The city has violated a court order and its own policies by discarding the personal property of thousands of homeless people, who have lost medications, birth certificates, IDs, treasured family photos and the ashes of loved ones. Pro Publica and New Mexico In Depth distributed cards to unhoused people, asking what the losses meant to them:
On a recent morning, Christian Smith ran an errand, leaving a shopping cart carrying everything she owned near the Albuquerque, New Mexico, underpass where she’d been sleeping.
When she returned, the cart was nowhere to be found.
Most of the belongings, such as clothing, makeup and blankets, could be replaced in time. But she panicked when she realized that her dentures, acquired after months of dental appointments, were also gone. Without them, Smith believed, it would be more difficult to find a job, prolonging her time sleeping on the street.
“It’s hard to eat, it’s hard to talk—I sound like a little kid,” said the 42-year-old native New Mexican. “It’s embarrassing.”
…
On a recent afternoon, Gabriel Rodriguez left a black duffel bag outside an Albuquerque shelter while he grabbed lunch. It contained a sleeping bag and clothing, as well as handwritten letters from his grandmother, who has since died.
When Rodriguez returned, it was gone and city workers said it had already been hauled away. Rodriguez said he had carried the letters from his grandmother as a reminder that even when he was going through a rough period, she had continued to check up on him.
“Everyone else in my life had forgotten about me,” he said.
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Admittedly, the timing of this is weird: Hanif Abdurraqib and André 3000 talking about the flute album 3 Stacks dropped six months ago? But at the same time: Hanif Abdurraqib and André 3000 talking, period. As lyrical and loopy (respectively, and respectfully) as you’d hope for, with Abdurraqib making a compelling case that New Blue Sun isn’t just a flute album—it’s the exact kind of thing an artist needs to do to keep moving.
Pharoah Sanders never stayed in the same place too long. Neither did Nina Simone. Zev Love X walked out of KMD, found a mask, and MF DOOM was born. The distance between these sonic and aesthetic leaps, throughout Black music making, sometimes comes at a cost, but is the cost so much that an artist might sacrifice their own evolution, that is the question worth asking. As Don Cherry told us, “When people believe in boundaries, they become them.”
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• Uncovering a century-old love triangle.
• Missteps and mystery in a high-profile legal case.
• A coming-out story for the (advanced) ages.
• How a gaming juggernaut lost its way.
• The cat who tore a neighborhood apart.
Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh | The Baltimore Banner | May 8, 2024 | 2,467 words
I read a lot this week, but not many pieces spoke to me. Frankly, I think I craved something different. So it was easy to get swept away by this Baltimore Banner story: a tale of “lust and scandal and fortune” and, ultimately, a love triangle between a woman and two men. Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh recount how Joanna Meade, a resident of Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood, discovered a black tin full of juicy love letters inside the wall of her house during a bathroom renovation. All 67 letters were addressed to a woman named “Mrs. R.A. Spaeth,” and all except one were postmarked in 1920 or 1921. Reading the cursive penmanship and old-fashioned language was difficult, but Meade was quickly hooked; “It was like eavesdropping,” she tells the authors. She enlists the help of her neighbors, as well as the Banner’s staff, to decipher the correspondence and gather clues from across city archives and the internet to piece together the mystery: Why were these letters stashed away inside her house? Who was Mrs. Spaeth? Who is “R,” the man writing to her? The scans of envelopes, letters, photographs, and newspaper articles enhance the read, like we’re discovering each detail as it’s uncovered in the newsroom. While the story’s premise is not new—it reminds me, in fact, of a piece in our sister publication called “Castles in the Sky”—there’s so much here to like: Secrets hidden in an old house, waiting to be found. A community working together to uncover information (through Nextdoor, of all places). And the power and sway of writing, of these words handwritten on delicate paper, more than a century later. —CLR
Rachel Aviv | The New Yorker | May 13, 2024 | 13,339 words
The day a Rachel Aviv story drops is basically Christmas for me—everything she writes feels like a gift. With the latest entry in her unparalleled catalog of features, Aviv delves into the investigation of Lucy Letby, a British nurse who last year was convicted of killing seven infants and attempting to kill six others at the hospital where she worked. Demonized by the press and reviled by the public, Letby is only the fourth woman in UK history to receive a life sentence. When the verdict came down, the judge accused her of a “calculated and cynical campaign of child murder.” The problem, as Aviv shows in exacting detail, is that there is no evidence of such a campaign. I’m not exaggerating. There is no proof of malicious intent or action on Letby’s part. The prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on the fact that Letby was on duty when the babies died, but it’s not even clear that they were murdered—their deaths might have been a result of natural causes or medical mistakes (and not necessarily Letby’s). Aviv’s piece is a brilliant analysis of failures within systems: the UK’s revered but overburdened National Health Service; a law enforcement apparatus eager for scapegoats; and a media sector practically salivating for content about a so-called “angel of death.” (I urge you to spend time on social media looking at side-by-side comparisons of Aviv’s story and previous reporting about Letby. The differences are shocking.) Ultimately, Aviv does what the systems she examines never did: she musters clear and convincing evidence to make her case. To read more about how she did this, check out this excellent interview she did with Nieman Lab. —SD
