In this beautiful essay for Joyland, Matthew Medendorp peels back the layers of the lowly onion, an organism with DNA more complex than that of a human. He reflects on its earthly origins and heavenly taste once transformed by fat in the pan, after it meets the knife.
The point is: we have more in common with an onion than we might like. If we share a certain amount of our DNA with a banana ((between 41-50% depending on the source, certainly more than I’m comfortable with), how much more so with an onion? Onions have, in fact, five times the amount of DNA as humans. There’s a famous genetic test associated with the vegetable named the Onion Test. The Onion Test puts us humbly in our place. Scientists used to think the more DNA an organism had, the more complex a being it was. Into this enter the humble onion, with a cellar structure so simple you can identify the building blocks of life under a simple, middle-school science class microscope. That extra DNA, scientists concluded, must be junk DNA – DNA that serves no purpose. The DNA is on standby, like an onion on your cutting board, awaiting something no one can quite predict yet, its final purpose unclear. So, it is possible that when you cut an onion you condemn a complex being to oblivion. Or, alternately, to a higher purpose.
Every time we chop an onion, we remember other onions that we’ve chopped. Even water has memory, and an onion is not without its juices. We compound our onion experience, water, and layers, and chopping, spirit memory and muscle memory. This is all automatic, primal, and elemental. The steel of a good cut is tempered in water, supercooled and given strength by the cold. Every time we chop an onion, we visualize what it will become, therefore invoking its future. Past onions and future onions collide on the cutting board as we slice and dice. This happens all without consideration, but it bears dissection.
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In 2001, Benjamin Hale’s young cousin went missing in the Ozarks. The search for her led his family down unexpected paths—to a cult, a murder, and possibly a ghost:
They thought it best to leave town for a bit, and they asked Haley where she wanted to go. Her favorite thing she had ever seen in her short life was the Gateway Arch, which they’d visited on a family vacation, so they decided to take a short trip to St. Louis. During the drive up, Haley told them for the first time—told anyone for the first time—about her “imaginary friend,” Alecia.
From the moment Alecia first appeared in the story, Haley insisted on that slightly unorthodox spelling, although she did not yet perfectly know how to read. She also insisted on other specific details. Alecia was four years old. She had long, dark hair tied in pigtails. She wore a red shirt with purple sleeves, bell-bottom pants, and white sneakers. She had a flashlight. She guided Haley to the river.
“I never had imaginary friends before this experience,” Haley told me, “and I never had any after. And I never saw this particular imaginary friend again.” She did not think at any time that Alecia was a real child. “I was fully aware that this was a non-corporeal being that was with me. And she was a little girl, and we had conversations, we told stories, we played patty-cake, and she was just a very comforting presence. But I knew I was alone.” The hallucinations started later, after she’d already made it to the river. Alecia was not a vision of this sort. “I one hundred percent did not think there was another child with me. I knew, physically, I was alone.” But she also says that Alecia guided her to the river, which she didn’t know was there.
There is a phenomenon called third man syndrome, or third man factor: when some sort of unseen or incorporeal conscious presence seems to accompany people—often a person alone—going through a long, difficult, and frightening experience they do not know they will survive. It is not well understood. It may be some sort of emergency coping mechanism. It was most famously experienced by Sir Ernest Shackleton during one of his expeditions to the Antarctic; the mountaineer Reinhold Messner has also reported experiencing the phenomenon, as have the explorers Peter Hillary and Ann Bancroft. “During that long and racking march of thirty-six hours over the unnamed mountains and glaciers of South Georgia,” Shackleton wrote in his 1919 memoir, South, “it seemed to me often that we were four, not three.”
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If you knew you had a 50/50 chance of having a genetic mutation that would lead to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), a condition that would wipe your affect like a chalkboard, taking your personality, your language abilities, and your judgement, eventually rendering you unable even to manage toileting on your own, would you want to know? What would you do with the information? For The New York Times Magazine, Robert Kolker unpacks the terrifying dilemma faced by one family of nine siblings.
