This edition of the Top 5 looks at Ukraine’s defiant underground beauty salons, the fight for a wild butterfly population, the meaning behind the quilts crafted in Gee’s Bend, Alabama, the world of Criterion Collection, and the shifting role of the call center worker.
Sophia Panych | Allure | February 22, 2024 | 4,531 words
As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, beauty salons in the country have become symbols of perseverance and resistance. Salon owners go to work despite the constant threat of missile strikes. They’ve moved their businesses underground. When they have no access to electricity and water, they run on generators and use bottled water. They’ve also adapted to working in the dark, painting clients’ nails under the glow of headlamps. Unfazed by air-raid sirens, they’re accustomed to calculating risks. Sirens can sound up to a dozen times a day, a cosmetologist from Zaporizhzhia, a city close to the frontlines, tells Sophia Panych: “At that rate, it would take all day to finish just one facial.” In this piece, Panych asks, “Does beauty even have a place in a society at war?” For many salon owners in central and eastern Ukraine, the answer is an emphatic yes. Many Ukrainian women have felt a deep sense of patriotism and duty to jumpstart the economy, while salon patrons get their hair cut and nails done to take control—and find normalcy—in an unstable time. “Every blowout, every massage, every pedicure they provide is a statement of defiance against an enemy that wishes to see them destroyed,” writes Panych. They’re also communal acts of self-care. A longtime beauty editor with Ukrainian roots, Panych had been looking for a way to write about the country since 2022, but she hadn’t found an appropriate angle. But her reporting here, on the unexpected resilience of Ukraine’s beauty industry, comes together beautifully in an inspiring piece on the courage and resourcefulness of ordinary citizens in a time of war. —CLR
In his latest for Hakai Magazine, Brian Payton creates excitement from the start: “They are ravenous and roving. Newly emerged from a six-month state of suspended animation, over a dozen larvae scale the crumpled paper towel inside a plastic cup.” I love Payton’s writing—I don’t yet know the name of these creatures, but I am already rooting for them. These are Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly larvae; they favor “bright, moist, open wildflower meadows” and were once abundant from Willamette Valley in Oregon to Vancouver Island in British Columbia. Today, only 13 wild populations remain, but conservationists in the US and Canada—including some incarcerated women who care for the butterflies—are trying to change that, for the butterflies and for humans who may not understand the critical role insects play in life on our planet. “Insects help create and sustain the natural systems terrestrial life depends on,” he writes. “A world with fewer insects is a world with less flora, fauna, and food.” Payton’s piece is educational and entertaining, a welcome and necessary spark of joy. This butterfly is particularly magnificent and Payton records them with thoughtful detail: “In April or May, they emerge as adults and take to the air on wings of vivid red or orange and white, outlined in black, calling to mind the brightly hued geometry of stained-glass windows.” What’s perhaps most beautiful (in addition to learning that the collective noun for butterflies is a kaleidoscope)? The Taylor’s checkerspot butterfly lives for only 14 days, but in that time, it does its part to help life on this planet to thrive. That humans are banding together to help the species? It sets my hopes aflutter. —KS
Jeannette Cooperman | The Common Reader | February 21, 2024 | 5,680 words
Gee’s Bend, Alabama, is famous for its quilters. Maybe you’ve seen their work in a museum or on a US postal stamp—it is abstract, geometric, and arresting. The quilters are Black women descended from slaves, and their craft is a tradition born of necessity. To keep warm, have a soft place to sleep, and swaddle newborns, the quilters’ forebears made what they needed with what they had. How, then, to view the contemporary acclaim for Gee’s Bend quilts that focuses more on aesthetics than function? Or the forces of capitalism that invited the acclaim in the first place? There’s a moment in this essay by Jeannette Cooperman when one of the quilters asks the author, “Who discovered art, do you know?” The line took my breath away because it’s a Russian doll of questions. To address it in any meaningful way requires asking other questions about the nature of art, the power dynamics of discovery, and how knowledge is shared across time and space. Cooperman does a splendid job lacing these lines of inquiry through the essay while also suggesting that trying too hard to answer them risks missing the point of creating and experiencing beauty—which is to say, the doing and the feeling. “Quilts were about loving people. And saving and re-using honored the material world,” Cooperman writes. “When Missouri Pettway’s husband died, she made a quilt from his old work clothes . . . so she could warm herself with the memory of him, ‘cover up under it for love.’” —SD
Joshua Hunt | The New York Times Magazine | February 29, 2024 | 4,230 words
