Nearly every day, a child unintentionally fires a gun and injures or kills someone, often themselves. It’s one of the most preventable forms of gun violence—but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to solve. Suzy Khimm tells the story of Skye McBride, a toddler who shot herself in the head when she found a gun at her father’s home. Her father has since been charged with a crime under a Michigan law pertaining to safe gun storage:
This clearly wasn’t a drive-by shooting, police concluded. But it did fit another pattern, one that unfolds too often across America: curious young children picking up guns and unintentionally firing them, often with catastrophic consequences.
Investigators found that Tolbert had left the loaded revolver on his bed, police told her relatives the next day. While her father was in another room, they said, Skye had grabbed the revolver, held it with the barrel pointing toward her face, and pulled the trigger.
As Skye lay unconscious in a hospital bed in the days that followed—with doctors telling her family that even if she survived, she might never speak or walk again—local officials prepared to make a major announcement.
The day before Skye shot herself, Michigan’s new firearms storage law went into effect. The measure made it a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison if a gun is left unsecured and a child finds it and injures or kills someone. Skye’s father would be the first person charged under the law.
“I did not ever dream that within days of the law going into effect, we would need it,” state Sen. Kristen McDonald Rivet, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, said at the news conference announcing the charges, six days after the shooting. “But here we are.”
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For Eater, Jaya Saxena interviews Estelle Lamotte, Sodexo’s director of the Olympic Village, and senior executive chef Jeff Leidy to learn how they’ll meet individual food requirements for 15,000 athletes who must fuel medal-winning performances at the Paris olympics. Anyone have three million bananas to spare?
I’m curious how you went about sourcing the sheer quantity of ingredients that you have for the Olympics, while still ensuring that the quality is good enough, that this is sustainable, and that this is going to be flavorful, good food for everybody eating it.
EL: The meat will be 100 percent French, mostly vegetables from France, and the rest will be European. We are fortunate enough that we are physically able to get the resources from nearby. There are a couple of exceptions, but that’s because of the volume and the quantity and the range of products we have. And it’s great that the producers have played a part as well. Since last year, we could give them the information of what was needed to be planted and harvested according to our needs, and they’ve adapted. Eggs will be one of the massive products that will be consumed during the games. For the purchasing team, and procurement, it’s been a fantastic journey to really start from the beginning of the chain and work alongside producers.
There are a few products we need to source internationally: coffee, chocolate, bananas. Bananas are an athlete’s favorite thing. We anticipate getting two or three million bananas. At peak time there will be 15,000 people living in one place. So that means per day, at peak time, we’re going to go up to 40,000 meals. At the end of the entire journey, it’s over 1.2 million meals. I was working on quantifying the volume of coffee, how to produce it. And then someone said, “Can we get the coffee grinds back to us to use as a fertilizer?” So what’s the volume of grinds we’ll produce? I’’s 20 tons of coffee, so that means it’ll be 40 tons of coffee residue. But all of this is going to be used to grow mushrooms.
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Science has come a long way in uncovering some of the mysteries of Earth. But we don’t know where and how life emerged on the planet. “For more than two centuries,” writes Ferris Jabr, “Western science has regarded the origin of life as something that happened on or in Earth, as if the planet were simply the setting for a singular phenomenon, the manger that housed a miracle.” This thought-provoking read explores the idea that the living creatures on Earth—humans, animals, plants, microorganisms—aren’t just products of evolutionary processes over millions of years, but rather participants in their own evolution. In other words, we are Earth. Jabr recounts his descent deep into the Earth’s crust, witnessing the very hot, very active interior of the planet—a subterranean environment teeming with ancient intraterrestrial microbes that may well have helped form the continents and laid the foundations for terrestrial life.
The history of life on Earth is the history of life’s remaking Earth. Nearly two and a half billion years ago, photosynthetic ocean microbes called cyanobacteria permanently altered the planet, suffusing the atmosphere with oxygen, imbuing the sky with its familiar blue hue and initiating the formation of the ozone layer, which protected new waves of life from harmful exposure to ultraviolet radiation. Today plants and other photosynthetic organisms appear to help maintain a level of atmospheric oxygen high enough to support complex life but not so high that Earth would erupt in flames at the slightest spark. Marine plankton drive chemical cycles on which all other life depends and emit gases that increase cloud cover, modifying global climate. Kelp forests, coral reefs and shellfish store huge amounts of carbon, buffer ocean acidity, improve water quality and defend shorelines from severe weather. Animals as diverse as elephants, prairie dogs and termites continually reconstruct the planet’s crust, facilitating the flow of water, air and nutrients and improving the prospects of millions of species. And micro-organisms, like those I observed deep within Earth’s crust, are now thought to be important players in many geological processes.
