I Dream of Jetlag
After 12 Years in the Sky, a Flight Attendant Braces for Furloughs and Adjusts to Life on the Ground
Last year, a time in history I want to mark as 2019 BC—that is, Before COVID—I was at the height of my ...
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What Would Cicero See in American Governance Today?
Before the Rise of Caesar, the Roman Statesman Predicted How the Spread of Lawlessness Could Destroy a Republic
At some point in the early summer of 54 BC, the Roman statesman Cicero set to work on his most consequential ...
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California, Where Whatever You Do, You Will Be Wrong
We're All in This Together—But Please, Keep Your Distance
Our politics may be paranoid, our society may be paralyzed, our police may be irredeemable, and our ...
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Who’s Left Out of the New American Mainstream?
The Diversification of Families, Universities, and Even Upper-Level Jobs Obscures How the Prospects of Black Americans Are Stagnating
At a moment when the eyes of the nation are fixed on Black Lives Matter and the anti-racism struggle, it ...
New at Zócalo
What the Jewish Name Changing Narrative Gets Wrong
A Forgotten History of Antisemitic Exclusion and Isolation in Mid-20th Century New York
In 1932, a man named Max Greenberger petitioned the City Court of the City of New York to change his last name and the last name of two of his four children, to Greene.
Max Greenberger, a U.S.-born, middle-aged father, did not fit into any of the classic stereotypes of name-changers. He was not an immigrant coming through Ellis Island, he was not a young man seeking to escape his Old World roots, nor was he a movie star in need of a stage name. Instead, he was explicitly seeking white-collar jobs for his family members. As he laid out in his petition, “[t]he name Greenberger is a foreign sounding name and is not conducive to securing good employment as a musician”—the chosen profession of his daughter. Additionally, he noted, “the name Greenberger … is not helpful towards ...
The Incredible Legacy of Newark's Black Women Activists
Harlem Renaissance Writer Brenda Ray Moryck and a New Jersey Community’s Untold Century of Intellectualism and Artistry
In 1927, Brenda Ray Moryck, a 32-year-old Black American woman from Newark, New Jersey, published a manifesto in Ebony and Topaz, a prominent Harlem Renaissance anthology of prose and poetry.
In the work, titled I, Moryck, a graduate of the predominantly white women’s college Wellesley, writes that though she has suffered from racial discrimination, she finds “honey as well as hemlock in the cup of every Negro, sunlight as well as shadow.”
The piece conveys a profound sense of mission—even a calling—to help others: “But as a woman, what did I learn? … Work, play, and that highest opportunity, the opportunity to help and give, to mother and to heal,—are mine… I am a ...
Dispatches
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A Letter From Northern Michigan, Where Remote Is Not Remote Enough to Escape COVID
A Professor Who Finds a Home in the Upper Peninsula No Longer Has the Heart to Return to the Classroom
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A Letter From London, Where a Philosopher Ponders Self-Isolation, the Social Contract, and When the Pubs Will Reopen
The Current Crisis Is Forcing Londoners to Decide What Kind of City They Want to Live In
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A Letter From Bogotá, Where Hunger Feels More Threatening Than the Virus
Delivering Fruit by Bicycle, an Expat Pedals Across the Sprawling Capital City and Tries to Imagine What the Future Will Look Like
Where I Go
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Where I Go: The Garden Library I Grow
Before I Plant, I Curl up With My Favorite Ecologists, Journalists, and Victorian Naturalists
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Where I Go: Atop San Francisco’s ‘Redwood Empire’
For Nearly 30 Years, I’ve Come to the City’s Highest Natural Point to Orient Myself
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Where I Go: From Northeast London Back to Duluth
In Our Newly Delimited World, I Became a Terranaut of the Local
Glimpses
Connecting California Joe Mathews
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My ‘Field of Dreams’ Above Carpinteria
At Santa Barbara County’s Ken McMullen Baseball Camp, a True Team Player Taught Us How to Teach Others
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How Tibetan Buddhists Helped Me Seek Enlightenment at Howard Jarvis’s House
Revisiting the Former Home of the ‘Mad as Hell’ Tax Reformer as Another Fight Over Prop 13 Begins
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Madrid Has 57 Councilmembers. Seoul Has 110. Why Does L.A. Have 15?
More Mayoral Authority Won't Empower California Cities; Electing More of Your Neighbors to Local Posts Will
In the Green Room
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43rd Treasurer of the United States Rosie Rios
I Have the Superpower of Seeing the Invisible
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California Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson
I Learned From the 'Queen Mother of American Tennis'
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President and CEO of the Institute for Women's Policy Research C. Nicole Mason
I Wake Up to Quiet and a Nice Cup of Coffee
