Although named after the place the project was originally started, most of the planning and major decisions surrounding the Manhattan project occurred in DC. https://t.co/OGWjb0qRch Although named after the place the project was originally started, most of the planning and m…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 19, 2022
Congratulations to all who have participated in creating this powerful documentary and doing the work to preserve these stories, places, and communities. And thank you most importantly to all the residents for so generously sharing their memories. Congratulations to all who…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
We are at @dcpl for the premiere of this brilliant documentary followed by a panel discussion with residents and the films’ creators. https://t.co/W3xp38MmtB We are at @dcpl for the premiere of this brilliant documentary followed by a panel discussion with residents and the fi…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
We can thank a huge storm for saving much of historic DC. As the British were in the process of taking the District in 1814 and setting many important buildings ablaze, a massive rain storm swept through the city, putting out most of the fires. https://t.co/ajdSw7MHwS We can…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
Following the burning of DC by the British in 1814, Congress was forced to move into a local Tavern after the Capitol building suffered extensive fire damage. For 5 years, Congress sat in session at Blodgett’s Hotel. https://t.co/oKedI20UCm Following the burning of DC by the…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
Hindsight is 20/20! When the Beatles performed their first live US performance at the Washington Coliseum in 1964, the owner of the venue was skeptical that the band would bring in enough fans. https://t.co/OHoENN2zjJ Hindsight is 20/20! When the Beatles performed their firs…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
From New England to DC: https://t.co/g2dmHlXXta From New England to DC: https://t.co/g2dmHlXXta — Streets of Washington (@StreetsOfDC) Jun 18, 2022
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
Today in History - June 18 https://t.co/uUyAmdzOl1 On June 18, 1812, President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Great Britain, marking the beginning of the War of 1812. Continue reading. James Montgomery Flagg, creator of the famous illustration of Uncle Sa…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
Not every town can claim it has a mascot. But Takoma Park is not every town. In 1989 Roscoe the Rooster made the streets of this Maryland suburb his own. https://t.co/F9S2RP9mqJ Not every town can claim it has a mascot. But Takoma Park is not every town. In 1989 Roscoe the R…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 18, 2022
To celebrate National Eat Your Vegetables Day, we look back on WWII when access to produce was greatly rationed. Americans were encouraged to grow victory gardens, and Eleanor Roosevelt set an example at the White House! https://t.co/SoofXxPKgo To celebrate National Eat Your…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
This 1804 map of the Washita (today Ouachita) River in Arkansas & Louisiana follows the river's course from Arkansas's hot springs to the mighty Mississippi. The map shows bayous, plantations, & two forts - Ft Adams & Ft Miro. Take a closer look: https://t.co/l73GGTw67C …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
Galveston and the Beginning of Juneteenth via NASA https://t.co/qU0KdJNbeu https://t.co/YWdBD4KLp7
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
Throwback to 1965, when Union Station was nearly turned into a Smithsonian: https://t.co/ZFWCxpbDoC https://t.co/cDnKXFxse1 Throwback to 1965, when Union Station was nearly turned into a Smithsonian: https://t.co/ZFWCxpbDoC https://t.co/cDnKXFxse1 — Boundary Stones (@Bou…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
This colorful representation of India from 1903 shows the nation’s provinces as they were divided over 100 years ago. Get a better look: https://t.co/E4rp5bW99l https://t.co/ts9UJOXm4g This colorful representation of India from 1903 shows the nation’s provinces as they were d…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
Here are five stories that moved us this week, and the reasons why.
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Nicole Carr | Pro Publica | June 16th, 2022 | 7,200 words
This was the scariest story I read all week. Cecilia Lewis was hired in 2021 by the Cherokee County School District in Georgia to be its first-ever administrator focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. But she hadn’t started the job — indeed, she hadn’t even moved down South from her longtime home in Maryland — before a mob of white parents decided she had to go. They sent her racist messages, spread lies about her, and screamed at school board meetings to get their way. And when Lewis took a different job, one county over, they didn’t stop. Nicole Carr’s feature is a searing reminder of just how vicious the right-wing war on progressive education in America has become, and a revealing look at the kind of people — white parents, riding a wave of national bigotry — who are leading troops into battle. —SD
Cullen Murphy | The Atlantic | June 15th, 2022 | 7,416 words
For most in the Americas who have heard of the Chagos archipelago, it’s likely through Diego Garcia, a tiny atoll that serves as a U.S. military installation in the middle of the Indian Ocean. But ’twas not ever thus. Not by a long shot. For Diego Garcia to be “uninhabited” enough to fulfill its current purpose, it first needed to be emptied of its indigenous populace: the Black people that had lived on the atolls for centuries, enslaved, indentured, and underpaid. Flung across Africa and as far as the U.K., the expatriated Chagossians fought for years to return to the islands; finally, this year, they boarded a ship and sailed eastward from the Seychelles to the land now known as the British Indian Ocean Territories. Cullen Murphy — a longtime Atlantic staffer, now the outlet’s editor-at-large — accompanies the voyage, and tells a long, maddening tale of disenfranchisement and diaspora. “Accompanied by British military personnel, small groups of Chagossians have in recent years been allowed brief ‘heritage visits’ to some of the islands,” he writes. “On their visits, the Chagossians have used the limited time on each island — never overnight — to clear vegetation from the decaying churches and restore the crumbling graves of their loved ones. They have cleaned inscriptions. They have left flowers. And then they have had to depart.” It’s not quite home again, but it’s a step closer. —PR