There are three primary kinds of business profiles. You’ve got your classic schadenfreude-fueled Rise and Fall, your everyone-loves-a-comeback Redemption Tale, and your Company at the Crossroads. All can be compelling. All can also feel like sponsored content. Joshua Hunt’s feature about Criterion Collection, that beloved reissuer of movies, manages to skirt that issue by being a culture story rather than a business one. Criterion started with LaserDisc, then moved to DVD and streaming; what’s remained constant is its seemingly bottomless love of film and commitment to supplemental materials, which Hunt conveys through director interviews as well as Criterion employees. Cinephile icons (Jim Jarmusch, Kelly Reichardt), A24 darlings (the Safdie Brothers), and even Michael Bay show up to discuss their favorite Criterion memories. Criterion’s warts are on display as well—its tendency to ignore Black filmmakers, the heavy toll exacted by its streaming strategy—further helping steer the piece away from Valentine territory. Obsession is as universal as it is single-minded, and stories like this bear that out perfectly: I may never have the encyclopedic knowledge that these filmmakers do, but I’ll also never tire of reading about another person’s lifelong passion. —PR
Sophie Elmhirst | 1843 Magazine | February 2, 2024 | 4,739 words
“It reminds me of processed cheese, Sophie,” says Gary, a call center worker, during his chat with Sophie Elmhirst on AI technology. Gary tells it how it is. I love Gary. An instantly endearing character, he epitomizes the sense of personality that could be lost as call center work edges further into the realm of the robot. Don’t get me wrong—we don’t always get a Gary when we call a customer service line. Elmhirst recounts, with her trademark dry humor, some of her less enjoyable calls (you will relate). But Gary from Vision Direct has her laughing as he guides her through ordering new contact lenses like they were “engaged in some kind of high-stakes joint project.” Roping him into an interview, she discovers more about the infectious joy he brings to customers, even after 20 years of working in call centers. Can AI ever replicate this? Perhaps. Developments are happening faster than the public or regulators can keep up with, and automating empathy is already in the works. In fact, as Elmhirst notes, ChatGPT recently scored better on standardized emotional awareness tests than the general population, according to a paper in Frontiers in Psychology. (Not sure if that says more about ChatGPT or the general population.) As is often the case with AI, there is much talk of hybrid roles, but inevitably, there will be less room for the traditional call center worker. The topic of AI use in customer service calls had the potential to be incredibly dull. Elmhirst makes it wildly entertaining. Gary makes it human. —CW
Matthew Bremner | Esquire | February 15, 2024 | 8,100 words
Twenty-six years ago, Barton McNeil called 911 to report that his 3-year-old daughter had died in the night. It was the worst thing that could ever happen to any parent. Then a new nightmare began. Matthew Bremner tells the harrowing story through a personal lens. —SD
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Commentary tracks? Presenting films in their original letterbox format? Both started with Criterion, the company that’s been reissuing beloved movies for more than 40 years. Joshua Hunt dives into the history of the Criterion Collection, interviewing filmmakers and employees alike—and exploding the myth that the catalog contains only the artiest cinephile bait.
In September, when I called Michael Bay at his home in Miami, he seemed blissfully unaware that many cinephiles don’t think his films belong in the collection. He was also unaware of Criterion’s continued existence, but told me quite earnestly how “cool” it was that they were still around. His enthusiasm for its LaserDiscs was palpable as he described washing cars for the cash to buy them, just as he did to afford the best stereo equipment. “I just remember it being the pinnacle,” Bay said of the brand. Bay also gamely entertained my questions about the most infamous feature of Criterion’s commentary track for “Armageddon,” in which the movie’s star, Ben Affleck, mentions an on-set spat with Bay over the plot: Why, Affleck wondered, would it be easier to prepare oil-rig workers for outer-space travel than to train NASA astronauts how to drill into and then destroy an asteroid on a collision course with earth? “I told him to shut the [expletive] up,” Bay said. “Ben has a wry personality, so you just have to come back at him with that same type of personality.”
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In an excerpt adapted from his book, Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State, Byron Tau reveals how advertising data collected from mobile phones has been used to track the movements of members of the military and even those closest to Vladimir Putin. What’s most troubling is that this advertising data can be purchased by nearly anyone—even bad actors.
If you ever granted a weather app permission to know where you are, there is a good chance a log of your precise movements has been saved in some data bank that tens of thousands of total strangers have access to. That includes intelligence agencies.
While Locomotive was a closely held project meant for government use, UberMedia’s data was available for purchase by anyone who could come up with a plausible excuse. It wouldn’t be difficult for the Chinese or Russian government to get this kind of data by setting up a shell company with a cover story, just as Mike Yeagley had done.
They realized they could track world leaders through Locomotive, too. After acquiring a data set on Russia, the team realized they could track phones in the Russian president Vladimir Putin’s entourage. The phones moved everywhere that Putin did. They concluded the devices in question did not actually belong to Putin himself; Russian state security and counterintelligence were better than that. Instead, they believed the devices belonged to the drivers, the security personnel, the political aides, and other support staff around the Russian president; those people’s phones were trackable in the advertising data. As a result, PlanetRisk knew where Putin was going and who was in his entourage.
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In December, The New York Times published a front-page story alleging that Hamas had committed systematic sexualized violence on October 7. The piece, which was written by a Pulitzer Prize-winner and two Israeli freelancers with very little journalism experience, has since come under scrutiny. The Times’ flagship podcast, The Daily, even shelved an episode about the story because of serious questions about the reporting. In this damning dissection, Intercept journalists lay bare the decisions that led to the story’s publication in the first place, some of which one of the freelancers, Anat Schwartz, articulated in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 news:
Schwartz began her work on the violence of October 7 where one would expect, by calling around to the designated “Room 4” facilities in 11 Israeli hospitals that examine and treat potential victims of sexual violence, including rape. “First thing I called them all, and they told me, ‘No, no complaint of sexual assault was received,’” she recalled in the podcast interview. “I had a lot of interviews which didn’t lead anywhere. Like, I would go to all kinds of psychiatric hospitals, sit in front of the staff, all of them are fully committed to the mission and no one had met a victim of sexual assault.”
The next step was to call the manager of the sexual assault hotline in Israel’s south, which proved equally fruitless. The manager told her they had no reports of sexual violence. She described the call as a “crazy in-depth conversation” where she pressed for specific cases. “Did anyone call you? Did you hear anything?” she recalled asking. “How could it be that you didn’t?”
As Schwartz began her own efforts to find evidence of sexual assault, the first specific allegations of rape began to emerge. A person identified in anonymous media interviews as a paramedic from the Israeli Air Force medical unit 669 claimed he saw evidence that two teenage girls at Kibbutz Nahal Oz had been raped and murdered in their bedroom. The man made other outrageous claims, however, that called his report into question. He claimed another rescuer “pulled out of the garbage” a baby who’d been stabbed multiple times. He also said he had seen “Arabic sentences that were written on entrances to houses … with the blood of the people that were living in the houses.” No such messages exist, and the story of the baby in the trashcan has been debunked. The bigger problem was that no two girls at the kibbutz fit the source’s description. In future interviews, he changed the location to Kibbutz Be’eri. But no victims killed there matched the description either, as Mondoweiss reported.
After seeing these interviews, Schwartz started calling people at Kibbutz Be’eri and other kibbutzim that were targeted on October 7 in an effort to track down the story. “Nothing. There was nothing,” she said. “No one saw or heard anything.” She then reached the unit 669 paramedic who relayed to Schwartz the same story he had told other media outlets, which she says convinced her there was a systematic nature to the sexual violence. “I say, ‘OK, so it happened, one person saw it happen in Be’eri, so it can’t be just one person, because it’s two girls. It’s sisters. It’s in the room. Something about it is systematic, something about it feels to me that it’s not random,” Schwartz concluded on the podcast.
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Two anthropologists looking to reshape the world via consciousness expansion. Dosing dolphins at a research institute in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Lab visits from a not-yet-famous 29-year-old Carl Sagan. A psychedelic subculture among crews of TV shows in the ’60s, including Flipper. Benjamin Breen’s piece—an excerpt from his book, Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the Troubled Birth of Psychedelic Science—recounts an interesting period in the history of psychedelics and leaves you wanting to read more. (Signup required.)
The recordings were grist for Lilly’s mill. By 1963, he was absolutely convinced that his dolphins were uttering coherent words in English — but at a speed so rapid and a pitch so high that only computerized manipulation could make them understandable. The payoff was vague, but in his mind immense. After all, if he could bridge the barrier in communication between these two radically different species, how could Americans and Soviets continue to claim that communication between their own camps was impossible?
In 1961, Sagan helped plan one of the first conferences on extraterrestrial life. The organizers had sought not just scientists interested in first-contact scenarios but also someone who already spoke to “aliens” — or at least the closest parallel that Earth afforded. Lilly was the obvious choice. Afterward, Sagan founded a whimsical scientific fraternal organization, the Order of the Dolphin, that was partially inspired by Lilly’s work. Now, three years later, Sagan was finally visiting Lilly’s “aliens” in person.
