months
Growing up in a big Italian family, I always enjoyed Sunday afternoons filled with bowls of spaghetti and meatballs cooked by my nana. Winters meant my dad would grind meat in the basement to make soppressata, or “soupy.”Throughout middle school, high school, and college, I took six years of Italian,…
Six months ago, my husband and I uprooted our lives, moving to a little town on the coast and away from the metropolis of Johannesburg, where I spent the last 32 years. Hermanus, South Africa (my new home) is small — a population of 100,000, compared to Johannesburg’s 6 million.In…
On our first morning in Spain, my husband opened our hotel window to a courtyard filled with the sounds of silverware gently clinking against plates, quiet, relaxed chatter, and a musician playing guitar below. Loading audio narration… No sirens. No horns. No one was rushing. People were sitting down to…
My partner was laid off in January of last year. Hundreds of applications later, he’d only landed two interviews with no job offers. Loading audio narration… We had managed to stay optimistic during the job search, using the time to travel and see family, but our positive attitudes began to…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kathy Lemoine, 58, who lives in Lawrenceville, Georgia. Her son, Andrew Reaster, died on August 9, 2025, from colon cancer. This story has been edited for length and clarity. Loading audio narration… My son Andrew lived life to the fullest every…
My father, a decorated veteran of the Marine Corps who served during the Vietnam War, struggled with dementia for over a decade. Loading audio narration… By the age of 70, both his first and second wives had died from cancer, leaving him alone and attempting to live by himself while…
A few years back, when ChatGPT first became available, the hype got loud, and one of my freelance clients was shouting the loudest. He called me one afternoon and declared that paying writers was a thing of the past, as this new technology could do in five minutes what all…
The US military’s research arm is looking for missiles that can be built in a matter of days rather than months. Loading audio narration… In recent documents posted on the government’s contracting website, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, said it’s looking for faster, cheaper ways to produce…
