This week’s top 5 long reads

This week’s issue*:

• Questionable practices of secret organizations.
• The unknown truth behind the crime from 35 years ago.
• A long historical trajectory of complicity.
• Long Covid-19: Obvious costs and hidden tolls.
• Regaining a speaking life after a brain injury.

*Some stories may require a fee.

Antonia Cundy | Financial Times | March 16, 2024 | 7,704 words

Teena, Anne-Marie and Monica: The three former Opus Dei assistants at the center of the Antonia Cundy investigation are the first women to speak publicly about their treatment in the West. Their story is not unique. Kandi interviewed his 40 former and current members of Opus Dei for this piece. This is just part of her in-depth research into decades of exploitation perpetrated by this Catholic organization. It is a fictional enhanced version that many people first learned about through this work. da vinci code. Her case studies are now in their 50s and into their 60s, but these women gave their lives to Opus Dei as girls as domestic workers, and the unpaid labor used to support a strong system. He was part of the military. It may not be Dan Brown, but Kandi still hints at mysterious deals (including how Opus Dei’s huge London headquarters near Kensington Palace is owned by the Netherhall Educational Society) All of its directors are members of Opus Dei, although there is no mention of it). However, the main focus here remains on the women behind the scenes who continue to carry out the mundane tasks of cooking and cleaning, and woven into their stories are the young conscripts themselves It is a well-honed and edifying work that teaches the history of Opus Dei. Domestic labor may be shared now, but as Kandi writes, “Monica and 42 other former nursing assistants from Latin America accused Opus Dei of enslavement in Argentina.” That was in 2021. The mystical shield around Opus Dei still needs to be completely removed. I hope this kind of investigation progresses little by little. —C.W.

Adrian Walker, Evan Allen, Elizabeth Coe, Andrew Ryan, Kristin Nelson, Brendan McCarthy | Boston Globe | December 1, 2023 | 30,259 words

As the word count suggests, this project is an epic feat of storytelling. Told in nine parts, he examines one of the most notorious crimes in Boston’s history. In 1989, Charles Stewart claimed that a black man shot him and his pregnant wife Carol, spurring a racist manhunt to terrorize and trap innocent people. . Stuart himself was the mastermind behind the crime that took Carol and her baby’s lives. If you’ve ever heard of this incident, you probably already know.what you can do do not have It is known that there was evidence pointing to Stuart’s guilt that the police ignored. “No one considered the simple fact that homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women in America,” the article states. “A pregnant woman is more likely to be killed by her child’s father than to die from something related to her pregnancy.” Most infuriating of all, this story shows that Stuart knows that he is lying, but does nothing. It has now been revealed that there were at least 33 people in the “vast whisper network” that she did not mention, including two people who attended Carol’s funeral. “Chuck did not pull off his racist hoax alone,” the authors write. “He had everyone’s help.” There’s a lot to admire about this project, from the tempo to the depth of research to the introspection about the role. boston globe Played unfairly. The film incorporates a surprising number of perspectives, including that of Don Juan Moses, who was 11 years old at the time of the shooting. The reader experiences through Moses’ eyes, in fact through his whole body, as the police burst into his house to detain his cousin on suspicion of being a gunman. You can hear the “low thunder” of the approaching police footsteps and the sudden cacophony of sounds as Moses, backed away from the police, crashes into the piano. 35 years later, Moses keeps a dashcam in his car in case he encounters the police. Trauma is one of the lasting legacies of the Stuart case, and Moses is one of those who “never got to be free.” He is grateful to know his story. —SD