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The overturning of Roe v Wade has left domestic violence advocates in many states wondering what to do when they encounter a pregnant DV survivor. What advice and resources can they offer without risking legal consequences? Julianne McShane reports:
Advocates aren’t the only ones caught in the middle: Administrators at both the agencies that employ them and the state-level coalitions that are supposed to act as leaders and resource hubs are often unsure of what’s legal and what’s not, and worry that issuing clear guidance to their service providers could put their funding at risk. “We’re hearing a lot of anger from people who have gone into this work because they care deeply about supporting survivors and their lives and making sure people have dignity and access to care,” said Quinn, from Provide. “They feel that their hands are tied.”
Williams, the advocate in Tulsa, is a 47-year-old former cop who wore her hair pulled back tight and her face makeup-free when we met a few weeks before Christmas; on her days off, she said, she indulges in Botox and salon visits to decompress from the intensity of work. She likens herself to a “bulldog”: “I will fight for my victims like there’s no tomorrow,” she told me. But when she’s working with survivors with unwanted pregnancies, she’s become more cautious. “I think it’s just so new to us that we’re all so afraid to even touch it,” she said of discussing abortion in light of the state’s ban. Agency administrators said that Williams speaks only for herself and not for the organization as a whole, and that advocates can always seek guidance from, or refer their client to, another team member.
But for Williams, the uncertainty can feel overwhelming: “I ain’t trying to lose my whole livelihood because I’ve given someone this advice.”
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Dedicated conservationists in the US and Canada—including some incarcerated women—are breeding Taylor’s checkspot butterflies in captivity and taming the invasive plant species that threaten the insect’s natural habitat, all in a bit to increase the wild populations of a beautiful pollinator that lives for 14 days.
They are ravenous and roving. Newly emerged from a six-month state of suspended animation, over a dozen larvae scale the crumpled paper towel inside a plastic cup. One determined individual undulates past the others to the top of the paper peak. There, it anchors its hind prolegs, raises its head and abdomen, and begins a kind of dance. About the length of a paper clip, the caterpillar sways its black and bristly body back and forth. It reaches toward the light streaming in through the greenhouse glass and the face of the woman beaming down.
Working alongside Heather is a fellow butterfly tech we’ll call Brooke. She’s dressed in a matching red DOC sweater, khaki pants, and rubber boots, but wears her long hair down. She, too, feels fortunate to be working just beyond the prison’s fence, where she regularly hears birdsong and the gurgling croak of ravens. The work includes monitoring greenhouse temperatures and humidity, growing and picking food for the caterpillars each day, and early in the year, watching for when the caterpillars awake from diapause. To ensure diverse and resilient populations, the women carefully document genetic lineages and track data to avoid breeding siblings. They also give them names. This year’s crop of males includes a lot of Georges—George Michael, George Foreman, and Boy George among them.
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Meet Gary, the human call center worker whom AI might replace. Brimming with character, Gary is larger than life and the epitome of the personality AI can’t replicate. Sophie Elmhirst brings her custom humor to this lovely piece exploring the fate of the call center as the AI takeover begins.
The room, at this point, went quiet. Sure, he wasn’t proposing replacing the agent, but he was proposing that each agent would have a sort of inexhaustible, automated co-worker and spy-manager, monitoring every conversation, every decision and then relentlessly suggesting improvements. Yes, calls have always been recorded for training purposes – words we know like a previous generation knew the Lord’s Prayer – but this surveillance lived, inescapably, on your desktop, and was focused entirely on you. It did not need to sleep or eat. It never went for coffee, or asked you what film you watched last night. It had no marital problems that you could chew over on a break. It just indefatigably and dispassionately existed to watch you and make you better.
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The quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, have skyrocketed to fashion- and art-world fame. Jeannette Cooperman traveled to their home turf to learn how they work and how they feel about all the acclaim:
Can what is useful be art? Those who burn to be seen as Artists wallow in self-pity when their work is not recognized; they have tied themselves up in knots trying to Make Art. I look at these ladies, piecing together scraps of paper on broad knees, then stitching quilts that will be warm and loved and beautiful no matter what.
“We weren’t trying to make art,” Mary Ann says, easing into a low chuckle. “Still don’t know nothing about art.” Yet to begin a quilt, she says, “I go by my colors. Quilting is just like designing a dress.” People around here can recognize her quilting rows even on an unsigned quilt. She eyeballs them an inch apart, and they are perfectly parallel, as evenly spaced as rows of cotton, but never on a grid. “I stay away from curves, but when they show up, I just follow them,” she says. “And I love triangles. For some reason, a triangle does something to a quilt.”