Abby Tickel | Maclean’s | May 6, 2024 | 1,846 words
When I read Abby Tickel’s essay for Maclean’s, I found joy in an unexpected place. Tickel, who was assigned male at birth, first attempted to come out to her parents at age 10, in 1964. Shamed by her father for her so-called shortcomings as a male, she resigned herself to learning how to live life as a man. She married twice and had children. Keeping her true self hidden, she never dared to Google “transgender” for fear of being outed by her search history until one day, at age 66, she typed it into her Facebook search bar. Stunned and inspired by the community of people she discovered online, she came out to her wife. (If you have tissues handy, now would be the time to grab one.) “But for me, telling her the truth lifted a weight off my shoulders,” she writes. “It took tremendous energy to spend my whole life acting. The day I came out to her, it was like the sun shone for the first time.” Tickel’s wife was shocked after 18 years of marriage, yet it wasn’t long before surprise turned into loving support. Reading the piece, you get to share in Tickel’s joy at finally feeling truly seen for the first time in her life—and revel in the power she feels in paying it forward, by doing LGBTQI+ advocacy and education. I wiped away tears reading about how her life and outlook have changed: “I used to be a quiet person who rarely smiled and barely had friends. Now, I wake up every day looking forward to what’s ahead. . . . I’m finally the person I always was.” There are many beautiful things about Tickel’s piece, but the most beautiful of all is getting to hear her story in her own words. —KS
Nick Zarzycki | Defector | May 13, 2024 | 4,965 words
I’ve never played Magic: The Gathering. That’s not a nerd-doth-protest-too-much thing; I’ve got enough 20-sided dice in my house to know better. But it still feels like an important thing to point out, if only to assure you that you don’t need to know anything about the card game in order to enjoy Nick Zarzycki’s story. No matter how little you know about Magic, you know of it. It’s huge, and it’s been huge for 30 years. Pokémon wouldn’t exist without Magic. It single-handedly invented an entire genre of tabletop games in which players build decks of cards for battle, with each card having a different effect. But this is much more than the story of a man named Richard Garfield and his era-defining creation. (Though that story is fascinating in its own right.) It’s also the story of how Magic—or, more precisely, Magic’s publisher—strayed from Garfield’s intentions almost immediately. See, Magic decks aren’t fixed; new cards are released all the time. Garfield didn’t want this to be a game that rewarded those who spent more money to get more powerful cards, but over time, that’s exactly what happened. By one count, there are more than 27,000 unique cards that can be played in the game; meanwhile, the game’s publisher continuously tries to push players to use an online platform that prioritizes microtransactions and robs the game of its human element. Enshittification is all too common these days, but we’re accustomed to it happening online; with solid reporting and an accessible tone, Zarzycki’s piece winds up as a stunning indictment of how Magic’s publisher managed to do the same IRL. —PR
Andrea Sachs | The Washington Post | May 9, 2024 | 2,882 words
Welcome to the story of Kitty Snows, who lived in Foggy Bottom. While this may sound like the start of a fairy tale, it contains considerably more lawyers and strongly worded letters than Hans Christian Andersen tended to include. Kitty Snows is a cat who participated in the Blue Collar Cat program, a scheme to rehome strays that cannot be domesticated (having witnessed too much on the streets). Kitty gets adopted by the community of Snows Court in Foggy Bottom, belonging to “everyone and no one.” She lives in a box on a lawn until two locals—Tom Curtis and Barbara Rohde—find her with sores on her nose and take her to the vet. With the vet deeming her unfit for outside life, they move her to Rohde’s fancy apartment. As Andrea Sachs points out, no one knows how Kitty felt about her relocation from a box to a 14th-floor condo with “impressionistic paintings of a Russian forest . . . [and a] baby grand piano backed up against soaring windows.” (When two detectives turn up at the door, they are informed that Kitty is “unavailable.”) What we do know: the Foggy Bottom Association is not pleased, and the fight boils down to whether Kitty was stolen or rescued. The legal ramifications of this neighborhood dispute could have made for a dry read, but Sachs maintains a wry tone and delivers every detail delightfully. I am sure that, if available for comment, Kitty Snows—no longer of Foggy Bottom but of Watergate West—would agree. (Don’t worry, the “Kittygate” reference is there.) —CW
Audience Award
What recommendation attracted the most readers? The envelope, please:
Lakeidra Chavis, Daphne Duret, and Joseph Neff | The Marshall Project | May 1, 2024 | 3,122 words
Explorer programs, overseen by the Boy Scouts, are supposed to foster an interest in policing. As this investigation reveals, based on thousands of pages of documents and extensive interviews, the programs have faced nearly 200 allegations of misconduct. The Marshall Project uncovers what appears to be rampant abuse of power and influence, with profound consequences. —SD
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For Maclean’s Abby Tickel shares her emotional journey of coming out as transgender at age 66, and the joy and efficacy she’s found in making new friends, LGBTQI+ education and advocacy, and most importantly, finally getting the chance to be herself.
