The top 5 longreads of the week

Included:

• An unpleasant first-hand account of homelessness
• The Politics of a Ranch Murder
• Lessons from an aloof horse
• Imitation of nature’s gift economy
• Simmering tensions in the heart of London

Patrick Fealey | esquire | November 14, 2024 | 9,552 words

You’ve read reports about the homelessness crisis. You’ve heard the voices of the homeless and seen the analysis of the many, many factors that have contributed to the increase. But you’ve probably never read a more powerful first-hand account of what it’s like to have no home in this country. Patrick Fealey was a writer all his life; First as an award-winning newspaper reporter and critic, then as an unemployed man struggling with manic depression, and then as someone living in his car in a seaside town in Rhode Island, writing all day on an old laptop plugged into the lighter was, and slept in a dorm room in Walmart parking lot at night. Fealey is under no illusions about the medication he needs to function or the beer he needs to cope with his current circumstances. Nor is he under any illusions about the parade of police officers who confront him under shaky pretexts, about the social safety net that is never enough, or about the people who avoid even acknowledging his existence. “If ‘I think, therefore I am’ is true,” he writes, “we are people who are. This is us and we stand on this ground. If you deny us the ground, you deny us our “I am.” Isn’t that a negation of our existence? We are here and we are you and we are yours.” Fealey saves his lyricism for his fiction and poetry; His prose needs no embellishment to break through your defenses. The uncertainty, the instability, the Danger This permeates his life and enters your brain from the side. I don’t know if Fealey is still on the streets or if paying for this story helped him get out of his car and into permanent housing. But I know that even if he is in a warm and safe place, there are many hundreds of thousands who are not – and his article ensures that no one who reads it will ever forget that fact. —PR

SC Cornell | The New Yorker Review of Books | November 16, 2024 | 4,107 words

At first glance, this is a story about a death and a subsequent court case. On January 30, 2023, a Mexican named Gabriel Cuen Buitimea, who had just crossed the border near Nogales, Arizona, was shot and killed by a rancher named George Alan Kelly. (His defense has suggested that someone else may have been responsible for the shooting; there is no evidence to support that claim.) But the details of what happened that day and later at Kelly’s murder trial are more than just compelling Narrative. They also serve as a vehicle for examining a terrible, urgent question: Why are so many Americans eager to kill people on the country’s doorstep, or at least leave them to die there? SC Cornell combines the history of the Border Patrol with an interpretation of contemporary politics to show how the border functions as a dehumanizing agent. When people cross that line, or in some cases simply approach it, their lives don’t simply lose meaning – they become fair game. “As both parties continue to militarize the border,” writes Cornell, “Republicans have begun to express what can hardly be considered a drive to kill.” This has seeped into the broader public consciousness — or perhaps it flows both ways . Many of Kelly’s supporters, for example, insisted that the shooting of Buitimea was “patriotic.” Cornell’s story is chilling in its clarity and punctuated by reminders of the hypocrisy at work in popular mythologies about the border. Kelly, for example, lives on Social Security, “a fund funded by undocumented immigrants.” Still, he keeps an AK-47 at his door, just in case the people who help him make a living come by. —SD

Sterry Butcher | The New York Times Magazine | November 12, 2024 | 3,896 words

There are many things I liked about Sterry Butcher’s New York Times Magazine Profile of rider Warwick Schiller and Sherlock, the seemingly distant horse that changed Schiller’s life. There are fascinating facts about horses. (Did you know that horses form friendships based on trust and mutual benefit, and that horse lovers scratch each other’s necks with their teeth to scratch the place they can’t reach?) There’s Schiller, the main character, one experienced rider who is used to training not only horses, but also their people. There is Sherlock, the equine antagonist, an emotionally flat horse as a riddle. However, this piece is about much more than just an old dog learning a new trick. To make a connection with Sherlock, Schiller had to stand still and watch. Closely. Sherlock replied when he felt like he was being seen. By observing the slightest stimulus and Sherlock’s reaction, Schiller concluded that the horse was far from aloof – it was exceptionally sophisticated in the way it communicated its discomfort as a prey animal. Schiller discovered that in order to be present for horses and people alike, he had to understand and deal with his own feelings and past traumas. “Through working with the horse, Schiller learned other aspects of his own character,” Butcher writes. “Old habits, like the tendency to talk at people instead To People, started falling off. “I learned to listen from horses,” he says. “Listen, not tell.” There are many lessons to be learned from this piece, but perhaps the most compelling takeaway is that just when you think you know everything, you realize there is still so much to learn. —KS