Adds tension and dynamic energy, an art teacher might say—but “does something” is what you need to know. Curious, I ask if she has ever seen the famous Amish or Shaker quilts.
“No,” she says, not the least bit interested. “I don’t like patterns. I do my own designs.”
In Gee’s Bend, inspiration comes from prayers, dreams, experiences.
“It’s dependent on how you are feelin’ that day,” Doris Pettway Mosley told me earlier. “All your feelings, you put in that quilt.”
Then you refine. “If it didn’t look too sweet to me,” Mary Lee Bendolph once said, “I’d take it back off.”
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Lisa Bubert | Longreads | February 27, 2024 | 3,584 words (13 minutes)
It’s my turn to wake up Carmen. (No, that’s not her real name.) Carmen has been living on the street longer than I’ve been a librarian, and her elderly head is currently resting on a study desk even though we’ve all already asked her to keep her head up. It’s our least popular and most enforced rule: we don’t allow people to sleep in the library. We know you’re tired, we know it’s warm, we know it feels safe. But someone who is dying also looks like someone who is sleeping, and we’ve all seen our share of overdoses. Also, if one person is allowed to do it, everyone will do it. So, no sleeping.
Carmen’s back and neck are perpetually bent at a right angle, her left shoulder humping up cockeyed thanks to years of untreated scoliosis. What she lacks in vitality, though, she makes up for in volatility; the last time we asked her not to sleep in the library, she called my coworker a “fat Jew.” I seem to set her off in particular. She accused me of being a Russian spy when we met, and if she sees my car driving down the street, she will throw a middle finger my way without hesitation.
Only one staff member has managed to break through Carmen’s shell after years of persistence, but they’re on lunch. I check the camera one more time. Carmen’s head is still down, arms wrapped around her ears like a kid in grade school. No time like the present.
I approach, our guard watching nearby. She’s already called him a pussy once; he’s not interested in hearing it again. I keep a table between myself and Carmen. I tap my fingers on the wood, near where she lays her head. I say her name.
She throws her head up. “What!” Just like that. No question, just exclamation.
“We’re just checking on you. You have to keep your head up while you’re in the library.”
“Why!”
“We need to know that you’re okay, that you’re not having a medical emergency.”
A flinty stare. “I need to keep my head up so you know I’m not having a medical emergency,” she repeats.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s the agreement of being in the library.”
She stares me down, crosses her arms. I back up.
“You won’t have to worry about that,” she says. “I won’t be back.” She says this like a rich woman who has been served the wrong meal at a fancy restaurant. Julia Roberts with all her shopping bags on Rodeo Drive. Big mistake. Huge.
“Okay,” I say.
She says something as I walk away, something meant to antagonize, to get me to come back and fight with her. I ignore it. I don’t give a shit what she says as long as she doesn’t give us a reason to kick her out. Summer is coming on, and it’s hot out. Back at my desk, I check the camera. Her head stays up.
She comes back the next day.
I am a public librarian. I currently work in an urban system, though I’ve done time in the ’burbs. We have a food bank to our left, court-ordered counseling clinics and shelters across the street, a fast-food chicken joint to the right, and a bus stop out front.
A good number of our regulars are either unhoused people waiting on shelter or people who have shelter but spend all day at the library because it’s safer. We know most of their names—if not their government names, their street names. Possum, Shorty Red, Baby Doll. If we don’t know those, we’ll come up with our own nicknames: Sparkle Boots, Hot Wheels, Orange Dreds. We’re not trying to be disrespectful; we’re trying to keep up with who is in the building. If we’ve learned anything about keeping the peace, we’ve learned that it’s imperative to know who’s here, who’s not, who has beef, who’s in hiding.
The best security is to look people in the eye when they come in, say hello, give a nod that says I see you. To find out their name and give your name in return. To give grace because that’s all some of our people have.
We do have a guard, but it’s dangerous to get too lazy about that guard. They’re there as a deterrent. A uniform, a badge, making rounds. The guard is unarmed, which is how we prefer it. The best security is to look people in the eye when they come in, say hello, give a nod that says I see you. To find out their name and give your name in return. To give grace because that’s all some of our people have.
When you don’t have money or a place to stay, but you do have an addiction, an abusive partner, or an exploitative job, you need to know where you can go. The church serves hot lunch on Mondays. The empty park behind the old Hardee’s is a good place to set up camp. The library will let you stay all day as long as you don’t sleep and you don’t have outbursts. Balance a book on your lap; if you’re gonna doze, make sure you doze sitting up. The librarians know who you are. The librarians see you.
I never wanted to be a librarian.