Carrington J. Tatum | MLK50: Justice Through Journalism | June 13th, 2022 | 2,370 words
Carrington J. Tatum’s mother held multiple jobs and worked hard to send Tatum to college — the first in his family. Becoming his school’s first Black editor-in-chief, Tatum also discovered a passion for journalism, and realized he could make a real difference in the marginalized communities he reported on. “I was on my way,” he writes, making an impact, winning awards, and doing everything one is supposed to do to “make it” in this world. But the burden of student debt, and rising rent, has meant that he can’t afford to stay in this line of work: “After graduating, I owed more than $90,000 in student loans, about $64,000 of which is private loans to Sallie Mae.” Any amount he has hoped to save has gone, instead, to paying off loans with excessive interest rates. “My journalism degree was more expensive than my wealthier classmates’ degrees because I couldn’t afford to pay in cash,” he writes. “But that’s a common theme with American systems. Poor people pay high prices. Rich people get discounts.” This is a gutting read on the financial hardships that are driving bright, hard-working Black storytellers out of the field, the systems that keep people in poverty, and, in turn, the communities who also lose out because their stories are not told. (Pair this with one of our Longreads essays, by Kristin Collier, on living with debt in America.) —CLR
Matthew Bremner | Hazlitt | December 1st, 2021 | 6,423 words
I am currently doing some renovation work on my house, which entails spending my evenings clutching a paintbrush, grimly painting the walls a color that someone, in a fit of whimsy, called “Beautiful In My Eyes.” (Inadvertently implying it is beautiful to no one else.) I am looking forward to a time when I do not have paint in my hair, and I can go back to being blissfully ignorant of the many different types of door trim there are in the world. (It is a whole thing apparently, there are catalogs.) Justo Gallego MartÃnez, on the other hand, chose to immerse himself in a building project for 60 years — not because he procrastinated over trims — but because he was building a whole damn cathedral by himself. With no architectural expertise and using waste and recycled materials, Justo constructed something near the size of the Sagrada Familia. As I struggle to figure out how to stop a door handle from falling off, I have nothing but respect for this achievement. So does Matthew Bremner, who finds himself charmed by Justo as he attempts to understand a monk who chose to sacrifice himself to God in such a unique way: “He piled empty paint cans on top of one another and filled them with cement to make columns. He bent corrugated iron rods and fed them through slinky-like springs to create the structure of arches.” Bremner spends weeks with Justo at the site, over a period of years, and learns not just about Justo but about the people who visit and even himself. Have a read — the beautiful descriptions will pull you into a bizarre world, one that Justo built himself. —CW
Nitasha Tiku | The Washington Post | June 11th, 2022 | 2,621 words
Could it be? After conversations with Google’s artificially intelligent chatbot LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), engineer Blake Lemoine maintains that the bot has achieved sentience. Google vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas has dismissed Lemoine’s claims, despite the fact he has “argued that neural networks — a type of architecture that mimics the human brain — were striding toward consciousness.” Lemoine’s on administrative leave from Google and decided to go public. While the story sounds like it comes straight out of science fiction, Lemoine is not alone. “Lemoine is not the only engineer who claims to have seen a ghost in the machine recently. The chorus of technologists who believe AI models may not be far off from achieving consciousness is getting bolder.” Detractors, though, say that making sense is far from sentience: “Most academics and AI practitioners, however, say the words and images generated by artificial intelligence systems such as LaMDA produce responses based on what humans have already posted on Wikipedia, Reddit, message boards, and every other corner of the internet. And that doesn’t signify that the model understands meaning.” Stories like this, as well as “Ghosts,” Vauhini Vara’s incredible essay about feeding the linguistic engine GPT-3 prompts about her late sister (highlighted in Longreads’ Best of 2021), would make any skeptic think again. —KS
When Woodward and Bernstein’s best selling book, All the President’s Men, was turned into a movie, producers were locked out of the one #DC location they desired most. https://t.co/pgkNQI1syP When Woodward and Bernstein’s best selling book, All the President’s Men, was turne…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
Decked out in period costumes, a group of fans pose on a pair of vintage streetcars at the Rosslyn turnaround in September 1949. It was all part of a "Transit Progress Day" celebration. The negative has been damaged. https://t.co/n6U7WjTbZR Decked out in period costumes, a gro…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
June News from the Library of Congress https://t.co/VJ3WBgMhjl News from the Library of Congress Celebrating Pride Month, Juneteenth, Summer Movies and More Top Gun, Willy Wonka, Mary Poppins and More Featured in 2022 Summer Movie Series The Library of Congress will host …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
