Because my house is in the neighborhood, and my mother is in the house, and you can't understand one thing without the other, and you especially can't understand why I don't leave. Because I could leave. I could leave tomorrow.
The neighborhood has changed since I was a child. The houses, originally for British railroad workers, were built along these narrow streets back in the twenties: stone houses with lovely little gardens and tall windows with iron shutters. You could say that it was the residents themselves who gradually ruined the houses with all their innovating: the air-conditioning units, the tiled roofs, upper stories tacked on using different materials, exterior facings and paint jobs in ridiculous colors, original wooden doors replaced with cheaper knockoffs. But it wasn't just the residents' poor taste; the neighborhood suffered because it became an island. It's bordered on the west by the avenue, which is like an ugly river we have to ford, with nothing much along its shores. To the south there are housing projects that have grown ever more dangerous, with kids selling crack in stairwells and sometimes pulling guns on one another when they fight, or firing bullets into the air if they're mad after losing a soccer game. To the north is a tract of land that was supposed to be developed into some kind of sports field, but instead it was occupied by the very poor, who have built houses there, the best ones made of concrete blocks, the most precarious of tin and cardboard. The housing projects and this slum merge to the east of our neighborhood.
Denne historien er fra February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra February 13 - 20, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.