Look, I understand. It’s the holiday season. You are already in a quagmire. By the time presents need to be bought, parties need to be attended, and everyone starts setting their inboxes to auto-reply, a month’s worth of work needs to be crammed in, and that work will take up his two weeks. Equivalent to half.things are busy. Who has time to read lots of magazine features?
That’s all that matters. This year is the perfect time to indulge in a long read. Think of it as a short escape from the hustle and bustle of your surroundings, a chance to meet different people, absorb new ideas, and travel to a world different from your own. Sure, you might get the same effect by just turning on the Hallmark Channel. Meanwhile, how many times can Luke MacFarlane, the hunky actor from Catch Me If You Claus, be the one Santa leaves under the tree?
Here are our favorite long reads for 2023:
Jason Van Tatenhove, once a spokesman for a far-right militia group involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, is trying to make amends. And he is trying to sound the alarm on groups and movements that he says “pursue their goals through lies and deceit.” by intimidation or the use of violence. ” This profile, written by Luke Mullins, follows Van Tatenhove’s path to right-wing radicalization. Van Tatenhove, a punk-rock bohemian with facial tattoos who identifies as bisexual, first became involved with the Oath Keepers as an independent journalist looking to write a book. Less than two years later, he was participating in paramilitary exercises in the mountains of Montana, engaged in armed confrontations with federal agents, and helped develop the group’s propaganda efforts. “I drank the Kool-Aid,” he says. A distaste for violence and bigotry ultimately led Mr. Van Tatenhove to break with the Oath Keepers, and after January 6, he testified before Congress and spoke out against others who have fallen down the extremist rabbit hole. started sharing their stories to help deradicalize. It says they are being “used as pawns in a dishonest campaign to gain more money, influence and power.”
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade, an abortion clinic has moved from the Tennessee side to the Virginia side of Bristol, the twin city that straddles both states. Sylvie McNamara tells deeply reported first-hand stories of clinics and their staff struggling to provide care in a suddenly more complex and challenging legal and cultural environment. As one clinic employee calls it: “A fierce battle for care for women in the South”:
Some of these patients will be Virginians, but many will come from surrounding areas such as eastern Tennessee, the West Virginia coalfields and Kentucky, which have some of the strictest abortion laws in the country. Some drive from Georgia, where the six-week ban is easy to exceed, and others from Alabama, where abortion is completely legal with some exceptions. In October, a woman drove 11 hours from Louisiana to terminate her pregnancy in Bristol. Otherwise, she might have had to travel many more hours to Richmond, Washington, D.C., or even southern Illinois. “I think about people who come from red areas where it’s not legal,” Rosenwinge says. “And I can kind of see where they’re going.”
Ultimately, McNamara writes, the situation in Bristol reflects the reality across the country.egg, the laws and geography surrounding abortion are still unresolved. And it will take years to resolve.
Not so long ago, we all declared our undying love for the restaurant industry. For a brief moment during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown, people gathered around restaurants like never before. They tipped wildly, donated to employee relief funds, and went out of their way to visit their favorite places. But somewhere along the way, much of that goodwill evaporated once mask mandates were lifted and cafeterias filled up again. Today, staffing struggles have resulted in subpar service, writes Jessica Seidman. Higher costs mean higher prices. Here in Washington, D.C., the tipped wage changes have caused confusion and bad feelings regarding service charges and tip expectations. result? The diner doesn’t feel that special. Restaurant people feel that they are not understood. Their romance is ready to fall apart with another stumbling carbonara. Everyone is fed up, and through a series of startling anecdotes of misdeeds, Sidman discovers that people are acting out their worst selves, both online and in person. (Advice: Don’t start (About that pesky QR code on the table).
Two years ago, Rockville Cancer Center became the first non-academic facility in the United States to receive FDA approval to conduct clinical trials of psilocybin, the active compound in magic mushrooms. This put the center at the forefront of a budding renaissance in psychedelic medicine, which, despite showing promise in the 1950s and 1960s, was replaced by the Nixon administration in 1970. It was stopped by criminalizing psychedelics under the Controlled Substances Act.
Matthew Leavell writes in the here and now that psychedelics are attracting unlikely evangelists, including the former director of the National Institute of Mental Health and former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson. Researchers are studying how the drug may have therapeutic value for mental and behavioral health conditions ranging from anxiety to addiction. In Rockville, doctors are using guided trips to help cancer patients with major depressive disorder confront the fear of death and rediscover the joy of life. So far, the results are good. In one trial, clinical depression scores of 24 out of 30 participants decreased by more than 50 percent, and 15 were no longer diagnosed as depressed.
