In his 1962 short story “2BR02B” (pronounced, to be or not to be), Kurt Vonnegut imagines that, in response to overpopulation, the US government might create a “Bureau of Termination,”...

It was too cold. That’s all I’m saying. It has been a long and rather temperate summer and these colder nights and now days, although logically they shouldn’t be,...

Now, I was looking at the cabbage. It was $7.29. It is true. The cabbage, a tiny little thing compared to the cabbages I remember flourishing in the fields...

The heavy rains are rich with life in the Spring. Even when the lilacs have died and the wafting scent of lily-of-the-valley has faded. Summer will come very soon,...

In the morning, the bobolink sings. It always heartens me—listening to the morning chorus of creatures waking up to the sun singing. Imagine. When was the last time any...

It took me a year before I finally succumbed to a phone that would accept 5G. They bugged me and bugged me by phone and email and text messages...

There is a lusty bird that sings at dusk outside my window high in the cedar tree. I’ve never seen him but he warbles wildly and poignantly as if...

We had our small respite from things as they are, languishing as we all mostly were here in the gloom of the moon as it traversed the sun. For...

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the...

The headlines are full of measles at the moment, in the way that always reeks of coordination. The measles outbreak in the US has been simmering away for weeks,...

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the...

Todd Hayen When all this Covid crap started up my primary concern was why most people did not see what we saw. Then I began to realize they did...

Todd Hayen The goals of the UN’s sustainable development agenda are rather pie-in-the-sky targets. But who in their right mind would give them a thumbs down if there was...

Sylvia Shawcross It is cold again at night and the raccoons that reach their little hands up to the bowl of food are not there under the porch light...

Sylvia Shawcross Out there the freezing rain settles crystals on the high snow and in the trees and dens the animals are warm and dreaming. Inside the people in...

Kit Knightly IMF Chief Kristalina Georgieva has called for every government to implement some form of carbon taxes or “carbon pricing” in the near future. Yes, we’re into week...

Gavin O’Reilly Last Thursday afternoon, news would spread throughout Ireland of a horrific knife attack on three young schoolchildren and their teacher outside a Gaelscoil (Irish-language school) in Dublin...

Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the...

Sylvia Shawcross The Canada geese are honking now in great swathes in the sky riding currents to where the water will not freeze over and there are bits of...

Sylvia Shawcross Come with me again? Yes? It’s just down this slate-coloured street. The sun so bright in a blue sky and the clouds white. It is not yet...