Brief back story: I’m taking a History of the Nazi Holocaust class, and it’s fascinating, and we learned something particularly fascinating today. I wanted to share it with you guys.

So, in 70 CE, one of the very last Jewish revolts took place. A small sect of Jews refused to bow down to the Romans and found their way to Masada, an unscalable mountain retreat.

Still, the Romans laid siege, showing off their ridiculous infrastructure skills and building a ramp up the mountain. The Jews decided that, rather than be captured, they would commit suicide. Continue reading →

I’d forgotten what it feels like to feel okay.

Sometime, over the last year (overscheduled and too little time alone and failing classes en masse) or maybe over the summer (the painstaking battle of learning how to drive and working childcare again and not being where I meant to be) I lost the gentle, unassuming rhythms of happiness.

I’d forgotten how, when you’re happy, it doesn’t settle on you all at once or shine through your windows when you wake up in the morning. How instead, all your inconsequential, nothing-special moments start feeling like they’ve been ripped from a book or unwound from a movie reel. Continue reading →

I am grateful for the white and tan, out-of-date ’98 Camry sitting in my parents’ driveway, because it’s mine and a car has never been mine before and freedom has never been mine before. I’m grateful for the cracked leather on the steering wheel. Grateful because I was 22 the first time I operated a moving vehicle by myself, 22 the first time I struggled to remove a bumper sticker from its contact paper, 22 when I first bought (with the generous help of a loan from my mom’s 401k) a car. I named it Belle.

I am grateful for my friends, who are flawed and lovely and sad and so different from each other. I am more grateful for them than anything else. I don’t even know what else to say. Continue reading →

There was a letter to the editor I read in Vanity Fair a few years ago, back when I did things like read Vanity Fair in print.

Sometimes I do this weird thing where something really hits me, really sticks, and I memorize it. I can’t do it on demand. I can’t etch textbooks in my mind before a test. But I still remember this letter to the editor, and I think I remember it word-for-word. My apologies if it’s yours, and if I’m rearranging your words accidentally.

This is what the letter said: Continue reading →