• It is almost Christmas, so Mark Evanie has re-posted his Mel Tormé story and I have re-read it, as one does.
• This Atlas Obscura item led me to read more about a story I didn’t know, the story of the “Eyam plague: The village of the damned.”
That’s a BBC article from David McKenna in 2016. Not, surprisingly, from 2020.
When a piece of cloth infested with fleas arrived from London, the local tailor’s assistant, George Viccars, unpacked it and became Eyam’s first plague victim. Eyam found itself on the brink of devastation. The infection spread rapidly, killing entire households. This fate was common in villages during the plague years, but what makes Eyam stand out is, rather than flee and risk carrying the disease to surrounding towns, the villagers chose isolation. They sealed themselves off for over a year, burying their dead in gardens and fields, and trading only at “boundary stones,” where coins were left in vinegar-filled hollows as payment.
McKenna’s article gets into how and why the village made this brave, sacrificial choice, and what it cost them. Remarkable story filled with ordinary people who did an extraordinary thing.
• “Where did all the porcupines go?”
• I did not know that Michael Jordan was a NASCAR fan. Or that he was a part owner of a NASCAR team. Or that he and his team were suing NASCAR: “How NBA Legend Michael Jordan Is Blowing Up NASCAR’s Monopoly” (via AZspot).
Jordan’s lawyers are apparently making a strong case that the billionaire owners of NASCAR, the France family, are not doing right by the league’s racing teams or its fans. (Note: The case has now been settled.)
• This article is more than 10 years old, but I just read it recently because I was wondering about the question asked in the headline: “Men’s Shirts Button on the Right. Why Do Women’s Button on the Left?”
This isn’t a here-is-why article. It’s a here-are-some-guesses-people-have-suggested article. Could be because of servants, or swords, or horses, or Napoleon. Or something else.
That’s just the speculation on how this distinction started. Why it continues might be a whole other article.
• “Into the American Night.” I enjoyed this essay by Adam Fleming Petty about Art Bell as a kind of precursor to the podcast era.
Like Petty, I admired Bell’s gracious ability as a radio host to respect the dignity of every caller into his show. He was kind to them and gave them what so many of them desperately needed: the sense that they were being heard. He often seemed, as Petty described him, to be “a late-night therapist to America’s loners and weirdos … connecting lonely people through the very obsessions that could make them off-putting in the waking world.”
But Petty also recognizes the downside of Bell’s Coast to Coast affirmations:
I am a firm believer that much of what is positive about the American character, the unswayable conviction and individualism, is on abundant display in Bell’s gallery of quacks and obsessives. Yet I also know that such eccentricity can become harmful, even destructive, when it is given free rein. And there is ample evidence to suggest that we have achieved precisely this state of destructive freedom, perhaps beyond the point of no return.
• “The haunting story of Mary Doefour and one man’s quest to give her back her real name.”
So much of this story is deeply sad and tragic, but it also has a note of something hopeful and beautiful in Rick Baker’s long, thankless quest to provide dignity after death to a woman who was denied it throughout most of her long life. That effort matters, even if I can’t be sure how or why, and even if Baker wasn’t sure how or why, and even if Mayur Muley — who beautifully tells this story of Baker and of Mary/Anna Myrle — isn’t sure exactly how or why either.
• “I’ve Seen How the Neo-Nazi Movement Is Escalating. You Should Worry.” Jordan Green had to move himself — and his family — from hotel to hotel, essentially living on the run, while reporting this story. As the Assembly’s Kate Sheppard describes it:
This story is gripping from beginning to end—even though you soon realize there’s really no end, because the threat is ongoing. Jordan Green seamlessly blended personal essay with relentless, detailed reporting. He manages to convey how his work uncovering domestic extremists upended his family’s life with emotion and depth, while still delivering clarity and context about what he learned in the process.
Green’s story was Sheppard’s pick for the North Carolina independent outlet’s year-end “Nice List” — the Assembly’s staff picks for some of the best writing and reporting the site delivered in 2025. So much good stuff there, and also on their Most Read Stories of 2025 list.
• “The Well Watchers.” Molly Taft writes about how “There are millions of abandoned oil wells across the United States. A group of unlikely activists in Texas is making sure no one forgets they need to be cleaned up.”
That’s an important story, but the real hook here is that Taft introduces us to those “unlikely activists” and these are people you just need to meet. Start with Hawk Dunlap, a man who looks every bit like his name should be Hawk Dunlap, and who is not someone who would immediately strike you as likely to forge a partnership and friendship with an idealistic academic like Sarah Stogner:
Dunlap, in turn, found himself with an unexpectedly eager wellhead pupil. “She was running around out here, putting her fingers in wellheads and stuff—well, I was telling her to,” he remembered. “She’d send me a picture and say: What is this? Well, put your finger in it.” He was surprised, he said, when she took the joke literally: “She’d go, wait a minute, I’ll be back. No, no, no—don’t do that.”
Dunlap’s jobs overseas kept getting canceled due to Covid. Eventually, he figured he’d tag along on Stogner’s campaign and give her a crash course in abandoned wells. They hit it off on the road. Stogner told me later that she knew she had a potential social media darling on her hands, comparing him to famous oil well firefighter Red Adair.
• Charles Kuffner links us to this debunking of a popular misconception: “Lowest Suicide Rate Is in December but Some in Media Still Promote Holiday-Suicide Myth.”
Please note that this does not mean that the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year for everybody. Lots of people still struggle around this time of year due to painful memories of previous years when terrible things have happened to them or to their loved ones around these same holidays, so the reminder to treat others gently at this time of year because they might be struggling with hidden pain remains true.
It’s just that this reminder isn’t necessarily any more true during Advent and Retail Advent and Christmastime, etc., than it is during the rest of the year. On every page of the calendar, there are people around you who are Dealing With Stuff and people around you who are reliving past pain associated with painful memories from previous years that resurface when that time of year comes around again. So the point of this debunking isn’t that we get to stop being kind and gentle to others around the year-end holidays, but rather that we should strive to be kind and gentle to others all the time, because we never know what somebody else might be going through, no matter what time of year it is.
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