Home to America’s intelligence agencies, thousands of foreign spies, and tons of valuable secrets, Washington is arguably the spy capital of the world. Perhaps nothing symbolizes our extraordinary status more than the nondescript house on Wisconsin Avenue across the street from the Russian embassy. Neighbors say the red-brick colonial with straw-colored decor has long been used as a “spy house,” a surveillance and listening post disguised as a residence. Of course, the FBI would not comment, but a number of local residents and other sources spoke to Sylvie McNamara. For decades, she says, the area around the Russian embassy has been plagued with secret tunnel entrances for espionage, garages with blacked-out windows, unexplained call jamming, and mysterious rooftop antennas. It is said that he was full of strange stories such as Array. Yes, this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s probably mostly true.
When your parents got engaged, they probably called a few people on their landline, took some grainy Kodak photos, chugged some Zima, and called it a day. Well, back then it was. Recently, Daniela Bick and Mimi Montgomery wrote that the proposal was in full swing. experience It features elaborate strategies, ballooning budgets, and professional planners. In the desire to impress (and love, too) online, asking this question has now become a spectacle of shock and awe, where too much is never enough. for example:
Check out La Vie’s latest proposal. It’s a beautiful wharf restaurant with a waterfront view hand-picked for his TikTok at dusk and a glamorous atmosphere that men love. real housewives of potomac set. (No, actually, one of them was having a baby shower there.) Our star got down on one knee in the site’s penthouse as photographers snapped away. Behind him, a vignette of flowers, candles, and balloons looms large, with illuminated marquee letters spelling out “Marry Me,” and a glowing ring-shaped outline beside it drives home the point. ing.
The bride-to-be was then taken to La Vie’s Chandelier Room, where 50 of her friends and family were waiting for her surprise party. Couple vibes abounded, with a pink background that read, “She Said Yes!” Her arch featured a cascading array of reddish balloons in various shades, in front of which guests posed for Instagram to the music of her DJ. An arched wall with a “Drink in Love” sign featuring coconuts flown in from Miami, decorated with the couple’s initials and filled with cocktails boasting names like “A Love Affair in Paris.” did. Their initials also appeared on custom drink stirrers, pillows, and cakes. And flowers! Explosions of pink, purple, and white spilled over the sides of a matching mauve velvet sofa and pink velvet ottoman, and a glossy gold cocktail spread across the side of her bar.
Total price tag? Approximately $30,000. And you thought the wedding was out of control!
In the largest rescue in Humane Society history, nearly 4,000 dogs were rescued from dire conditions at a research breeding facility in Virginia. Today, many people are happy and prosperous. And so are the people who brought them home. In this heartwarming collection of stories, Andrew Beaujon and Daniela Bick follow a group of exceptional boys and girls. Beagles work as service dogs, help families who have lost loved ones, and even live with the Virginia state senator who sponsored the bill. That contributed to the closure of abusive facilities.
Ruby Corrado was a DC icon. She is a fierce and difficult trans immigrant from El Salvador who survives everything from homelessness to her HIV-positive diagnosis, and who provides housing and social services to homeless queer children and trans sex workers. She earns $4.2 million. In the organization of Casa she founded Ruby. , and others whom Corrado called her “family.” In 2014, then-mayor Vincent Gray walked down Virgin Road at Corrado’s wedding. Five years later, she was named “Washington of the Year” by Barron’s.
after that? Everything fell apart. Less than a year later, Casa Ruby ceased all operations and went into administration. Meanwhile, Mr. Collado fled to El Salvador and was accused by the D.C. attorney general of gross mismanagement and funneling charity funds to himself. In this investigative story, Britt Peterson talks about the people who worked with Corrado and knew her best — Zoom calls that alternated between self-righteous defiance and near-self-justifying confessions. Corrado himself (through whom he interacted with others as well) and depicts in more detail how he acts. Things didn’t go well, but there were red flags along the way that were ignored.
Herring is an important species and is an important fish in the diets of many animals, including popular wildlife such as herons and bald eagles, sport fish such as striped bass, and food staples such as tuna and marlin. It is also the most endangered fish in the Potomac River. So in 2012, federal regulators made it illegal to catch them by hand, with nets, or with hooks. Not all the time of the year. Even if you put it back in the water, it won’t work at any stage of maturity. Below Key Bridge, the job of enforcing that moratorium falls on people like Sergeant Rich Goshka of the Virginia Conservation Police, who play hide-and-seek with poachers every year. Sylvie McNamara takes readers deep into the battles that are being waged just below the commute, and asks important questions that may remain unanswered. “Will this work?”
Amid the boiling racial tensions and desegregation fights of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a group of young black women teamed up with civil rights leaders in Washington, D.C., to cheer on the Washington NFL team. We broke down the group’s color barrier. However, their stories have been largely ignored until now. Luke Mullins explores how these women overcame prejudice to become team captains, forged friendships that lasted a lifetime, and ultimately created a larger story across cheerleading that went beyond the playing field and influenced American culture. We will reveal how we paved the way for the next generation as part of the movement.