Barb decided to start a search of her own. She contacted the National Institutes of Health and learned about a condition that bore a striking resemblance to Christy and Mary’s symptoms: frontotemporal dementia, or FTD, which emerges in the prime of adult life — as young as 40, in some cases — and relentlessly attacks the part of the brain responsible for planning, organizing, expressing language, understanding social cues and exercising judgment. Unlike more common brain disorders like Alzheimer’s, FTD is confoundingly rare; researchers suggest that perhaps 60,000 Americans have it, though that estimate is complicated by how difficult it is to diagnose.
Christy wasn’t sad or delusional; she wasn’t even upset. It was more as if she were reverting to a childlike state, losing her knack for self-regulation. Her personality was diluting — on its way out, with seemingly nothing to replace it.
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Where does Tom Cruise live? Simple question—with anything but a simple answer. Based on tips from, among other sources, “a Brazilian woman who is quite possibly his most dedicated fan in the world,” writer Caity Weaver embarks on a journey to find the world’s most elusive movie star:
Cruise still takes part in promotional junkets and convivial late-night-talk-show chats, but his refusal to participate in the sort of in-depth journalistic interviews that (in theory, anyway) reveal some aspect of his true self has coincided, somewhat paradoxically, with an incredible surge in his commitment to infusing cinematic fantasies with reality. For unknown reasons it could be interesting to explore in an interview, reality has become very important to Cruise, who reveres it as a force more powerful than magic. It is vital to Cruise that the audience of “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One” have the opportunity to witness not a C.G.I. production of a feat, or even a seasoned stunt performer executing a dangerous act, but real footage of him, Tom Cruise, the 61-year-old father of three from Syracuse, N.Y., riding a motorcycle off a cliff.
This fetish for reality has become a keystone of Cruise’s persona, to the extent that many of his public appearances now take place in flying vehicles. Rather than accept an MTV Movie & TV Award in person in May, Cruise filmed his acceptance speech from the cockpit of a fighter jet as he piloted it through clouds, politely shouting, “I love entertaining you!” over the engine’s roar. Delivering “a special message from the set of @MissionImpossible” to his followers on Instagram, Cruise screamed while dangling backward off the side of an aircraft, “It truly is the honor of a lifetime!”
But reality does not exist only in movies. What is missing from Cruise’s fervid documentation of ultrarisky, inconceivably expensive, meticulously planned real-life events are any details about the parts of his real life that do not involve, for example, filming stunts for “Mission: Impossible” movies. My own mission, then, was simple: I was to travel to the ends of the Earth to see if it was possible to locate the terrestrial Cruise, out of context—to catch a glimpse, to politely shout one question at him, or at least to ascertain one new piece of intelligence about his current existence—in order to reintegrate him into our shared reality.
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Nearly every cuisine on the planet includes fried seafood, but none make it so central to the larger national identity as the British with fish and chips. But as Tom Lamont finds in his year of reportage along the Scottish coast, the once-thriving “chippy” sector is facing a difficult road. Come for the aggressively quaint shop names, stay for a surprisingly sober read. It’s not clickbait, but you’ll still be hooked.
Before the main danger to fish and chip shops was the quarterly energy bill, it was sudden fire. Ignored for a moment, the hot cooking fat can get too hot, rising to an auto-ignition point and exploding. In a single year – 2018 – there were serious fires at Old Salty’s in Glasgow, the Admiral in Overseal, Mr Chips in Fakenham, the Pilton Fryer in Pilton, the Fish Bar in Fenham, Crossroads in Kingstanding, Graylings in Fremington, the River Lane Fish Bar in Norfolk, the Portway Fish Bar in Rowley Regis, Bruno’s on Canvey Island, Jimmy’s Palace in Liverpool, Scoffs in Paignton and Moby Dick in Shirley. “Doesn’t matter how experienced you are,” said Chris Lewis, one of the owners of the Wee Chippy in Anstruther, “if something mechanical goes, or something catches, and you haven’t seen it – that’s it, that’s your time.”