Frederick Kaufman | harpers magazine | March 18, 2024 | 5,928 words

The January 6th riot revealed nothing that had been smoldering for years. QAnon long ago turned a disaffected and gullible population into a group of self-respecting “patriots.” “Look it up for yourself” has become a mantra for people whose critical thinking skills crumble in the face of Facebook memes. As Frederick Kaufman reveals in his research, harpers According to his profile, Jacob Angeli Chansley was just the latest in a long line of people who confused magical thinking with hidden truths. Even if the name doesn’t ring a bell, you probably remember Angeli Chansley. He was the “QAnon Shaman,” the shirtless man who walked through the U.S. Capitol on that day in 2021, wearing horns and fur and looking like a new-age Fabio. Connecting with Angeli Chansley after a bid to prison, Kaufman counters history and science in surprising and illuminating ways that map their conversations (and JAC’s conspiratorial worldview).Fascination with Norse mythology and Carl Jung sparks similarities with German mythology Volkish Movement and history of JAC’s home state of Arizona. Dropping references to “quantum particles” leads to an interesting section on Wolfgang Pauli, a quantum pioneer but also one of Jung’s most famous patients. Even Isaac Newton makes an appearance, not because of his laws of motion, but because of his obsession with alchemy and numerology. The occult has fascinated people for centuries because it is inherently appealing, no matter how rational a society’s intellectual temperature or identity. Kaufman writes, “In the days of Locke and Voltaire, victims of poisoning, electrocution, and asphyxiation abounded.” Anyone who writes about someone like Jacob Angeli Chansley may be tempted to ridicule, but that is not Kaufman’s attitude. Instead, he offers an analysis of conspiracy theories that is both memorable and well-founded, and a valuable reminder that people write profiles to condemn, not to forgive. Masu. You need to understand your profile. —PR

Ligia Navarro | Trainyard | January 8, 2024 | 6,110 words

Ligia Navarro’s essay on life on long-distance transport was published in January, which is when I first contracted the coronavirus. I heard from a relative who attended a Christmas gathering knowing that her spouse, my uncle, was sick, but her mother still decided to go to the party without a mask. When I decided to isolate from my girlfriend’s husband and her daughter in a nearby Airbnb, some thought it was weird and over the top. Well, we’re entering her fourth year on After Times. People have been moving forward for a long time. “In 2020, we heard that the silver lining of the pandemic was all the inequalities it highlighted. As 2024 dawns, inequalities remain as entrenched as before, if not more so. That is clear,” Navarro wrote.At first we were all tied to it unity. We protect the vulnerable. but “[w]Social justice and disability rights activists remind us that long-haul transportation workers are here to stay, and that the American landscape remains the same. ” I was soaking in Navarro’s reminiscences of his 2020. Her quiet lockdown experience was similar to my own family’s days spent quarantining in our former wine country home and chasing a toddler around our half-acre garden. But our paths soon diverge from there. While her child was probably asymptomatic when she first contracted COVID-19 in the spring, Navarro began experiencing symptoms like fatigue and brain fog eight months later, eventually developing a diagnosis of POTS. Diagnosed. -Everyday life. “I remember 2022 as the summer when people stopped caring,” she says, describing her symptoms being ignored by others, her lack of help, and her realization that she was disabled. Looking back, she writes: Navarro said that while she mourns what she once was, including her body and her ability to fully participate in her offspring’s childhood, what she grieves most is that she She clarifies that it is her loss of faith in humanity. “A body like mine, a life like mine is the future,” she writes. However, this is a truth that most people choose to ignore. —CLR

Judith Hannah Weiss | Judith Hannah Weiss Salmagundi Magazine | June 5, 2023 | 5,936 words

Back in 2006, Judith Hannah Weiss suffered severe brain injuries when a drunk driver crushed her parked car. Before her accident, her words were her livelihood, and her customers paid her to clarify them. She writes for a famous high-end magazine and was supposed to ghostwrite a book for a famous doctor. Later, plagued by her aphasia and memory loss, she has to relearn to speak and write, at the cost of words and memories instantly erased by the accident, and relationships forever changed. I counted. In this compelling essay of hers, she achieves the impossible. She tells us what it’s like to live with a brain that is recovering from trauma. “Imagine you’re trying to speak and no one understands you. That’s what living with aphasia is like. Imagine you’re with other people and you can’t understand them. “It’s the same thing,” she wrote. “Twenty words is like 20 kids playing 20 different sports in the same space and inside my skull at the same time.” Over time, I learned how to walk, speak, and write. As Weiss fixes herself, she becomes “us”, a fusion of her pre- and post-accident selves. She’s a writer who once met with famous clients, a woman who has struggled through life with a brain injury, and a woman who, as humans, is always more than the sum of what we’ve lost. It proves that there is. —K.S.

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