I was a kid who loved reading, but I liked writing even more. And while I liked helping people, I preferred when it came with an adrenaline rush—which didn’t square with my impression of libraries. I had fallen victim to the false, if enduring, tropes about librarianship: shushing people, valuing quiet contemplation, wearing combed hair in a tidy bun over a well-made dress, relishing the academic predictability of each civilized day.
As it turns out, though, graduating from college in the middle of a recession changes things: the public library offered me a slightly-higher-than-minimum-wage part-time job I immediately accepted. Turning that part-time job into a full-time job, would mean getting a master’s degree in Library Science; however, being a graduate student also let me place my already towering student loans into a deferment that wouldn’t collect interest. So, to library school I went. I got the degree. I got the full-time job. I also imagined a distant future in which I quit the library, my temporary placeholder career, for something much more fitting for me. Emergency services, social work, counseling, maybe vagabondry.
That I have been ambivalent about my librarianship career surprises most people. But you’re so good at what you do! You’ve always seemed like someone who has it figured out! It wasn’t until I started working at the library I’m at now—where I can have the nonemergency line on speed dial and Narcan in my backpack—that I felt like I found my place. There is no quiet here, no predictability to the days. There is instead a backdrop of low-grade chaos, funny in its Southern volatility. Telling a patron he can’t burn his trash behind the library building even if that’s how they do it in Mississippi. Telling another patron to lower their voice, only for them to apologize and deny in the same breath. Being accused of being a Russian spy, obviously. I mean, where else am I going to get stories like this?
I may never have wanted to be a librarian, but I love this job. This specific job. Not because of any kind of noble commitment to knowledge or love of books. I love it because every day requires me to meet humanity face to face. It reminds me that I am actually living in an actual society where I am responsible to other people. In one hour on the desk, I can help a child find every single book on frogs that we have and then turn around and give a tissue to a grown man sobbing over his deceased wife. I can give a tampon to a woman hiding in the restroom because she’s been living on the streets. I can listen to the HOA chair complain about being booted from our larger meeting room because we needed it to host FEMA after a tornado tore up another neighborhood a block over. Patrons recognize me everywhere I go in my neighborhood, like a minor celebrity. Library lady, library lady. They know I’m nice, that I try not to judge. They know I can be trusted. They know I’m good in an emergency. And these days, when you work as a librarian in America, there is no lack of emergencies.
Vulnerability doesn’t fit into America’s beloved bootstrapping ethos, and so Americans will try very hard not to see their vulnerable neighbors. When we walk down a street and see someone lying on a sewer grate to keep warm, the polite thing to do isn’t to check on the person—it’s to pretend we don’t see them and keep walking. If the person sits up and asks for help, we become momentarily deaf and walk faster. Anything to get away from the uncomfortable truth that our safety net is failing.
We love to remember the troops, never forget 9/11, be #BostonStrong, #ParklandStrong, #VegasStrong, #UvaldeStrong, etc., etc. Americans supporting Americans in their time of need surely proves that we are a nation of grace, a nation that takes care of its own, at least until the next hashtag comes along.
Some say we are a nation that cares for its “deserving” own and that deserving is defined by those who are in power, who are not vulnerable, who have wealth, privilege, status. I agree with this critique, but I’d posit another angle. We don’t choose who to help based on who deserves it; we choose who to help based on the amount of control we have over that help. We are, after all, a business-oriented nation. We love a deadline.
I am in a meeting with coworkers about programming when we hear a woman screaming at someone in the public restroom. I hustle out to the floor to see what’s going on. Our security officer is there, calling the police. A woman’s voice screams, at him, at everyone, at no one. The smell of burning. Two old ladies sit across from us, frozen at the computer.
“Are we in danger?” they ask.
“No,” I say, looking at the security officer. He doesn’t say anything.
The woman comes out with all her things. She has been caught bathing in the sink; the burning smell is from her curling iron burning synthetic hair as she restyled her wig. The security officer follows her out while the woman continues to scream. The old ladies remain frozen.
This scenario is small potatoes. An angry woman in the bathroom, embarrassed at being caught in a private moment. We’ve dealt with heavier issues by far. Still, my stomach hurts the rest of the afternoon, adrenaline running for no reason. The week thus far has been a bad one; one man threatened one of our regulars over money owed, saying he was going to put a pistol in his mouth the next time he saw him. The heat wave is waving, bad drugs are on the street. Everyone coming inside is passing out. So much nervous energy, too many people in one place, too many people we’ve never seen before, whose stories we don’t know. The week before, a man twice my size went from zero to 60 on me because the computers were full and he needed to fill out a job application. He called my coworker a bougie bitch with fake braids; he screamed at me about how he had a life and he didn’t give a shit what we said. Fuck you, you fucking bitch, I don’t give a fuck if you call the cops. We’d all been on high alert so long that it felt like we lived there.