Today in History - June 17 https://t.co/G1Hld7zyt9 On June 17, 1775, American troops displayed their mettle in the Battle of Bunker Hill during the siege of Boston, inflicting casualties on nearly half of the British troops dispatched to secure Breed’s Hill (where most of th…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
In 1975, DC activists established its first Gay Pride Day, starting an annual tradition that became the Capital Pride festival we know today. https://t.co/DbcXeR5xDA In 1975, DC activists established its first Gay Pride Day, starting an annual tradition that became the Capit…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 17, 2022
In the spring of 1848, a daring plan was hatched to free some 70 enslaved individuals from bondage by loading them on a schooner ship at The Wharf in SW #DC and sailing for free lands. Unfortunately, the results were catastrophic for all involved. https://t.co/YkBaymvxx7 In …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 16, 2022
Explore central Europe with this 1854 map of the Austrian Empire! In addition to roads and postal routes, the map shows important mines and mineral springs. The various provincial coats of arms appear in the lower right. Zoom in here: https://t.co/BBFfNDWrDi …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 16, 2022
What happens when the art form you love is taken from you due to an illness? For Kit Kamien, losing the ability to play music due to MS meant he would undergo experimental chemotherapy in 1982 to afford him more time making his beloved music. https://t.co/hsTzDYXYtT What hap…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 16, 2022
The Progress Pride Flag Flies at NASA Headquarters via NASA https://t.co/TijAMjXhxK https://t.co/kW1fFEob8X
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 16, 2022
On the backside of this 1885 map of the nation’s capital you’ll find an assortment of advertisements including a particularly eccentric one for mosquito screens. Take a look: https://t.co/MzbDVuuCSh https://t.co/WXSS7BPcJ5 On the backside of this 1885 map of the nation’s capi…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 16, 2022
It’s hard enough being a professional athlete as a fully abled-bodied person, nevermind being an amputee from the knee down. But that was the case for extraordinary Washington Senators pitcher, Bert Shepard, who lost his leg flying a plane during WWII. https://t.co/Zi75calNHx …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 16, 2022
Today in History - June 16 https://t.co/aG0yKg6t1e On June 16, 1775, George Washington was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress. Continue reading. On June 16, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Banking Act, th…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 16, 2022
Yuxi Lin | Longreads | June 2022 | 12 minutes (3,311 words)
It’s 2004 and my first year in America. I type the word “wholesale” into my digital translator.
noun
definition: the selling of goods in large quantities to be retailed by others.
I’m 12 years old and all I want to be is whole and wholesome. The ability to buy it is even more appealing.
In front of me, the glass display case contains all the luxury I’ve ever known. Watches, earrings, and necklaces, all sleeping under the fingerprints of strangers. At this point in my life, I can’t imagine anything costing more than a Costco diamond. During ESL class, my teacher asks how I would like to be proposed to one day. I tell her that I want my future husband to take me to Costco, where I would ask the salesperson to open the case and take out the $1999 ring. My future husband will have also made reservations at a nearby Pizza Hut, my favorite restaurant, and kneel down on its fake wooden tiles.
While my parents and their friends peruse the enormous shelves, I prowl the sample stands. This is one of the only times I get to eat American food. My parents don’t patronize American restaurants out of a combination of fear and disdain. For a while at lunch I was dumping out the fried rice my mother cooked because the white kids said it looked funny, but I quickly ran out of allowance money to buy chicken nuggets.
I make a beeline for the old ladies in hairnets doling out cut-up Hot Pockets or lone nachos with salsa. More than anything, I lust after the microwavable cheese-filled pierogies. “Trash food,” my mother calls them. I tell her that I aspire to be a trash can.
Almost always, the samples come in grease-stained cupcake liners. I fold them into halves, then quarters, hide them in my palm, then wait a few minutes before circling back for another round. I don’t want to appear too greedy, too needy, the way immigrants feel starved for that unnamable thing, no matter how many years they live in their chosen country. I go back for thirds, sometimes even fourths, unable to stop myself. The aproned ladies occasionally look askance in my direction but never stop me, and to this day I am grateful for their silence.
My parents are self-satisfied at Costco in a way that I rarely see except when they return to China. Their coworker sometimes joins us on our trips, picking up a 15-pound sack of flour so he can make mantous and noodles for every meal, less expensive than rice. After we drop him at his house, my mother makes fun of the guy for being cheap.
“These northerners don’t know how to enjoy seafood like we do,” she says smugly from the front seat.
My father agrees. “Let’s invite them over next time and show them a proper feast.”
“They’ll talk about it for weeks after!”
“How do you know he doesn’t just like lots of mantous and noodles?” I ask.
My mother whips her head around and casts me a disdainful look. “Because that’s food for poor people. We are different.”
***
2005 is the year Keira Knightley plays Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. It’s my favorite movie. I enjoy watching the Bennets complain about their poverty while being waited on by five servants. When my Korean American friend Stephanie mentions that she has the movie on DVD, I don’t believe her. I’ve seen the price tag for the movie at Costco, $25.99, and multiplied it by eight in my head, the approximate exchange rate between USD and RMB. In China, I could have eaten out for a whole week on that money. It seems impossibly luxurious for a 13-year-old to own such a thing. How could she afford it, even if her father is white?
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“Do you want to borrow it?” She offers.
“Sure, if you can bring it.”
She hands it to me the next day. “You’re so funny. Why didn’t you believe that I had it?” Stephanie asks, puzzled at my look of surprise.
I stroke the smooth plastic cover over Keira’s half-turned face and shrug, wishing I could disappear.
***
Once a year, I look forward to the most special time. By the Costco entrance, there are pianos for sale. Just a few Kawai and Roland uprights so beautiful that I fear touching them, uprights that make me tear up with nostalgia for the piano I’d left in China, the bench on which I wept from fatigue as I practiced for recitals over and over again until my fingers would carry the music, even if my brain shut off. When I sit down at a Costco piano, my former self wakes up inside me. Awkwardly and slurring, my fingers get to speak a language that they’d almost forgotten. I know that I don’t have much time with them, just a song or two at most before the sales lady asks where my parents are.
The pianos stay for a week, maybe two. Inevitably, the next time we go, they are gone.
***
I am 14 when I buy my first American CD. Against a silver background, Britney glows in a black bra and leather shorts, her face haloed by a black fur hood. She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. My Prerogative, says the cover. I look up the word in my dictionary and understand that it’s something along the lines of “rights and privilege.” I rub the glossy cover against my cheek as my parents complain about how much it had cost. I’d snuck it into their Costco shopping cart and refused to put it back. We drive home blasting “Boys,” my parents awkwardly silent while Britney whispers “Okay nasty” against Pharell’s heavy breathing.
***
I learn in first grade that the greatest sin is leaving food on the table. This message is reinforced both publicly and privately in China. One of the first sentences I learn to read in my Chinese textbook is that every drop of a farmer’s sweat turns into a pellet of rice in my bowl. That is how my food comes to be, and it is a disgrace to the farmers who toil in the fields should I leave even a single pellet of rice uneaten. This discipline is drilled into everyone in my family. My mother would stay at the table until every speck of flesh is picked from the bone. Then she would break the bone to suck out the marrow. Then she’d simmer the bone fragments to make broth.
I don’t want to appear too greedy, too needy, the way immigrants feel starved for that unnamable thing, no matter how many years they live in their chosen country.
Whenever I express distaste for any food, my father says, “You’re so lucky. Back when I was your age, I would have given anything for a bite of that.”
I believe him.
***
While researching nutrition in my adult life, I keep encountering the China Study conducted by the Campbells in the 1960s, where two American scientists conclude that Chinese people had fewer cases of heart disease because they didn’t eat meat and relied mostly on vegetables. I roll my eyes. Most of the lauded healthy Chinese eating habits back then were probably involuntary.
Chinese people like to say that they are a culture obsessed with food, and it’s true. It never occurs to me until adulthood just how much of that obsession stems from intergenerational trauma. Once I see the privation on my parents’ faces while chewing on a piece of chicken, I cannot unsee it. Who are they eating for? Their former selves perhaps, which, like ghosts, could never be satiated. And then, is this what I look like, too, when I’m eating?
***
After graduating from college, I live alone in North Carolina, loathing my first job where I travel four days out of the week to corporate client sites in obscure cities. I make more money than my parents and spend it mostly on clothes and heels. Some days I drive to Costco and order a Coke and pizza. I eat it next to a family with small kids who cannot sit still. They climb down and over the benches, smearing their greasy, ketchupy hands everywhere. I call my parents on the phone so they can ask me what I’d bought, how much I’d paid, and I can tell them that I’d eaten the same thing that they’d eaten last week when they’d gone on their own Costco run.
***
Two years later, I quit my corporate job and move to Texas to teach English. While unloading my bags from a weekend shopping trip, I realize that my wallet is missing. Where had I seen it last?
I call the San Antonio Costco, and a calm Texan accent on the other end reassures me that my wallet has been found. I had dropped it while putting groceries into my car in the parking lot. When I pick it up, I want to hug the man in his silly-looking red vest.
***
Sometimes I go to Costco in Texas just to see other Asians, where I project my past and future onto the families there. I watch sensible middle-aged Asian parents strolling through the aisles, scanning for Kirkland products for their relatives back home, gifts such as vitamins, salted walnuts, and anti-aging creams. Like my parents, they look for the cheapest thing with a Made in the USA sticker that would simultaneously convey their own success and justify their abandonment of a former home. I make up stories about them in my head. Do they, like my family, pull up with their Asian neighbors in a row of Toyotas each Sunday at the Costco parking lot? Do they buy in bulk the favorite food of their adult children and freeze it until they come home? Do they feel in some way that this is the safest place in America?
My favorite people to watch are the young Asian couples pushing carts piled high with toilet paper and granola bars, doing mental arithmetic on cost-per-unit comparisons. They’re absorbed in the comfortable tasks of mundanity. In a stroller next to them, a baby sucks his thumb and gazes out at the mountains of things around him.
***
My parents are born in 1962, the tail end of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Chinese Famine. The fields lie barren. All the shoots dug up. The trees stripped of bark. Caused partly by natural disasters, and partly by terrible agricultural policies, the famine left roughly 35 million people dead, but my parents don’t know that yet. Nobody knows the real body count. One only hears whispers of bodies lying in the streets of villages; some of them disappear and are never found. Nobody speaks of what happens to them.