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This is an excerpt from issue no. 152, “The Extra Mile.”
One hundred and twenty runners stood in a clearing overlooking the Mississippi River, listening as a man with a curly gray beard needled them. He checked his watch; an unlit cigarette dangled from his fingers. “Thirty seconds,” he announced to the crowd. “You’re running out of time to change your mind.”
Over the next ten days, these ultramarathoners hoped to cover 314 miles on foot. From the clearing in southeastern Missouri, they’d board a ferry to cross the river, disembark in Kentucky, traverse a narrow corner of the state, then cross Tennessee to finish at the Rock, a cliff on a ranch in northern Georgia. “Remember, the earliest quit was at the Tennessee state line,” the man with the beard said. Someone in the crowd yelled out, “I can beat that.” Everyone laughed. Tennessee’s border with Kentucky was less than ten miles away.
Other than the ferry ride, the participants would have to run or walk every inch of the course. Most wore a hat to protect their face from the July sun and carried a small backpack with water and other essentials. Some stood with a crew, people who would supply them with necessities along the course. Runners without crews were called “screwed” runners. Among them were the Barcelonas.
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Todd and Allison Barcelona, 57 and 55, respectively, had completed 20 ultramarathons together. Allison stood with her hands clasped in front of her polka-dot running skirt. Todd’s nerves had kept him awake for most of the previous night, and he felt a little sick to his stomach. But evidence of his grit and the battles he’d already waged in his life was etched into his skin: a jagged-edged divot in his lower left shin.
“Five seconds,” the bearded man warned. A dark wall of clouds encroached on the pale peach sunrise behind him.
At 7:30 a.m. exactly, the man transferred his cigarette to his mouth and lit it, cupping his left hand around the flame to shield it from the wind. He tilted his head back and exhaled a puff of smoke.
“You’re off!” he announced.
Whooping, the throng surged forward. The 2023 Last Annual Volunteer State Road Race was under way.
The beginning of Todd and Allison’s story is the stuff of a sweet country song. They attended the same elementary and high schools in Memphis, where Allison was a year behind Todd. When their friendship turned romantic, Todd asked Allison if she would go with him. Allison asked him where he wanted to go. He still teases her about that.
When they were dating, they mainly stayed home, preferring to save money for their future. Allison’s parents joked that they were “16 going on 30.” Allison finished school a year early to be with Todd; they graduated together in 1984. Three years later they were married—Allison was 19 and Todd was 21.
The Barcelonas welcomed a daughter in 1988, another about a year later, and a son in 1991. After they moved to Atoka, a small community about 40 miles north of Memphis, Allison gave birth to their youngest child, Ashleigh. Allison worked full-time as a paralegal, and Todd as a line mechanic at a Cadillac dealership.
In his mid-forties, Todd was diagnosed with high cholesterol. To avoid medication, he changed his lifestyle. He bought a treadmill and began running. He didn’t enjoy it at first, but it grew on him, and after a while he began jogging outdoors.
Eventually, Todd graduated to races. He enjoyed the camaraderie he felt with other runners. Each finisher medal he received was a point of pride. On August 31, 2014, Todd ran a marathon in Tupelo, Mississippi. His goal was to finish in under five hours; he did that with about ten minutes to spare. Allison ran a half-marathon at the same time.
Whether racing or training, the Barcelonas usually ran separately. Allison liked to run with friends, while Todd kept to himself. It might have stayed that way if not for what happened on September 29, 2014.
During their workdays, Todd and Allison stayed in touch. That afternoon, Allison called Todd to let him know that Ashleigh, the only Barcelona child still living at home, wasn’t going to her guitar lesson as planned. When Todd didn’t pick up, Allison assumed that he was still working. But when she looked at the clock a little while later and saw that it was almost 6:30, she got worried. Todd always called her by six.
When their friendship turned romantic, Todd asked Allison if she would go with him. Allison asked him where he wanted to go. He still teases her about that.
