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(These are excerpts—click on the title to view the whole piece!)
Viktor Frankl Guides Us Through the Pandemic
To recall anything related to the Holocaust during a global catastrophe of a troubling but much less horrific scale is to venture onto hazardous ground. It risks a perception of comparison. That same summer, right-wing politicians, out of historical ignorance, made such comparisons, and it was inaccurate, troubling, and offensive. That is not my intention here.
Wayne Scott
Most nights, when I finally fall asleep, I find myself running around unfamiliar hotel corridors, looking for my room, my driver's license, and my phone. In the mornings, I wake up with a hangover-dry mouth and chimney breath as if I'd smoked a pack of cigarettes. Bedsheets twist around my thighs, and my legs ache as if I'd run a marathon, even though I haven't left my bed.
Susan Bloch
We youth of 1978 were happy. Though we did question authority. Hated the establishment. (Nixon-Carter-Ford: a bunch of big liars, laying the groundwork for more big liars.) We were jealous of '60s music. And the drugs, well, we could thank our predecessors for drugs. Still teenagers most of us, we were aimless, with our futures stretched out before us like endless mystery novels. Determined NOT to be like our parents, we were certainly defiant. Some of us more defiant worked, some of us less defiant got money from parents (my parents had none). Some of us loved the drugs too much.
Marisa Mangani
Shiro Wat
(Spotlight Runner-Up!)
In the US, home to over 200,000 Ethiopian diaspora, shiro is regarded with reverence. Here the powder is ground gold often unearthed from suitcases returned from rare and expensive trips to Ethiopia and handed in Ziplocs to wide-eyed loved ones in living rooms. It generally must be ordered as a separate entrée at Ethiopian restaurants and costs more than ten times what you would pay in the land of shiro's birth. Servers present it sizzling in little black earthen pots called tegamino, cached as within tiny treasure chests.
Elise Tegegne
