Author: Lance Garrison
This summer, when the temperature hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit or above in Phoenix for 31 straight days, many were fretting about the Southwest’s prospects in the age of climate change. A writer for The Atlantic asked, “When Will the Southwest Become Unlivable?” The Washington Post wondered, “How Long Can We Keep Living in Hotboxes Like Phoenix?”The foregone conclusion seemed to be that the region was heading for a crash — destined to become an overpopulated, unlivable dead zone, plagued by ranch foreclosures, unemployment, water wars and heat deaths.As a writer who has studied the Southwest’s history and spoken to some…
Decades ago, the leaders of Britain launched a, frankly, incredible plan, to provide every kind of medical treatment to everyone free of charge. It had never been done on this scale under capitalism before, and Britain was broke. But with courage and vision, these politicians pulled it off. [INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING] The National Health Service was born, and overnight, every medical treatment, from blood tests to brain surgery, became available to millions who could previously never afford it — no deductibles, no co-pays. Here in Britain, we are fiercely proud of the N.H.S. It’s this towering monument to social generosity,…
This morning in Mott Haven, a neighborhood in the South Bronx, tens of thousands of New Yorkers — more than 95 percent of whom are people of color — woke up and breathed in air thick with vehicle exhaust. Hundreds of trucks drive through here daily, to and from the enormous food distribution center Hunts Point Produce Market, as well as other nearby warehouses, shipping facilities and waste transfer stations.The neighborhood — sometimes nicknamed Asthma Alley — has some of the most polluted air in the country, leaving residents at increased risk not only for lung disease and strokes from…
“Rot in hell.”Those words were part of Donald Trump’s Christmas Day message, spewed at his political enemies. The next day, when I was asked during a CNN interview about the increased violence in this country, I responded honestly that I thought the former president’s message was wrong and divisive. I’m not afraid to say what I think, even when that means there may be unpleasant repercussions and threats from the former president and his supporters. A lot of us may face this type of conflict in the year ahead. I am particularly familiar with this, as Mr. Trump has targeted…
As the year ends, civilians are dying at a staggering pace in Gaza and the genocide in Darfur may be resuming. A man charged with 91 felonies is leading in American presidential polls, and our carbon emissions risk cooking our planet.But something else is also true: In some ways, 2023 may still have been the best year in the history of humanity.How can that possibly be?Just about the worst calamity that can befall a human is to lose a child, and historically, almost half of children worldwide died before they reached the age of 15. That share has declined steadily…
Some years ago, as my mother and I were walking on New York City’s Upper West Side, she pointed out a redbrick townhouse in the West 70s where, she said, my great-grandfather had lived as a child. It was an awkward building, the door set back under a large arch, the roof sharply peaked, and I wondered that it had survived as the city rose around it.I have since discovered that many of the places in New York where my ancestors lived are still standing: tenements on the Lower East Side, brownstones in Brooklyn Heights, a squat apartment building in…
To the Editor:Re “I Teach the Humanities. I Still Don’t Know What Their Value Is,” by Agnes Callard (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 3):As a fellow humanist, I understand Dr. Callard’s desire to avoid conventional pieties and, in the spirit of ongoing inquiry, to claim not to know the value of humanities disciplines. But it is still dispiriting to read this essay with the fear that only humanities undergraduates — well schooled in the reading of subtle texts — will understand the irony in hers.As one who taught in an English department for almost three decades and went on to be…
That started to change when she found a babysitting role in Yonkers. She had recently graduated from high school, and it was her first job. She was taking time off to plan what she wanted to do next.Babysitting gave her some confidence and, unexpectedly, a sense of kinship with the parents of the child she took care of. They explained that their son didn’t have many friends at his elementary school. He didn’t talk much. Ms. Ambroise coaxed him out of his shell by sitting with him as he played with his trains. Little by little, he opened up to…
Jeff Winograd, who’s lived with depression for 25 years, says ketamine treatment saved his life. Jeff Winograd didn’t know an adult life without depression. Since he was 20 years old, he had tried virtually every antidepressant on the market. But he says, “The depression was just a constant.”By the time he was 45 years old, by then a father of two small children and a struggling-at-the-time film and video producer in Portland, OR, Winograd had hit rock bottom. The depression was so severe that he felt paralyzed by it.“I sat on the couch all day, unable to move, I couldn’t…
Vishaan Chakrabarti is the founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism, a New York City architecture firm, and the former director of planning for Manhattan. New York City doesn’t have enough homes. The average New Yorker now spends 34 percent of pre-tax income on rent, up from just 20 percent in 1965. There are many reasons homes in the city are so expensive, but at the root of it all, even after the pandemic, is supply and demand: Insufficient housing in our desirable city means more competition — and therefore sky-high prices — for the few new homes that trickle…