HELLO and welcome to the 252nd installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about sandwiches! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.

The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.

How The Sandwich Consumed Britain, by Sam Knight for The Guardian, November 2017

I had never thought so much about sandwiches or as sandwiches as anything besides a basic fact of life until reading this very interesting history of the sandwich! I also didn’t realize pre-packaged sandwiches were so popular, I don’t know if this is a difference between me and everybody or between me and people in the UK.

In chatlogs, celebrated hacker and activist confesses countless sexual assaults, by Sarah Jeong for The Verge, November 2017

WELP

On Self-Respect, by Joan Didion for Vogue Magazine, 1961

What drew me to this thing besides Joan Didion being the light of my life was that the intro says it was written when another author failed to turn in their piece on the topic. This is relatable. Vogue: it was just like us, once!

The Declaration of Independence Is Hard to Read, by Julie Sedivy for Nautilus, November 2017

This could be basic information if you’re a linguist, but to a novice, I learned about 56 new and fascinating things from this piece.

In the Footsteps of a Killer, by Michelle McNamara for Los Angeles Magazine, February 2017

The passion of an armchair detective and a huge serial killer case that never got solved.

Digging in the Trash, by David Joy for The Bitter Southerner, April 2017

About poverty and addiction and honesty and hope as a privilege and shared humanity and compassion and it’s really sad and beautiful.

So often people hear that word “trailer” and their minds follow with “trash.” Maybe it was growing up going to my grandfather’s or maybe it was growing up with a trailer park just across the road, but as a child I don’t remember ever thinking that I was better than the kids I played with because I lived in a house and they lived in trailers. It wasn’t that I was oblivious to class. I recognized some folks had more than others, that I had a little more than them, and the rest of the world had a lot more than any of us. I recognized class. It’s just that I don’t remember ever equating class to a person’s worth, and I count myself lucky for that. We all rode the same bus and went to the same school. We bickered and fought, made up secret handshakes and loved each other like brothers and that’s just the way it was, kids being kids.

The Conjugal Visit, by Jesse Katz for Los Angeles Magazine, November 2017

Did you know that conjugal visits were invented to stop inmates from turning into permanent homosexuals? That’s not the point of this post or even what it’s about really, just a side-fact I picked up within it.

Walking While Black, by Topher Sanders and Kate Rabinowitz, ProPublica, and Benjamin Cornack for The Florida Times-Union / ProPublica, November 2017

How police in Jacksonville, Florida are writing tickets to pedestrians for obscure walking violations in a racially biased manner and how Jacksonville should also really build more sidewalks and crosswalks! This page has all their work on the topic, which is extensive and of course important.

Reported Missing, by Eleri Harris for The Nib, October 2017

This is the story of a woman accused of murdering her husband, as told by her daughter to a childhood friend who is an artist and presents the story in the form of a comic. It’s so great! I think you have to read it on a computer and not a phone. I didn’t know The Nib did longform stories like this.

Thanks to Ikea, Cafeterias Matter Again, by Andrew Holter for Eater

Meatballs!

Weinstein’s Complicity Machine , by Megan Twohey, Jodi Kantor, Susan Dominus, Jim Rutenberg and Steve Eder for The New York Times, December 2017

An investigation into who protected and enabled Weinstein, and the portrait of a man confident he’d never get caught.

The Santa Ana, by Joan Didion for The Saturday Evening Post, 1965

A shorter read, but — I imagine I am not the only person in this state who re-visited this piece this week.

Los Angeles weather is the weather of catastrophe, of apocalypse, and, just as the reliably long and bitter winters of New England determine the way life is lived there, so the violence and the unpredictability of the Santa Ana affect the entire quality of life in Los Angeles, accentuate its impermanence, its unreliability.  The winds shows us how close to the edge we are.