Recently, I led a bird-watching event at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary in the heart of the city. I invited a friend of mine who brought a few other younger trans men with him, plus a group of Rainbow Elders. It was a cold and blustery day, but we saw some great birds and shared good conversation. Halfway through the event, one of the young men told me that he hadn’t left his apartment much, and he was thrilled to be outside, getting sunshine and fresh air. He said it meant a lot to be talking to real people, rather than texting or speaking on Zoom. Afterwards, we went for brunch at a coffee shop. The friend I’d invited later told me that the sandwich he ate there was the first decent meal he’d had in a long time. It was just a bird-watching event, but it helped people in ways I didn’t expect.
After coming out, you begin to change in quite a big way. Everything can shift: who your friends are, who you can partner with, how society sees you. Many Rainbow Elders came out later in life too, and they understand what it’s like to have played the role of another gender for decades, and the difficulty of trying to shake that. In our generation, there are so many people who have gone through trauma, especially at the hands of our postwar parents and a bigoted society. Each Rainbow Elder has their own story, but we all share a similar vulnerability.
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Brendan Koerner has a long, storied career reporting on stories and characters who feel almost too vivid to be true. For his latest at Wired, though, he turns that formula inside out—and becomes one of the army of hidden support workers who assume the identity of an OnlyFans creator in order to maintain chats with paying subscribers. Hilarious and deeply depressing in nearly equal measure, but never without the empathy that Koerner brings to all his work.
I found it quite easy at first to write the sort of run-of-the-mill smut the Serbs expected. (I’ll spare you the gory details, except to say I cribbed some color from Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 sci-fi film Strange Days.) For the less explicit chats, I imagined Miko offering to cook the subscriber a pasta dinner and feigning appreciation for his TV recommendations. I did make one glaring error that could have led to an entire chat being voided as unusable: Due to my hasty misreading of Miko’s bio, I characterized her as a fan of spicy ramen when she actually prefers her food mild. “I have to ask you to pay attention to these little facts,” Daniel wrote in his assessment. “In this case, these lines mentioning the food could have been rejected, and that could have led to the dialog’s rejection.”
But despite that mistake and a few other hiccups—my punctuation seemed unnatural because it was too accurate—Daniel offered me the job. I was to be paid 7 cents per line of dialog, with each dialog running for a minimum of 40 lines. For my first assignment, I had to compose 20 dialogs involving sex in public places—10 at the beach, five inside a car, and five in a forest or garden. There was a list of particular sex acts I had to include, as well as a stricture that I refrain from using emoji in more than 30 percent of lines. I had only 48 hours to complete the task.
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Joanna Meade moved into an old house in Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood. When they removed a wall during a bathroom renovation, they discovered a black tin box hidden among the plumbing. Inside, she found 67 “juicy turn-of-the-century love letters,” all except one postmarked 1920 or 1921. Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh recount what Meade, her neighbors, and Baltimore Banner staff pieced together from the correspondence.
A woman in Waverly sent a newspaper article on Dr. Reynold Albrecht Spaeth. The zoologist and Johns Hopkins public health professor was ahead of his time, giving lectures on the merits of birth control and education for women factory workers. By 1920, he was 34 and already renowned in the field of immunology.
The love letters were to his wife, Edith.
What a sweet romance: an esteemed Hopkins scientist, whose research took him away from home, writing love letters back to his wife in Baltimore. Or so it seemed.
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A fabric store owner, a surgeon, a TV-news traffic anchor, a Latin-dance-music D.J., a church organist, a letter carrier, and a firefighter share career highlights and their very last day of work before retirement.
There has always been a certain feeling of euphoria that comes to Tony Pabón as he looks out at the dance floor from his D.J. table at Salsannati Dance Company. “To play music and have people start to clap or move their body or dance — that’s powerful,” he says. “I have to pinch myself sometimes.” So when his job started to feel more like a chore than a joy, Pabón knew it was time to retire. (He will continue working a day job at a bank.) “Lately, I’m not having the passion,” he says. “I’m doing it because it’s my duty.” Besides, standing for four-hour sets was taking a toll on his knees.
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