With Ashleigh standing next to her at the kitchen table, Allison called her husband again. A male voice she didn’t recognize answered. She still recalls how it felt hearing a stranger on her husband’s phone: “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else.”
The man asked her who she was, but she didn’t respond and repeated the question to him. The man said that he was with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and that Todd had been in an accident. He was at a hospital in downtown Memphis. Allison felt sick.
Allison hung up the phone and turned to Ashleigh. “Dad’s been in an accident,” she said. “We have to go.” Ashleigh said nothing, and mother and daughter got in the car and left.
As Allison drove, she and Ashleigh were both crying. They began pleading with God aloud. “Lord, please, please keep him here,” Allison prayed. “Please don’t let this be his time.” Later she recalled, “I told Him I couldn’t do life by myself.… We still needed Todd.”
En route to the hospital, Allison tried to take the Austin Peay Highway into Memphis, but it was closed. She didn’t know that it was because of what had happened to Todd.
fter getting off the ferry, the Barcelonas climbed a ramp to a two-lane road and strolled past a blue “Welcome to Kentucky” sign. Rounding a curve, they passed a cornfield, ears heavy on the stalks. Vol State, or LAVS, as this ultramarathon is sometimes called, winds through urban and rural communities. The course’s terrain is also varied—sometimes flat, sometimes steep.
The Barcelonas, like most of the other race participants, walked to start with, because speed isn’t the most important factor for a successful finish in Vol State. With such a sizable distance to cover, most racers gain little by bolting ahead and tiring themselves out. The key to Vol State is the ability to put one foot in front of the other, hour after hour, day after day. “Many will fail,” a website advertising the race explains. “But, for those who find the steely will and muster the sheer dogged tenacity to overcome the impossible obstacles … [it] can be a transcendental experience.”
Nonetheless, participants would need to manage their pace, because per the race’s rules, Vol State must be finished within ten days. At 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. every day, runners are required to check in via their phones to report mileage. A spreadsheet tracks their progress, and among the names in the document, one always stands out: Oprah. That is the moniker given to the minimum pace—15.7 miles every 12 hours—runners must maintain to stay in the race. Every morning and evening, Oprah advances up the spreadsheet, and any participant whose name falls below hers risks disqualification if they don’t hustle.
Quirks like Oprah are one of many attributable to Vol State’s founder, the man with the beard at the starting line. Even the full name of the ultra—the Last Annual Volunteer State Road Race—is an inside joke. Amused by race directors who, confident about the long-term prospects, declare an inaugural event the “first annual,” Vol State’s founder decided to dub his the last. (It’s now been run for more than forty years.) The founder once explained his choice to call the minimum pace Oprah: “She is real life. A world of celebrities and politics and ‘luxury.’ ” In other words, she represents the world the runners had left behind when they entered Vol State.
Even the founder’s name has a peculiar backstory. Born Gary Cantrell, he began using Lazarus Lake online years ago for privacy reasons. Now he’s equally well-known by his self-anointed nickname, or Laz for short. In the ultra world he’s a legend: a showman whose long, grueling races, designed with signature flair, have attracted a devoted following.
As the Barcelonas and other runners headed toward Hickman, Kentucky, the first town on the Vol State route, a boxy van approached. This was the meat wagon—another race fixture, driven by a woman named Jan. When runners fell too far behind Oprah, or if their willpower was simply crushed, they’d call Jan and wait for her to deliver them from the course. For now she drove alongside the crowd, a harbinger of what would be the runners’ greatest obstacle: the temptation to quit. Then she honked and drove on.
Chatting with two other runners, the Barcelonas entered Hickman. Todd stopped to take a photo of a black-and-white mural of Mark Twain. The author had once described Hickman as “a pretty town perched on a handsome hill.” Touches of Twain’s pretty town were still visible in the decorative brickwork and keyhole doorways of buildings along Hickman’s main drag, but few places seemed to be occupied. One structure, a popular hotel of yore, stood out with its horseshoe-shaped entryway and windows running the length of its facade. “LaClede,” the name of the shuttered hotel, was painted above the door.
Time and creativity were invested in building Hickman. Now it was a shell of its former self.
On the afternoon that changed his life, Todd was driving home from work in his sky blue 1994 GMC Sierra truck. He had purchased it used and lowered the suspension so it sat closer to the ground. It did not have airbags.
