Julia Pike

Touring History

By MARIAN CROTTY 

lights and palm trees

Disposable ponchos and white tennis shoes, cotton ­beach dresses worn without bras, sunglasses dangling from nylon cords, and a way of walking that is, in spite of the gray sky and the drizzling rain, ponderous. On a whole, they are younger than I expected, larger, and much more interested in cover bands. Almost all of them are couples. 

Touring History
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Rwandan Genocide: Two Days, Three Memorials

By MASHA HAMILTON 

April 6, 2014, marks the 20th anniversary of the horrific genocide in the African country of Rwanda, when an average of 8,000 people were killed per day over a period of 100 days.

Victims of the 1994 genocide are engraved in a wall in the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in the capital of Rwanda.

Victims of the 1994 genocide are engraved in a wall in the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center in the capital of Rwanda. 

In 1994, I followed the news out of Rwanda as we learned that over a period of 100 days, those identified as Hutus killed some 800,000 others identified as Tutsis, mostly with machetes. Recently returned from a decade working as a foreign correspondent,  I considered returning overseas to cover the immediate aftermath, but only briefly: I was pregnant with my third baby, and I knew from experience a pregnant me could not manage the extended stretches without sleep and food which would be required to report on this story, at once complex and horrifyingly simple.

Rwandan Genocide: Two Days, Three Memorials
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Con

By STEPHEN O’CONNOR 

We decided to start with a con. She was small, with blonde hair and an unidentifiable accent that gave her voice the warped vowels and ee-haw rhythms of a handsaw. She approached him on the footbridge, made a startled noise, and looked down. His eyes followed hers, and there—exactly midway between them—was a golden ring. She picked it up first, having been, after all, the one who had put it there the instant before he caught sight of her.

Con
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The Common Statement

1.

The sidewalk in front of my house unfurls enticingly to the north and south. Though its seams have buckled after months of gravel and salt, the walk still leads me to my neighbor’s porch, where I pull eggs and goat cheese from the fridge, take honey from the shelf, and leave cash in an unlocked box. The snow- and ice-narrowed path also still ferries a friend and me to the Bookmill, where we drink wine in the afternoon and squeeze up tight next to the stacks to peer down on the rushing creek below. If the walk’s covered overnight by a hard snow, Don blasts his snowblower through, the cranking assault of the motor a reasonable price to pay for the favor. For the magic of having one’s way into the world restored. That I have a sidewalk outside my door is a fairy-tale luxury, an enchantment.

The Common Statement
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When an Old Classmate Learns I Am a Lesbian

By JULIE MARIE WADE

“Oh my God! I knew it! I always knew it. I was like Julie is so gay, & people were like oh, whatever, you just think everybody’s gay because it’s an all-girls school, but I knew I wasn’t gay, & I knew most of those girls weren’t gay, so I was like fuck you, Jasmine, go suck on one of your Jolly Rancher rings! Do you remember those?

When an Old Classmate Learns I Am a Lesbian
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