Editor’s Note: Read Morgan Thomas’s new short story, “Bump.” “Bump” is a new short story by Morgan Thomas. To mark the story’s publication in The Atlantic, Thomas and Amy Weiss-Meyer, a deputy managing editor at the magazine, discussed the story over email. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.Amy Weiss-Meyer: “Bump” begins with a confrontation of sorts, addressed “to those who accuse me of immoderate desire.
Electricity was late and expensive
Coming to Appalachia
Knoxville especially so
Twice a month the coal
Man would come to fill the cellar
For warmth and sometimes food
And what I loved most was the fireplace
Where Grandmother and Grandpapa would sit
Near to tell stories but
Oak Ridge came for the war
Or maybe the war came for Oak Ridge
And atomic energy replaced coal
And the cellar became a home for mice
And maybe some insects that we never
Needed to bother since they didn’t bother usOne su
Editor’s Note: Read an interview with Morgan Thomas about their writing process. This story was published online on May 16, 2021.To those who accuse me of immoderate desire, I say look at the oil executives. Look at the Gold Rush. Look at all the women who want a ring and romance and lifelong commitment, and then look again at me.
I don’t know what to say to him.
The aim is to help survivors who can’t shake symptoms months after infection, but some experts worry that marginalized groups could get left behind.
The White House’s reaction to unexpected jobs and price data has opened the administration up to GOP attacks.
Very few Americans are allowing themselves to feel anything about Afghanistan anymore. A triple bombing in Kabul left 80 people, many of them schoolgirls, dead last week. In photographs, you see the physical devastation of the bombing—a crater, twisted metal, gouged walls—but the more visceral devastation is in the faces of family members, the contorted, grief-stricken expressions of mothers and fathers at the gates of the school as they search for their daughters.
Parenting advice on only children, transgender kids, and COVID.
Checking in on the New York City mayoral race—and the regrettable candidates leading it.
A farcical tale of city planning.
Things are getting weird in the late-pandemic economy.
I want to leave, but he wouldn’t have any income.
The moves came a day after the CDC said it is safe for fully vaccinated people to go maskless in any type of group gathering.
Rochelle Walensky also said vaccinated parents and teachers “may want to continue wearing masks to model behavior” for unvaccinated children.
Exasperation among diplomats reflects global pressure on the U.S. to begin sharing some of its Covid-19 vaccines.
The announcement marks the first time the Biden administration has said it is safe for vaccinated people to remove masks in any kind of group gathering.
Gov. Mike DeWine said the lotteries would be paid from existing federal coronavirus relief funds.
Parenting advice on dog disagreements, video hangouts, and stepchild resentment.
White Fragility author Robin DiAngelo on why whites—even progressives—are often angry, irrational, and hostile in discussing race.
Neel Kashkari of the Minneapolis Fed says things should get better as people overcome fears related to the pandemic.
“There were elements of growth in the balance from what I can see and understand,” Carney said in a long response that didn’t directly answer the question.
Chrystia Freeland uses Budget 2021 to reveal Canada’s new emissions target.
Republican senators in Washington are attempting to block Kristen Clarke, a prominent voting rights advocate, from a top Justice Department position. The Senate Judiciary Committee has deadlocked on an 11-11 vote on whether to move Clarke’s nomination for assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division to the Senate floor for a full vote.
Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi says Israel’s latest assault on Gaza is turning life in the besieged territory into “sheer hell,” aided by U.S. military and diplomatic support. “Israel has total license to use unbridled power to kill and destroy and maim and get away with it,” Ashrawi says.
As the death toll in Gaza reaches at least 119 amid Israel’s escalation of its aerial assault, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the first Palestinian American woman elected to Congress, delivered a powerful speech on the House floor Thursday to denounce the violence and attempted erasure of the Palestinian people. “I am the only Palestinian American member of Congress now,” Tlaib said. “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist.
As MOVE family members and hundreds of supporters held a memorial Thursday to mark the deadly May 13, 1985, police bombing of their home in Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney announced the resignation of the city’s top health official over stunning new revelations he cremated some of the bombing victims’ remains, including bone fragments, without the knowledge or permission of the families.
“Today Iran, tomorrow Palestine.” Thus cheered the crowd in Tehran in February 1979, during the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s visit to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini just days after the success of the Iranian revolution. Arafat was the first foreign dignitary to visit Iran after the fall of the shah.
And a county election official ripped Donald Trump as “unhinged” for parroting false complaints about the ballots.