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Human ingenuity in the face of crumbling infrastructure. One man’s quest to save a bird that might already be extinct. The cultural schism dividing a major musical genre. A personal essay braiding space and family. And a jungle trek gone horribly, horribly awry. These are our editors’ favorite reads of the week.
Ilir Gashi | The Guardian & Kosovo 2.0 | July 13, 2023 | 4,061 words
In 2012, I lived in Pristina, Kosovo for a few months. Much to the chagrin of my mother, I couldn’t receive mail at my apartment. I had no postal box or number; as far as I could tell, no one in the brutalist residential complex did. I informed my mom, who wouldn’t take “no address” for an answer, that she should send mail to the nearby NATO base; I had met someone posted there who offered to serve as a middleman. (Thanks again, Drew.) I had the privilege of being an American with a connection to a powerful institution. Still, I did what many people in the Balkans do when they need to get something from point A to point B: I asked a friend. Ilir Gashi’s essay—a runner-up for a European Press Prize—details how informal networks that move packages, letters, and passengers have developed in response to the Balkans’ disputed borders and entrenched poverty. Gashi worked as an ad-hoc courier, delivering medicine, documents, homemade food items, and even a doll, which a little girl on a trip to Belgrade left behind when her family returned to Pristina. “While the weather map on Radio Television of Serbia shows Pristina as part of Serbia,” Gashi writes, “as far as the Serbian postal service is concerned, this city doesn’t exist, just like other places in Kosovo where Serbs aren’t the majority. Private delivery services are way too expensive. The only way the doll could reach Pristina was for somebody to take it with them.” This is a beautiful story of everyday resilience. —SD
Lindsey Liles | Garden & Gun | May 24, 2023 | 4,371 words
Does the ivory-billed woodpecker still exist in Arkansas? If you ask Bobby Harrison, the answer is yes. If you ask pretty much everybody else, the answer is no. That hasn’t stopped Harrison from 2,000 sojourns into Arkansas swampland to find a bird that hasn’t been officially sighted since 1944. At any time, the U.S. federal government may declare the bird extinct, ending all environmental protections for the species; Harrison is trying to prove everyone wrong and the clock is ticking. Lindsey Liles’ piece for Garden & Gun is much more than simply a superbly written profile of Harrison and his majestic quarry. It is more than the story of one man’s quest. It is a paean to faith and perseverance, to belief, and above all, hope. “As it turns out, searching for the ivorybill feels exactly like buying a lottery ticket,” writes Liles. “Rationally, you know it won’t happen, but the if and could of it all—plus the mystery of the deep woods, where anything can be lost or found—keeps your heart racing and your eyes combing the landscape.” Take a chance and spend some time on this piece. It won’t take long before you’re rooting for Harrison to hit the jackpot. —KS
Emily Nussbaum | The New Yorker | July 17, 2023 | 9,528 words
I’m not what you’d call a country music fan. I’ve never been to Nashville. So in many ways, I’m exactly not the audience for Emily Nussbaum’s grand unpacking of the schism currently wracking the genre and the city. But I love a good cultural shift, and I love having my expectations upended—and her feature accomplishes both of those without breaking a sweat. It feels cheap to call what’s happening an ideological divide, but nothing else feels like it comes close. For years, Nussbaum demonstrates, country music has been ruled by the so-called “bro” variant of the genre, facile cosplay of working-class platitudes performed by wealthy suburbanites; yet, as more queer and Black and female and politically progressive artists find success, in part by pushing against the prevailing mores, they’re inevitably shunted into the country-adjacent genre “Americana.” In the long run, that means less radio play, lower sales, and ultimately a ghettoizing: y’all over there, us over here. Again and again, Nussbaum finds people and places that underscore this struggle; her scene work is effortless and plentiful, whether gathering with members of the musical collective Black Opry or soaking in the atmosphere at bro-country star Jason Aldean’s Nashville club. It’s tempting to write this off as parachute journalism, but Nussbaum grew up a country fan in the South, so there’s little baggage to weigh down the keen eye that made her such a dynamite TV critic for The New Yorker. What emerges is a memorable, hopeful, and sometimes maddening portrait of a machine in flux. It might not have made me a country fan, but it made me a fan of the people who are pushing that machine in long-overdue directions. —PR
