Baltimore

Thursday

Jessa Crispin

How the good intentions of Title IX ended up punishing the innocent

How do we have difficult conversations? Especially in an age of polarisation, where everything is immediately politicised? But also where calls for ‘nuance’ and ‘complication’ are sometimes used to justify what is really just bigotry. Is it possible to be both protective of the vulnerable and to allow for a larger pursuit of justice and compassion? These are the questions I was left with after listening to the podcast series The Inbox (part of the larger anthology The 11th), a tricky but sensitive look at the questions that surround the adjudication of sexual violence accusations on college campuses through the Title IX system. Sarah Viren wrote an essay for the

Saturday

Alex Clark

Even Anne Tyler can’t make a solitary Baltimore janitor sound interesting

Micah Mortimer, the strikingly unproactive protagonist of Anne Tyler’s 23rd novel, is a man of such unswerving routine that his rare moments of whimsy — slipping into a foreign accent on Mondays when the week turns to floor-cleaning and ‘zee dreaded moppink’ — come to seem like unfathomable caprice. Indulging a sudden hankering for a takeaway barbecue is as wild to him as one of Hunter S. Thompson’s most lurid binges. The reasons for his cautious mundanity are unclear: he emerged from a chaotic family, but so did his convivial, cheerful sisters; he’s no stranger to romantic disappointment, but then who is? Now in his forties and scraping a living