One of the first sentences I learn to read in my Chinese textbook is that every drop of a farmer’s sweat turns into a pellet of rice in my bowl.
Food shortages and poverty continue to haunt the country for decades. In a grainy photo taken at the beach, my young father and his college friends are so thin that I can easily count their ribs.
My father grows up drinking rice porridge, and, being the younger son of six children, occasionally has a desiccated olive to suck on while my aunts watch with envy. This is what it means to be the favorite. This is what it means to be a son. He nurses that olive for an entire meal because it is the only dish. When guests visit, his parents boil an egg and serve it to the practical stranger or obnoxious neighbor while their own children watch from behind the door frame, imagining the burst of yolk amid the soft white crumble.
The family, like almost all families in China at the time, couldn’t get enough food even if they’d had all the gold to sell, but my grandmother would still hoard gold for the rest of her life. Her last gift to me is a single gold earring, taken off her left earlobe at her 94th-birthday banquet. She mumbles something with her toothless mouth in the regional dialect I never learned. My aunt translates for us, “She says, for your dowry.” My grandmother nods fiercely, puts it in my palm, and closes my fingers over it.
During the famine, unable to feed six children, my grandparents send my third aunt, my dad’s older sister, to the countryside to be raised by distant relatives. She will survive there somehow, they tell themselves. But the conditions outside the city are even worse. Along with other starved and desperate farmers, my aunt pulls wild grasses and weeds from the cracked soil and eats them boiled. Years later, when she finally returns to the family, no one thanks her.
“Why is third aunt so fat?” I ask my father when I’m in elementary school.
“She’s not really fat.”
“So does she eat a lot?”
“It has nothing to do with eating.”
My aunt lives the rest of her life with a bloated face and a body turgid from the plant poisons she’d ingested. Every year she sews me pajama pants in the ugliest fabric with elastic waistbands, and each night I still go to sleep under the duvet covers she made for me. She works at a crematorium and uses her connections to help everyone in our family get a nice plot. In her early 60s, she is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We hide it from her so she can die in ignorance. Within six weeks, she does.
***
Whenever I tell my parents that I want to write about them, they say, “Why? Our lives are so ordinary. There’s a billion of us and nothing worth telling.” Maybe they’re right on some level, that human suffering in its various forms is no great secret. Yet, when I sit down at a meal sometimes, I feel a void inside, like I’m merely a mouth for generations of mouths, and I’m eating for my parents, my aunts, my uncles, and ancestors; while other people, the ones who do not walk around being gnawed by ghosts, watch with horror at my insatiable glut.
***
After a decade in the States, my parents move from the northeast to a town in Florida and begin cultivating the land behind their house. It’s swamp land, low in nutrients with loose sandy soil. Each month they make a one-hour drive to a horse farm to collect manure. They ask the local Asian grocery store to give them the Kikkoman soy sauce buckets to use as planters for radishes and carrots. My father nails together planks of wood and builds trellises to anchor the cucumber vines and snow peas, then winter squashes and bitter melons. Their efforts yield so much harvest that they buy a $3000 industrial freezer for storage. It still jars me to see their petite Asian figures standing next to a freezer twice the size of them combined.
Despite their ability to buy or grow most vegetables, they still love going to Costco, out of habit rather than need, driving two hours to Orlando and back. It gives them satisfaction to walk the familiar aisles, to load and unload the car. My father always buys more than they need, and my mother spends days stressing over what’s going bad so she can determine the order in which to cook the meals. But sometimes, they come back with just a jug of milk and some fruits, things they could easily find in a grocery store down the road.
On our way to a family trip to Miami that I had planned and booked, we drive past a Costco. My mother wants to go in.
“Now? We’re trying to get to the hotel while there’s no traffic,” I explain, irritated. “Is there something you need to buy?”
“No, but I want to go,” my mother says, staring longingly at the warehouse. “Maybe pick up some groceries.”
“We’re staying at the Hyatt Regency, Mom. There’s nowhere for you to cook.” I’d forbidden my parents from bringing their electric stove, which they brought on road trips and plugged into the electric outlet at a Motel 8 to cook Chinese food. But this time, I am determined to vacation like an American. I hit the gas.
“Well, maybe I’ll just look…” My mom’s voice trails off. The store shrinks from sight just as quickly as it had come into view.
***
One night, I receive a video call from my father out of the blue. He wants to know how one goes about eating jamón.
“Where are you getting jamón in Florida?” I ask.
“Costco.” He pans the camera to a whole bone-in jamón lying on the living room floor.
“Are you having people over?”
“No. Just for your mom and me.”
My parents have never been to Spain or enjoyed Spanish food. In fact, the one time I’d taken them to a Spanish restaurant, they’d commented how much better the seafood paella would have tasted if only the chef had cooked it as Chinese fried rice. What they said about the flamenco dancers at the restaurant was even worse.
Sometimes I go to Costco in Texas just to see other Asians, where I project my past and future onto the families there.
