The Cut - The Patriot Act and Me

The day I was born, my parents were robbed. It was a warm January morning in 1988 when my father went out to the car and found the window smashed, their cassette player, their Fleetwood Mac and Eagles tapes, gone. They told me later that they didn’t care; their first child had been born. Other than that, my childhood growing up in Hyde Park, one of the most ethnically diverse neighborhoods of Chicago, was uneventful. In the summers, I played soccer in the midwestern heat, then cooled off with strawberry ice cream my grandfather bought from the corner store when he visited from India. On the Fourth of July, the smoky smells of barbecue filled the air while I joined the neighborhood parade, American flags fluttering from my bike handles. I watched with wonder as the night sky popped with fireworks reflected on Lake Michigan. I remember the cicadas singing on hot nights and how the cool lake breeze made the little hairs on my brown arms wave.

The Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, Virginia, a focal point of years of protests and vandalism, has finally been dismantled. The world’s biggest direct-air capture plant is now running in Iceland — think, “giant industrial vacuum that sucks CO2 out of the air.” If you, like us, have a lot of feelings about the John Mulany x Olivia Munn news, this Slate piece is a good reminder to keep parasocial relationships in perspective. Norma McCorvey, the plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, never had the abortion she was seeking. After decades of keeping her identity a secret, the daughter she gave up for adoption is speaking. Zendaya has announced that she won’t be attending this year’s Met Gala, so maybe why bother at all with the event? And pediatric COVID hospitalizations are at a record high.

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