Todd approached the intersection of Austin Peay Highway and Old Brownsville Road heading north. A Shell gas station, fields of crops, and stands of trees filled his view. The light ahead turned yellow, and he continued through the intersection. A gray Honda Accord driving south made a left at the light at the same time, failing to yield the right of way. It smashed into Todd’s truck almost head-on.
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For High Country News, naturalist Priyanka Kumar relates the singular thrill of encountering multiple long-billed curlews an hour north of the Rio Mora National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. She highlights the commitment of local ranchers whose grassland conservation strategies are helping to preserve precious habitat for the birds.
As soon as Michael pulled over to the shoulder of the road, I moved toward the two-foot-tall curlew. A second curlew, perhaps its mate, stood in the same field, some 30 feet to its right. The pair screamed almost in unison, determined to scare me away. I suspected that they had a nest nearby; as part of the courting ritual, the male scrapes a shallow nest in the ground, and the female later lays a clutch of four mottled eggs in the depression. Maybe this pair had chicks, since neither parent seemed to be sitting on a nest. Cur-lee! Cur-lee! The female’s spectacularly extended bill, over eight inches long and more curved at the tip than her companion’s, moved almost robotically as she opened it wide, emitting shrill staccato cries.
The pair flew over me, arcing across the road and screeching as they flew. Then they soared into the field on the other side, never far above my head. Soon, I saw another pair of curlews flying over the second field. Four curlews! As the first pair landed, I saw the female deftly pluck a grasshopper from the ground and swallow it. Moments later, she downed another.
If I had to pick one bird species to venerate, it would be the curlew. The reasons are partly anthropomorphic — these large, gangly birds are fiercely protective of their young, and the fathers stay behind to rear the chicks after the mothers fly on to central Mexico or some other wintering grounds. Though curlews are monogamous, a paired male and female may spend the winter in different places before returning each spring to the same grassland to breed. Talk about a couple giving each other space! The pair rears the chicks for the first two or three weeks; after the mother leaves for her wintering grounds, the father stays until the chicks can fly away from the nest site, usually another two or three weeks. Compare the devotion of curlew fathers to, say, hummingbird dads, who typically have nothing to do with chick-rearing.
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Carla Dove heads the Smithsonian Institution’s Feather Identification Lab. There, they use forensic ornithology—which involves identifying birds from their parts, both big and small—to better understand the damage caused when birds strike airplanes. The goal is two-fold: to allow manufacturers to build damage-resistance into their jets and to help ground crews ensure that airports become unappealing habitat for local and migratory birds, for the safety of the flying public.
Today Dove’s lab inspects around 11,000 dead birds a year. After Sully’s plane hit the water, federal investigators sent in 69 bagged samples. Sometimes the remnants are relatively whole: a carcass, large bone fragments, a severed head. Sometimes they’re just snarge, which must be carefully wiped from fuselages, wings, and the inside of engines using paper towels or alcohol wipes to preserve bird DNA.
As with most detective work, identifying birds is both art and science. Largely intact samples can often be matched to corpses in the Smithsonian’s library. When bird leftovers are particularly gooey, they’re analyzed by DNA-sequencing machines that the Museum of Natural History keeps in-house. Tissue samples are prepared as slides and placed under a microscope, where Dove’s team looks for minuscule details that can help them make a match with samples from the collection.
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Conor Niland clearly has some bitterness toward his time on tennis tours, but he still presents a clear-eyed picture of the harsh realities of being a low-seeded player, struggling to improve your ranking. It’s a hard life: to work toward a dream that remains just a little out of reach. I appreciated hearing about the graft of those struggling to make it—a story we rarely hear.
There are three tiers in the hierarchy of men’s professional tennis. The ATP Tour is the sport’s top division, the preserve of the top 100 male tennis players in the world. The Challenger Tour is populated mainly by players ranked between 100 and 300 in the world. Below that is the Futures tour, tennis’s vast netherworld of more than 2,000 true prospects and hopeless dreamers.
I wasn’t schlepping my way through the lower ranks of the professional tour for the money or the prestige, both of which were in short supply. I, like everyone else, was there to remove myself from the clutches of the lower tiers. The Futures tour sometimes felt like a circle of hell, but in practical terms it’s better understood as purgatory: a liminal space that exists only to be got out of as quickly as possible.
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