Staring at the giant leg of cured meat on my screen, I don’t know what to say.
My father switches back the camera to face him. “I thought I’d ask you since you went to Spain.”
“I’ve only had jamón when it’s been sliced at a restaurant.”
“Well, what’s the point of going all the way to Spain when you can have perfectly good jamón right from Costco?”
“Is this about my going to Spain a few months ago instead of visiting you and mom in Florida?”
“No. Don’t be immature.”
We are quiet for a few beats.
“Want us to save some jamón for you in the freezer?” He offers. “You can try it when you come back.”
“Okay.” I hang up, not sure what defrosted jamón would taste like.
***
Over the years and our continuous fights about my increasing Americanness, food has become the only safe subject between my parents and me. It is also the only language through which they can tell me that they love me. While my white friends receive care packages of cookies and candles from home, my parents offer to overnight me live lobsters that they bulk-order.
Pushing a cart along the massive aisles in the Orlando Costco, my father loads up boxes of oranges and blueberries that he tries to force-feed me over the next few days. I do my best to act grateful because I know the people he’s trying to feed are no longer alive.
“I never had this growing up,” he’d say and dump another 5-pound box of fruit in the cart, ignoring my mother’s scowl. It’s an act that they’ve perfected and carried out for years.
I look up at the stadium lights shining down on us. In the great halls of Costco, two of our greatest fears are assuaged — that of not having enough, and that of not being enough.
Ten miles away, children are lining up at Orlando’s Disney World to live their dreams. Here in Kirkland, my parents are lining up to checkout. Here is where I feel most American. Here is a home where I can touch everything that lives in yours. When we walk out the door, a white woman smiles and waves, “Please come back soon.”
***
Yuxi Lin is a poet and writer living and teaching in New York City.
Editor: Carolyn Wells
Copy Editor: Krista Stevens
In 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt went to the encampments of WWI veterans, protesting in DC for the Federal government to grant them their bonus checks promised to them for fighting. Although they did not get the money, they did get jobs. https://t.co/wGnLFTDs3v In 1933, Eleanor Ro…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 15, 2022
The Sparkle of Distant Galaxies via NASA https://t.co/DSFSGGKbbx https://t.co/Hx0lOLHAXm
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 15, 2022
Our maps come from a wide variety of sources including some which were originally published in newspapers! Click on the link below to see a series of Civil War maps published by the New York Times and New York Herald. Check it out: https://t.co/pdeoNw86CR …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 15, 2022
This postcard, mailed in 1908, depicts the Herbert Wadsworth house, just off Dupont Circle at 1801 Massachusetts Avenue NW. Designed by architect Frederick Brooke in 1900, the landmark structure has been home to the private Sulgrave Club since 1932. https://t.co/CCT7Ot9zfS Thi…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 15, 2022
Harriet Beecher Stowe based her classic American novel on Josiah Henson a man enslaved in Montgomery County, MD -- and came under fire for doing so. https://t.co/wbtxU0T6ih Harriet Beecher Stowe based her classic American novel on Josiah Henson a man enslaved in Montgomery C…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 15, 2022
Today in History - June 15 https://t.co/xNmW3te4sF On June 15, 1836, Arkansas became the twenty-fifth state. Continue reading. On June 15, 1939, in Oakland, California, folk music collector Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded Mary MacPhee performing Gaelic songs from the Hebri…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 15, 2022
By Lisa Bubert
The first novel I ever wrote had a mystery at its heart: a disappearance. It was never explained. It didn’t involve any kind of crime. The disappeared never reappeared. The mystery just … was. It was a storyline I was deeply committed to — and one that, as you may imagine, did not lead to a publishing contract.
Unsolved mysteries manage to be as irresistible as they are frustrating, stoking our imagination even while they tease our need for resolution. Faced with a story that refuses to tie everything into a neat bow, we chew on potential explanations until we find the one we like best — the one that satisfies all our biases, the one that allows us to bask in the knowledge that we (and only we) know what actually happened. A lack of answers may be maddening, but it also allows us to rewrite stories to our satisfaction.
As it turns out, not everyone feels that way. People reading my book maintained that the mystery simply couldn’t go unresolved, that there must be a why to the strange thing that had occurred. Was suspending disbelief suddenly something our brains couldn’t handle? Was it so impossible to believe that in this year of our Lord 2022, a mystery could persist?
In their minds, yes. After all, we have science. We have constant surveillance. We leave a digital self-portrait everywhere we go now, a mosaic sketched from location pings and security cameras and the constant tracking of our personal data. Infidelity in your family is no longer just a whispered theory; a DNA test proves it. So, in fiction especially, writing a story with an unsolved mystery often depends on a contrivance, some convenient loss of modern technology. (A character’s laptop died! A power surge took out the router! Someone threw their phone in the ocean!) Cause and effect skew, leaving the reader with a sinking feeling that things are happening because the writer needed them to happen that way — and nothing leaches the enjoyment from reading like awareness of the deus lurking in the machina.
