Today we are featuring stories about the decimation of a national park, the survival of Texas Monthly magazine, how a couple escaped slavery in Boston, choosing when to die, and the future of jelly.
Georgina Gustin | Undark | January 4, 2023 | 2,363 words
Once a wildlife paradise, Kenyaโs Amboseli National Park has become a wasteland. Tourists on safari arrive excited but leave traumatized, reports Georgina Gustin, as carcasses of starved animals litter the terrain: โWildebeests are gray-brown lumps with quote-shaped horns. Gazelles, small piles of suede. Zebras, bloated disco-era carpets.โ Previously a lush wildlife sanctuary, Amboseli has been plagued by climate change-fueled drought for two years and braces itself for a third. In addition to a parched and changing landscape, clashes between herders and farmers and an increase in illegal poaching also contribute to the dire situation. Wildlife photographs by Larry C. Price accompany Gustinโs piece, and while they may be hard to look at, theyโre an important reminder that no creature can escape a warming planet. โCLR
Stephen Harriganย |ย Texas Monthlyย |ย January 17, 2023ย |ย 4,495 words
Fifty years used to be nothing for a magazine. Ofย courseย they lasted decades, they were bound collections of journalism printed monthly and delivered via newsstand and mailbox! But forย Texas Monthlyย to hit that mark was in no way foretold โ and for it to do so during the long slow decline of physical media is a miracle indeed. No wonder that the magazine commissioned some of its longtime writers to bear witness. What sets Stephen Harriganโs dispatch apart, though, is its utter lack of nostalgia. Sure, Harrigan was there at the very beginning; sure, he wrote forย TMย as typewriters gave way to computers and fax machines gave way to computers and [checks notes] everything gave way to computers. This is no elegy to a bygone era, though; itโs an ode to evolution. Turns out that a publication needs to adapt to survive. But that doesnโt mean that its mission has to. โMorale was shaky, salaries were flat, the staff was shrinking,โ Harrigan writes of a particularly lean period last decade. โIt just didnโt seem like a world anymore where a writer would have the latitude to take three or four or six months to deeply report a feature story, where it was possible for a statewide magazine to maintain a national reputation. But at the same time, nobody wanted to give up on the idea.โย Nobody wanted to give up on the idea.ย Nobody should. And in a time when launching new magazines is far too rare (and their demises far too frequent), itโs crucial to remember that. โPR
Ilyon Woo | The Boston Globe Magazine | January 5, 2023 | 5,786 words
Ellen and William Craft fled slavery not via the Underground Railroad but by actual train: They climbed aboard one bound for Savannah, Georgia, in December 1848 โ she disguised as a white man, he as her property. They saw people they knew on their journey, including a friend of their master who sat right next to Ellen in a first-class seat. (She pretended to be deaf so she wouldnโt have to converse with him and risk exposing her identity.) But making it to Boston, where the couple built a new life together, didnโt guarantee their safety. Slave catchers came for them, and in an enthralling turn of events, Bostonians of all colors came out to defend the Crafts by any means necessary. This story, excerpted from Ilyon Wooโs new book,ย Master Slave Husband Wife, had me on the edge of my seat and, at various points, cheering. It feels as if itโs powered by a locomotive engine, but really the motor is Wooโs exceptional facility with pacing, scenes, and characterization. โSD
Robin Williamsonย |ย The Audacityย |ย January 11, 2022ย |ย 4,597 words
Robin Williamsonโs mother had secondary progressive multiple sclerosis. A disease that ravaged her body for many years โ before driving her to an attempt on her own life. Her family needed to find a different path. Williamson talks about her mother with love, tenderness, and sadness that never creeps into theย saccharine. Instead, pragmatism overlays emotion: Faced with death, this family made a plan, wrote a schedule, and decided to confront it together, not in secret. Despite her mother being โthe strong, stoic sick person,โ Williamson knew that โย beneath this persona โ there was misery and pain, with morphine now โlike laying a thin blanket on a stone bed.โ Not shying away from the reality of disease, Williamson still manages to write an essay more beautiful than maudlin. The final month the family spends together beforeย headingย to Dignitas to carry out โThe Switzerland Scheduleโ is about the tiny, precious moments of nothing: โPicture my father, my brothers, and I spread across the sofas, beer bottles and wine glasses strewn around the room, with my mother on her scooter beside one of the sofas.โ The time then spent in Switzerland is about grief, but it is also about finding peace.ย โCW
Bettina Makalintal | Eater | January 10, 2023 | 1,818 words
โI predict that we are on the threshold of a new aspic-forward aesthetic,โ is something I would not have expected to read in my lifetime. I admit it. Iโm a dessert fusspot. I have strong opinions: I love sticky toffee pudding and chocolate cake. The only acceptable pies are apple and pumpkin. Custard is bland. Tapioca is revolting. But Jell-O tops the many desserts on my โhard noโ list. Way too squirmy! Itโs always important to revisit your beliefs from time to time. (I guess.) Could Jell-O become a possibility for me? (Highly unlikely!) โI think that Jell-O, in a way, can be terrifying and delicious at the same time. Thereโs a little discussion in the book about the sublime: things that are really scary, but they kind of attract you anyway. Itโs things that are in the liminal space between whatโs acceptable and whatโs really bizarre, and people find that fun from an aesthetic perspective.โ โKS
On the occasion of Texas Monthlyโs 50th anniversary, writer Stephen Harrigan looks back at his own milestone with the magazine, and in the process delivers a stirring reminder of what brought so many into the longform journalism fold. You report and write for the reader, yes, but every story is a crucial experience โ and one that begets its own tributary.
The monthly editorial meetings represented, for me, a magic door opening to an unknown future. What story would I be assigned? Where would it take me? Who would I meet? There were stories that I reported by phone from inside my house, others that deposited me in the empty middle of the Chihuahuan Desert, or in the suffocating botanical abundance of the Big Thicket, or in the operating room with Denton Cooley, or a world away with a Dallas disaster consultant in the rain forests of Madagascar. Every magazine piece led to new interests, new expertise, ideas for more articles, and even sometimes a branching path to a new career. My first two novels were incubated in stories I wrote forย Texas Monthly,ย and so was the first screenplay I sold.ย