Erica Vital-Lazare | The Baffler | July 19, 2023 | 3,914 words
Do you feel a certain tingle when you’ve stumbled on a great piece? I do. Erica Vital-Lazare’s beautiful braided essay on black holes—both those in space and the void her father created in deserting his family for the lure of Las Vegas—exacted a gravitational pull on my reading brain. Vital-Lazare doesn’t blame, chastise, or attempt to excuse her father’s neglect; she simply tries to understand. “Black holes are remnants,” she writes. “Their absence creates unfathomable weight…where no-thing can exist or escape. It is the uncreated space, where what was can never be again.” Humanity exists in the space where she cares for her aged, ailing father, in cooking turkey sausage instead of pork and serving unsugared jam to a man who abdicated his responsibility to take care of her as a child. For an essay that mines absence, it’s Vital-Lazare’s thoughtful observation and incisive prose that will fill you up. —KS
Melissa Johnson | Outside | July 18, 2023 | 4,273 words
I defy you not to squirm as you read Melissa Johnson’s account of her Guatemalan trek. Her visceral descriptions conjure up the sticky, itchy, sweaty reality of the jungle until you feel enveloped by it; a written Jumanji, if you will. The only romance here lies in the purpose of the trek: A marriage at El Mirador, the ruins of a Mayan city. (The ultimate in an inconvenient destination wedding.) Ten friends attend, and each struggles on the trek, but only Johnson gets bitten on the vagina by a tick, an incident she describes with as much eloquence as she does the wedding ceremony. It’s fun and funny but also an honest reflection on aging and lost time—not to mention a brutally effective reminder to remember bug repellant spray on your next jungle trip. —CW
Audience Award
Now for the piece that our readers loved the most this week:
Molly Young | The Paris Review | July 12, 2023 | 1,871 words
I have been to Disney World—but only as a child, and the memories are vague. I remember bright colors, noise, and the endless, miserable queue for Space Moutain. And being cross about it. (Such treasured memories make it money well spent for my parents.) I, therefore, enjoy those who enter the gates with a healthy dose of cynism, and Molly Young’s analytical take is no exception. But although she approaches things with humor, she does not quite shake off the wonder altogether—finding the most surprising part of Disney World to be people’s unerring positivity. Maybe I am the exception who managed to sulk through the experience. Sorry, Mum and Dad. —CW
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There’s been a storm brewing in Nashville, epicenter of country music, for some time now. Black, female, and liberal-minded artists are finding audiences like never before—but are also invariably shunted over to Americana, a distinct (and arguably contrived) genre. That separation keeps them off the radio, and out of the upper tiers of success. In investigating how one music can have two souls, Emily Nussbaum covers the waterfront with nuance and expertise.
Whenever I talked to people in Nashville, I kept getting hung up on the same questions. How could female singers be “noncommercial” when Musgraves packed stadiums? Was it easier to be openly gay now that big names like Brandi Carlile were out? What made a song with fiddles “Americana,” not “country”? And why did so many of the best tracks—lively character portraits like Josh Ritter’s “Getting Ready to Get Down,” trippy experiments like Margo Price’s “Been to the Mountain,” razor-sharp commentaries like Brandy Clark’s “Pray to Jesus”—rarely make it onto country radio? I’d first fallen for the genre in the nineties, in Atlanta, where I drove all the time, singing along to radio hits by Garth Brooks and Reba McEntire, Randy Travis and Trisha Yearwood—the music that my Gen X Southern friends found corny, associating it with the worst people at their high schools. Decades later, quality and popularity seemed out of synch; Music Row and Americana felt somehow indistinguishable, cozily adjacent, and also at war.
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