So much nervous energy, too many people in one place, too many people we’ve never seen before, whose stories we don’t know.
After the woman from the bathroom leaves, I go work the reference desk. I tell my coworker (the one with the bougie braids) that the situation had made me nauseous and we laugh over it because yeah, way worse things have happened and we’ve dealt with them. I don’t know, I say. Just too much in general, I guess.
Thirty minutes later, I’m checking social media and I see a news report about a shooting at another branch. We’ll learn later that two teens in the restroom shot each other in the legs trying to settle a dispute, but in the moment, all that’s being reported is “shooting in progress.” We try to get in contact with the staff at that branch to get any word. I text the children’s librarian, the teen librarian; my coworker calls the circulation supervisor. Finally, an email comes from admin confirming that a shooting did happen and that no staff or other patrons were hurt. We are relieved and not relieved. When my coworker comes back from lunch, I tell her what happened and she shakes her head.
Books might be banned in some very rare and unfortunate circumstances, but more often they were “challenged,” where someone levels an accusation at a book and library leadership is compelled to reconsider its inclusion in the collection. Most times, library leadership would decide that, yes, the original collection decision had been correct. Or maybe it was correct but the book should be recatalogued into a different section, such as the usual case of young adult books that flirt with adult material. Only in extremely rare cases would library leadership actually pull a book from a collection.
That’s what we thought, at least. Never could we have imagined that state governments would send “approved” lists for librarians to purchase from. Or pursue criminal charges for a librarian who ignores the list. Where were those scenarios in library school? At the time, we’d almost pined for that kind of drama—the good old days, when someone would challenge a book and the community would rise up against the challenge and the library would remain victorious, respected. Are these the new good old days? Is this how the story ends? Most of us are fleeing the profession, seeking greener pastures where the pay is better and the shift ends at five o’clock.
My mind is constantly on a loop, evaluating incident reports, what could have gone worse, what could have gone better. I watch the camera, I make the rounds, I read body language. I can hear a fight before it starts. I wonder if today will be the day someone goes from desperate to violent. I stay vigilant.
I hate how much of my job is taken up by surveillance. It makes me feel like a warden. But if we’re not vigilant, we miss important things. Like two boys pushing another boy into the restroom before gunshots ring out from inside.
To be a public servant in America is to contend with a fair amount of trauma. The institutions are collapsing, and public librarians, especially, have a front row seat to the fallout. Every day, the collapse comes to our door and sets up camp. Because when the social safety net fails you—and it will fail you—you can still come to the library. As a result, we librarians are armored up for a job we didn’t expect.
Last night, I dreamed about escorting people out of the library. One woman suspended for a year for grabbing people and trying to hold them close to her chest; another man suspended for screaming in anger after receiving the help he requested. Dreams, but not too far from the truth. I wake up feeling rattled. I used to be able to shake off the unpleasant parts of the job—kicking people out for becoming unruly, talking someone down from anger, staying calm while a patron seizes on the floor, preparing to perform a sternal rub on a suspected overdose. But we have been short-staffed, the summer has been hot, and everyone feels pressure.
We are late to our desk shifts, hurrying over from the last thing we were doing, sighing deep as the long hour passes. Keep an eye on that man, he might be watching porn. This guy is filling out SNAP forms; I got him on the application but he says he doesn’t know how to use a computer well. This old woman needs to print coupons from her email once she figures out how to sign in to her email. I already told that guy to lower his voice. She says the dog is a service dog.
We shrug. We pick our battles. We’ll be back tomorrow.
Before libraries received over 600 book challenges from 11 people across the country, before librarians were doxed and our lives threatened online, before states passed laws to jail us if we did not comply, before patrons overdosed in the stacks, I thought the most important part of the job was to get children to read.
Did I mention I’m a children’s librarian? I am.
And the most important part of the job is getting children to read. But not just to read—to imagine, envision, and dream. We place just the right book in just the right child’s hands not just so they’ll grow intellectually, keep up in school, compete in the job market, etc. We want the child to read and comprehend what they’re reading because we need that child to grow into somebody who can imagine a better future. This child needs not only to be able to imagine all the things that haven’t yet been imagined before, but they need to be able to go out and build them. You can’t build what you can’t imagine. You can’t imagine if you’re never given the freedom to read and learn and dream.
