essays
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Letters From Tel Aviv
Begin the Descend
Hebrew has a verb to describe the act of a Jew immigrating to Israel: la’ahloht, “to ascend.” Upon deciding to leave Israel, our correspondent starts the slow process of descent well before boarding the plane.
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Personal Essays
It’s All in Your Head
It begins as a dull ache, then the skull becomes hot and brittle, then the neck stiffens—and then there’s no escaping a migraine. A search for relief, temporary or otherwise.
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Personal Essays
Giving Up the Guns
When your life is opened in front of you, all your old attachments shucked off, the task of finding a new ending can be as simple as handing over a bag of guns.
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Personal Essays
Fly Girl
Even if you grow up crushing on the jets in Top Gun—and not Tom Cruise—it can be tough to preserve a dream of defending your country from a plane. But some girls do.
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Personal Essays
Clenching the Night Away
A mouth guard can do more than save our enamel from nighttime gnashing. It may also shield us from our daily anxieties.
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The Nature Desk
Hey, Bear
Warning: The great American wilderness is home to many hungry stomachs, including some that reside in animals weighing 600 pounds more than you. Also: They travel in groups.
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The College Desk
German Philosophy for Immigrants
The line to speak with a consular official is never so long as when you’re studying 19th-century philosophy and everything you desire exists on the other side of an ocean.
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Announcements
The Most Tweetable Sentences of 2012
We asked Paul to choose his favorite articles published on TMN in 2012. We had a pretty good year, we like to think: Many stories we loved, many reprints and nods...
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Personal Essays
Habitat for Humanity
Manhattan is rife with lumberjacks, Los Angeles is hot for Appalachia, and the latest trend in pornography is cabins. Yes, cabins. But when a woman leaves New York for a log structure of her own, a metamorphosis occurs.
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The Travel Desk
Twilight on the Tundra
How do you see what mushers see? You mush. An adventure on the Beringia, a dog sled race stretching over Russia’s easternmost tundra. If in the process you see more than you ever expected—more of humanity, more of yourself—then thank the people of 685 miles of snow.
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Man's Best Fiend
Catlike DIY
A long-ignored home improvement project awaits. The tools and materials are at the ready, and there’s nothing to stop you. Then enters a cat named Jeeves.
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Unnatural Disaster
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Apocalypse
When a Frankenstorm arrives from Haiti with destructive powers, the semi-professional student of zombie literature and history has a unique ability to perceive the arrival of end times. Welcome to America’s new normal: the nonfictional apocalypse.