born, not in the shadow of a wall that divided nations, worldviews, and cultures, but into the sunlight streaming through its cracks.
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Matthew Brady’s True Legacy
He did everything it took to get those photographs. If there was a particularly artistic patch of land that happened to have no bodies, he and his crew would move them into position before shooting.
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Dedicated Here to the Unfinished Work
Back in this time without television, movie theaters, and rock concerts, public speeches were exciting and entertaining, and, for the country town of Gettysburg, likely very rare. People would ride for hours, perhaps even days to hear someone.