Thankfully, in real life, unsolved mysteries still abound. Whatever happened to Amelia Earhart? What’s up with spontaneous human combustion? Who the heck was D.B. Cooper? Will anyone ever publish my book? (The world may never know!) From paranormal thrillers to fog-shrouded disasters to pedestrian oddities, let the modern mysteries chronicled herein bedevil your otherwise logical mind.
The question of what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has long been a source of fascination for me. Is it because I still have trauma from that one time we hit turbulence on a flight back from Las Vegas and I was convinced we were all headed for a certain death so I cried to my mother and told her I loved her and then decided that the boy I’d just started seeing would have ended up being my husband if I’ve only had a bit more time? Maybe. (Though I did have more time and he did end up being my husband.) But it’s also because of the same paradox that Langewiesche tugs at in this meticulously reported piece: In a time when it’s nearly impossible for even one person to completely disappear, how is it that a plane full of 239 people could blink off of air traffic radar unnoticed, never to be seen again? The answer — and Langewiesche does propose one, satisfying and unsatisfying in equal measure — is long, complicated, and involves a necessary amount of conspiracy.
The mystery surrounding MH370 has been a focus of continued investigation and a source of sometimes feverish public speculation. The loss devastated families on four continents. The idea that a sophisticated machine, with its modern instruments and redundant communications, could simply vanish seems beyond the realm of possibility. It is hard to permanently delete an email, and living off the grid is nearly unachievable even when the attempt is deliberate. A Boeing 777 is meant to be electronically accessible at all times. The disappearance of the airplane has provoked a host of theories. Many are preposterous. All are given life by the fact that, in this age, commercial airplanes don’t just vanish.
When writing, we’re always challenged to consider external conflicts that are pushing up against internal conflicts and vice versa. But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction — and the call really is coming from inside the house. This story of identical twins June and Jennifer Gibbons, who would only communicate with each other, hits all the high notes of the deeply weird. Known as “The Silent Twins,” the pair led a strange and reserved existence from the beginning, which was exacerbated by the racist trauma and ostracization they experienced from being the only Black children in their Welsh community. (Hello, external conflicts!) As time went on, the two began to have trouble discerning themselves from each other. “You are Jennifer, you are me,” Jennifer would tell June. June later said, “One day, she [Jennifer] would wake up and be me, and one day I would wake up and be her.” I’d always heard people talk about the phenomenon like it was almost paranormal; however, upon reading Als’ essay, I was surprised to find that the story was less one of mystery and more one of self-preservation under untenable circumstances. The real mystery (or perhaps not, if we choose to look) is why so many storytellers are more willing to see this as a story of the unexplained rather one of oppression.
For most of their lives together, they refused to speak to anyone but each other — a refusal that led to their emotional exile, their institutionalization, and, eventually, to the misguided appropriation of their story by activists and theorists who used it to pose questions about the nature of identity and the strange birthright that twins are forced to bear.
Imagine The Exorcist, but set it in 2010s Gary, Indiana, and add the Department of Child Services. Latoya Ammons’ three children are fatigued, bruised, and frequently missing school. Child abuse? No. Demons? Perhaps. What sounds like a plot perfect for the silver screen unfolds in a daily issue of the Indianapolis Star — a ghost story that comes with receipts. Reported with over 800 pages of official records and interviews with case managers, police officers, psychologists, and a priest, this piece is so fantastical it can hardly be believed — and yet there is so much official documentation that even the strongest of skeptics would have a hard time dismissing it.
According to Washington’s original DCS report — an account corroborated by Walker, the nurse — the 9-year-old had a “weird grin” and walked backward up a wall to the ceiling. He then flipped over Campbell, landing on his feet. He never let go of his grandmother’s hand.“He walked up the wall, flipped over her and stood there,” Walker told The Star. “There’s no way he could’ve done that.”
Later, police asked Washington whether the boy had run up the wall, as though performing an acrobatic trick.
No, Washington told them. She said the boy “glided backward on the floor, wall, and ceiling,” according to a police report.
A classic Texas whodunnit, set against the backdrop of West Texas canyon country: Big game hunters clash with a Mexican drug cartel. Or was it a practical joke? Or a hoax for political and financial gain? Who shot first depends on who you ask; as Wes Ferguson describes it, “the question of who shot Walker Daugherty still feels like a political Rorschach test.” Of all the things Texas Monthly does well, true crime might be its strongest suit. Much of that lineage is due to the legendary Skip Hollandsworth, who has turned out more excellent investigative pieces than I can count. But Ferguson is no slouch himself — and this piece, which brings true crime to his usual outdoor beat, proves the tradition is in good hands.
They were nodding off when they were awakened by a frightening noise. The locked side door of the RV was rattling loudly. It sounded as if someone wanted in. Tinker Bell barked. Edwin jumped out of bed and grabbed his gun. “Who is it?” he later recalled asking. “Hey! I got a gun in here. Go away.”The door handle shook again. He heard a man’s voice outside the RV: “All we want is the motor home.” The demand, he noted, was delivered in clear, unaccented English. Tinker Bell was growling loudly in Carol’s arms, and she didn’t hear the voice. But to Edwin, the man sounded sinister, terrible. “It was just like the devil was on the other side of that door,” he said later. Then he heard the door rattling again. He shot a single round through it.