If I cut through the noise of book challenges and legal censorship and failing safety nets, I can still remember that the most important part of my day is when a child brings me a stack of books to check out and we marvel at them together and I ask which one they are most excited to read and their answer is all of them. This scenario still happens—it happens every day.
The most important part of my job is to make the library a safe space. One where kids burst through the door and go running with glee to the children’s area so they can say hello to whoever is at the desk. One where a patron can have a full metal meltdown about the state of the world and still be given resources to find housing, a shower, a meal. One where someone can come in blasted high for years and then return the next day sober and clean, ensconcing themselves in the safety of the books to stay that way.
Libraries are on the frontlines of so many wars—the war against censorship, the war against the erosion of personal privacy, the war against illiteracy, the war against fascism and the crumbling of democracy. Put it all together and we’re fighting one big war—the war against despair.
People often ask me if I’m afraid to go to work. God no, I tell them. I’d be more terrified if I didn’t work here. Call it exposure therapy: the thing you fear becomes less scary when you face it every day. Every day, librarians face despair in all its forms. Every day we return to the job—and cut through that despair—is a win. No, we weren’t taught to do this in library school. But this is the duty that calls. Love and strength to those who answer.
I have a favorite patron. I know I shouldn’t have favorites, but I do. I tell him he’s my favorite but I don’t think he believes me. Perhaps he thinks I tell everyone that. I do not.
I love him because he reminds me of my uncle, ragged and worn but loving. He comes in every day, whether it’s a good day because he’s sober or a bad day because he’s not. We have a little game we play: if one of us sees the other from across the library, we will stop what we’re doing and wait until the other notices. When we do both finally see each other, we wave our arms high in the air like we’re trying to send the biggest hello, I love you across the expanse. Think Forrest Gump waving at Lieutenant Dan, that big goofy smile. That’s me when I see Derek. (Again, not his real name.) That’s Derek when I confirm the game is still on.
“How you doin’, darlin’?” He comes over and asks.
“I’m good. You?”
“I’m…” He pauses and thinks. And every time, he says the same thing:
“I’m blessed.”
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.
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Disney adults are hardcore fans of everything Disney, from film franchises to theme parks. Amelia Tait takes a closer look at this often mocked and misunderstood demographic, which, according to her survey of more than 1,300 self-identifying Disney adults from around the world, is typically female and aged 25-44. They are well-educated, while about half align with the political left. Many seek out the Disney experience because it provides a community, creates family bonds, and is “psychologically beneficial.” But the Disney entertainment and marketing machine has also always been about hyper-consumption—and for some individuals, embedded in their lives at birth.
Whether Disney adults are embarrassing or enchanting is largely a matter of opinion. What is missing from endless comment sections is the fact that they are a creation of the Walt Disney Company – a character constructed just as carefully as Elsa or Donald Duck. Disney does not hide its desire to create lifelong consumers. In 2011, Disney representatives visited new mothers in 580 maternity wards across the US, gifting them bodysuits and asking them to sign up for DisneyBaby.com. In 2022, the company announced plans to build residential “Storyliving” communities across America, with special neighbourhoods for those aged 55 and up.
Over the past 100 years, the Walt Disney Company has entwined itself with our families, memories and personal histories. In many ways, Disney is a religion that one is born into, the same way a 15th-century English baby was predestined to be baptised Catholic. Choice doesn’t necessarily come into it – we see Mickey Mouse around us like our ancestors saw the cross; a symbol that both 18-month-olds and 80-year-olds recognise. But if we accept that Disney adults were created, rather than spontaneously generated, then why are we scrutinising the congregation instead of the church?
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It all started in 2016 with Honey, an eight week-old German Shepherd puppy given four months to live. At that time, Mike Favor was newly sober after 13 years of active cocaine addiction. He didn’t think he was capable of caring for himself much less another being, but Honey changed all that. Today, his rescue Staten-Island dog rescue, “Freedom Home” specializes in matching pitbulls and drug addicts—two “misunderstood breeds.”
When Mr. Favor started Pitbulls and Addicts, he had ambitious plans to house dogs as well as people in recovery from substance abuse. The dogs, it turned out, were the easy part.
“I’ve been robbed,” he said. “I let people sleep on couches. I put people in hotel rooms. I took guys under my wing for many, many, many months.” He suspects that someone deliberately started a fire that burned down much of the shelter in 2019.
He concedes now that he tried to do more than he could handle. “In the beginning, I was trying to make this visionary dream, just in a rush,” he said. “And it just set me back.”
“I’ve been screwed over way too many times by the humans,” he said. “But when somebody turns to me, I have open arms.”
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