Americana | The Smart Set

Daisy Goodwill and the Montana Rockies

Darlene West — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 11:30:00 +0000

I remember a lake rimmed with lily pads; a meadow filled with sun. The uphill stretch of trail where I stepped round a bend and came eyeball to eyeball with a mountain goat. Now, the goat may have been a bighorn sheep. It wasn’t the curve of the horns, so much, or the softness of […]

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Beyond the Quilt

Carolyn Davis — Mon, 12 Sep 2022 11:30:00 +0000

I have a quilt. A piece of an old dress, a worn-out pair of pants, an apron that has outlived its usefulness, and maybe even a head rag, once drenched in the sweat of our ancestors, all pieced together to make what is called the Cathedral Window. This quilt personifies its creator, Ms. Ruth. Born […]

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Van Life

Sadie Scotch — Thu, 07 Jul 2022 16:27:18 +0000

As I drove down the canyon and out of Sequoia National Park towards a town called Three Rivers in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas, I saw what looked like a painted wall of mountains that nearly brought me and my van over the cliff’s edge. I wanted to reach out and stroke my fingers […]

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The Pandemic, Murder, Cannibalism, and Me

Jeanie Kortum — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 11:30:00 +0000

The deaths of half a million people. A year spent in isolation, living on crackers and popcorn that Amazon delivered, wearing the same two dresses day after day. Because I never left the house, squirrels began to make nests in the engine of my car. Relationships dropped away. I watched endless Scandinavian crime shows, became […]

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New Orleans

Matt Hanson — Thu, 25 Mar 2021 11:30:00 +0000

When my gal got a job teaching in the big easy in the summer of 2019, the movers asked us where we were going they were excited for us. In some ways, Boston will always be special to me, but about a year and a half after I’ve made the switch I find that I […]

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Yours, Mine, Ours

Megumi DeMond — Thu, 25 Feb 2021 12:30:00 +0000

Two corgis. One squirrel. Three turkeys. And many more presumably educated, ostensibly left-leaning young people. I pass these creatures on my first day back in Cambridge, on a riverside run that used to be routine. After a two month hiatus from the brick university buildings and green lawns that are within walking distance from my apartment, I am jarred into recognizing […]

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The Sirens of the Loons

Rebekah Morris — Mon, 11 Jan 2021 16:38:25 +0000

There were two loons in our still bay. They were quiet during the day when the sun sat behind the gloomy clouds with the humidity perspiring downwards to our armpits and hairlines. But at night, when the cool air blew through the leaves and pine needles, the loons sang to each other. Their calls were wilderness sirens. We sat […]

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(S)elf-Paved

Colin Fleming — Thu, 24 Dec 2020 12:30:27 +0000

The ultimate American Christmas novel for an age needing it the most. As we descend lower into what I think of as the inveigle age — and we must be down around the catacombs by now — I increasingly esteem qualities that I used to take for granted, even if they were never easy to come by. Consistency […]

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The Common Meal

Akshay Pendyal — Mon, 16 Nov 2020 12:30:00 +0000

Growing up, it seemed like we went to a different National Park every summer. A few weeks after school let out, my parents would pack up our station wagon and, over the years, check them off the list. Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore — all places that, as new inhabitants of the capacious idea known as […]

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Personal Patch

Colin Fleming — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 11:21:09 +0000

In third grade, prompted by a teacher who encouraged me to write and write often, I would compose scary tales in my head on the bus to school, which I’d formally write down during class. It could have been the autumnal time of the year that produced my horror streak, or that I loved old black and white monster movies, not […]

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