If you’re into Cold War history, espionage thrillers, secret Russian conspiracies, or all three, this story is absolute catnip. Apparently, a shortwave radio station that can be heard around the world has been broadcasting since the 1980s, and nobody knows who is running it — nor does anyone claim to own it. The station mostly broadcasts a long drone interrupted occasionally by a foghorn sound; once or twice a week, voices read out random phrases in Russian. (Russia says it’s not theirs, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .) There are many theories as to what’s behind the station, my favorite being the chilling “dead hand” theory, which states that the station is an automatic system scanning the airwaves for signs of life in the event of a nuclear detonation. If no signs of life are detected in the country of origin controlling the station, a retaliative attack is automatically triggered. Mutually assured destruction, shortwave style. Whatever it is, I’d love to read some spy fiction about it. Solved or not, the story practically writes itself.
Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to the frequency 4625 kHz.
It’s so enigmatic, it’s as if it was designed with conspiracy theorists in mind. Today the station has an online following numbering in the tens of thousands, who know it affectionately as “the Buzzer”. It joins two similar mystery stations, “the Pip” and the “Squeaky Wheel”. As their fans readily admit themselves, they have absolutely no idea what they are listening to.
***
Lisa Bubert is a writer and librarian based in Nashville, Tennessee. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Texas Highways, Washington Square Review, and more.
***
Editor: Peter Rubin
Copy Editor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
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Quote of the Day: "It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light." - Aristotle Onassis
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 15, 2022
Celebrating #DCFlagDay with @51stDC! [insert DC flag emoji here 🙃] #DCStatehood #CivicSeason @HistoryMadeByUs https://t.co/VZH2qUOPo8 Celebrating #DCFlagDay with @51stDC! [insert DC flag emoji here 🙃] #DCStatehood #CivicSeason @HistoryMadeByUs https://t.co/VZH2qUOPo8 — D…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 14, 2022
On this day 197 years ago, Pierre L’Enfant, the architect of Washington, DC, passed away. After 84 years, L’Enfant was given a proper burial at Arlington National Cemetery. https://t.co/h6eXlbXjSk On this day 197 years ago, Pierre L’Enfant, the architect of Washington, DC, p…
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It's Flag Day via NASA https://t.co/3xBL5fkyec https://t.co/iFJXmEOqs8
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This immensely detailed map of London is actually quite large, though it can be hard to judge scale while viewing a digitized version. The physical map is composed of 12 separate sheets which when put together form a 5ftx8ft image. Explore the map here: https://t.co/RUARr80sr7 …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 14, 2022
Today, we may think of DC as a city beautiful enough to be considered a world capital, but back in 1807, others had some less favorable views. Charles William Janson’s describes our beloved city back when it was still in its infancy. https://t.co/QxjYtwHj8H Today, we may thi…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 14, 2022
Today in History - June 14 https://t.co/nG4nsXL7wG On June 14, 1777, the Continental Congress approved the design of a national flag. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 14, 2022
Time to return to the Old Post Office! https://t.co/xSjellglHR Time to return to the Old Post Office! https://t.co/xSjellglHR — Streets of Washington (@StreetsOfDC) Jun 13, 2022
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There's still time to register for the @librarycongress Geography & Map Division Virtual Orientation tomorrow! Learn about the collections and research resources of the world's largest map library. Register here: https://t.co/bjDEsmCEPv https://t.co/FCe2ZFihni There's still ti…
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JAXA Astronaut Akihiko Hoshide Speaks With Students via NASA https://t.co/pTc5oJpmGQ https://t.co/wlsn8T36jX
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 13, 2022
This map published by the CIA in 1962 depicts nations that had gained independence since the end of the Second World War. This included much of Africa and southern Asia as colonial empires collapsed in the post-war period. Have a look: https://t.co/dW8P6bmRu8 …
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 13, 2022
Today in History - June 13 https://t.co/5B3SsX88vy On June 13, 1942, some six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Office of War Information (OWI) was created. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 13, 2022
Quote of the Day: "The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings." - Eric Hoffer
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 13, 2022
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Helen Hayes is more known for her acting then her activism. But in 1948, she was one of many artists who took a stand against segregation in D.C. theatres. #DCHistory https://t.co/xEOTXy9jcN Helen Hayes is more known for her acting then her activism. But in 1948, she was one…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 12, 2022
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The "Washington College" seen on this 1909 postcard was a girls' boarding school at 200 T St NE. The house was built in 1815 by Joseph Gales, publisher of the National Intelligencer as his country estate. In 1922, it became the Mount Carmel Retreat House. Demolished in the 1…
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 12, 2022
Today in History - June 12 https://t.co/HAF5wptuK1 On June 12, 1806, John A. Roebling, civil engineer and designer of bridges, was born in Mühlhausen, Prussia. Continue reading. Click here to search Today in History for other historic moments.
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 12, 2022
Quote of the Day: "Each day is the scholar of yesterday." - Publilius Syrus
— Kenneth Samson (@PangurBanC) Jun 12, 2022