What…..Ever it may be 

Andrew Chamings | New Lines Magazine | May 19, 2023 | 2,786 words

A clown motel—built to honor the clown collection of a man who died in a mine fire in 1911—would not be top of my must-see list. While Andrew Chamings seems equally bemused, he bravely makes it through a lobby filled with clown memorabilia to stay in a room themed around clown Elvis (Clownvis). Tonopah, the small American town where the clowns reside, has a devasting past. In the early 1900s, a mysterious illness known as the Death Harvest decimated its population, and the motel sits across from the cemetery where many of its victims lie. The graves draw more tourists than the clowns. As Chamings explains, “America … strangely and uniquely fetishizes its brutal past.” The American West has long held a particular fascination: The more gruesome the tale, the more the appeal. Chamings, a Brit, ponders on the cultural difference to England, where “every inch of soil has been warred over, killed for, harvested, bought and sold a hundred times, from the Druids to the Romans to the Gauls to the modern day[;]” concluding that this vastness is why the British lack the same interest in historical tragedies. I concur. When I lived in London, I no doubt had picnics over Black Plague pits—they lie under several green spaces, unmarked. As long as you have a decent sandwich, what does it matter the skeletons that lie beneath? As Chamings eloquently puts it, the “carnage of America’s manifest destiny is fresher, a bloodstain still drying in the sand.” Some fascinating reporting. —CW

4. ‘A Good Death’

Jason Warick | CBC News | June 4, 2023 | 4,312 words

In Canada, while the government has been criticized for proposed expansions to the Medical Assistance in Death (MAiD) program that could include people with mental illness and disabilities, the program’s intent was originally to allow Canadians with terminal illness the right to die with dignity on their own terms. Saskatoon artist Jeanette Lodoen, 87, wanted Canadians “to understand the realities of medically-assisted dying.” She and her family granted CBC News reporter Jason Warick and videographer Don Somers unrestricted access in the weeks before, during, and after her death, allowing them to share an intimate portrait of a vibrant woman who—in relinquishing her life—reminds us how to live. “I thought, thank you. Thank you,” says Lodoen. “I’ve had enough. I’ve had a long life. I’m 87 years old. I’ve had a wonderful family who support me and I love dearly forever. It was such a release to know that I didn’t have to suffer anymore, and that it was OK to go.” —KS

5. Cat-astrophe

Carrie Arnold | Noēma | June 6, 2023 | 3,186 words

Let me preface this by saying I am both a cat person and a dog person. That said, cats are assholes. That’s okay! It’s part of their charm. They’re loving, yes, but they’re also haughty and destructive and give approximately half a damn about your feelings or possessions. Carrie Arnold allows as much when she sets out her own felinophilic bonafides in her Noēma piece. Yet, even she, a woman who calls cats “the only phenomenon on Earth that could lure me out of bed before sunrise,” was surprised to learn of the havoc they wreak on the natural world. In the U.S. alone, as many as 80 million unowned cats (and another 20ish million pet cats with outdoor privileges) present a legitimate existential threat to birds, plants, and other wildlife. The story, for all its essayistic tendencies, focuses on the rift between conservationists and cat defenders—and also on the hypocrisy lurking in the way we think about outdoor cats. We shun the peaceful “free dogs” of India, yet we don’t give a second thought to the cat with a bird in its mouth (nor do we realize that for every mouth-bird we see, many others have been ravaged out of sight). Then again, as Arnold points out, “the problem with cats has nothing to do with cats at all. The issue is a fundamentally human problem.” We’re so busy marking our own territory, it seems, we don’t think about the responsibility of pet stewardship. Bob Barker was right all along. —PR