Robin Wall Kimmerer and Jenny Odell | Orion | November 19, 2024 | 2,698 words

Last year I noticed a hardcover edition of Lichens of sweet grass on our shelf. It’s my husband’s book and I’ve never opened it. But after reading this inspiring conversation between Jenny Odell and the book’s author, Potawatomi scientist Robin Wall Kimmerer, I pulled it off the shelf; I wanted to read more from Kimmerer. My favorite read this year encourages us to look to nature for solutions to our many failing human systems. In this discussion they talk about Kimmerer’s new book, The serviceberryand circularity and reciprocity in the natural world. Everything that is consumed is regenerated; nothing is lost. “I mean, think about it,” says Kimmerer, “every breath we take is oxygen exhaled by plants, a so-called waste product.” In return, we exhale carbon dioxide, which occurs in a cycle that most that we take for granted goes straight to the plants: “It is the ultimate biological poetry, my breath is your breath, and life is magnified through exchange.” Shouldn’t human economies emulate this?” Odell and Kimmerer discuss how one Gift economy looks like: People take responsibility, learn from healthy and biodiverse ecosystems, and cultivate mutually beneficial relationships that evolve over time (as opposed to relationships that extract and destroy). Maybe not always see You, but all around us there are gifts: light, water, plants, earth. Kimmerer asks, “Are there ways we might begin to restore our ability to see things as the gifts that they are?” She asks us to pay attention to nature: “It is an act of resistance, to reclaim your attention from what the market demands of you.” As an interviewer, Odell’s anecdotes and observations are equally insightful – I love her thoughts on water, the give and take of gardening, and the benefits of shared physical labor. The whole conversation is a gift. –CLR

Francisco García | The fence | November 12, 2024 | 3,430 words

I worked in a post production house in Soho, London. I remember smugly carrying cassettes between editing bays (yes, cassettes) and eating a lot of free cookies meant for customers. I thought I was pretty cool. Not me – Soho was the cool one. The narrow streets radiated vibrancy from every colorful corner and busy alley. As I sipped warm beer on a street corner outside a crowded, steamy pub, I watched businesses fail (businesses and drugs at the same rate), commiserated with tourists staring at the street names hung hopelessly high on brick walls, and swore at young people Guys in salmon-pink trousers and stand-up collars meander to Soho House and feel the warmth of couples embracing under historic arches. It felt alive, on the verge of something more. Temporary. Not once did I think about the actual residents of Soho – until now. In this piece for The fenceFrancisco Garcia explores the underlying tensions in this densely packed square kilometer of central London, reporting on a “three-way confrontation between ‘business’, local government and residents”. (Pedestrianization and outdoor dining are particular points of contention.) Soho’s steady gentrification has resulted in a drastic decline in its population since the heady days of 1881, when it numbered 16,608. There are only about 2,600 regulars left, many of whom are “long-term social housing tenants rather than wayward millionaires.” But despite falling numbers, a strong community organization called The Soho Society still takes exception to many new development plans, much to the chagrin of property developers such as Soho Estates (run by larger-than-life son-in-law John James). a former Soho porn baron). I really appreciate that Garcia made me think about this area in a new way – and made a land dispute fascinating. I was filled with nostalgia as he entered and walked along these magical streets as “(P)post theatergoers streamed out of theaters to mingle with the spirited dregs of the after-work crowd” and reached a “crowd of freshly sick people.” . . proudly splashed outside the entrance to Tottenham Court Road.” Good times. –CW

Audience Award

Our most read editorial tip of the week is: