Maurice Chammah on the Country s Ambivalence Toward Democratized Killing
January 26, 2021
In every death penalty case, before Charlie Brooks and since, you will find the family members, the lawyers, the journalists, the prison workers each of them touched, in ways large and small, observable and invisible, by the moment a person takes a life, the moment the state takes a life, and the many moments in between.
To everyone else, the death penalty can feel like an abstraction, a source of dinner table quarrels that reemerge when a major case hits the news and we marshal the arguments we’ve heard before, citing the Bible or statistics or anecdote to make our case for or against. Capital punishment is a long-standing tradition, close to a cultural universal over the long span of the human experience, but Americans have always viewed it with some ambivalence, and our history is accordingly erratic. Before the Civil War, the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville marveled at the “mildne
HYGGE
Start the new year off right with some Winter Reads about health, happiness, and Hygge. Hygge is a Danish concept meaning a quality of coziness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being.
âAmerican Cozy: Hygge-Inspired Ways to Create Comfort & Happinessâ by Stephanie Pedersen. With overscheduled lifestyles, Americans can t always find time for the people and things they love. Enter American Cozy, which uses the Danish phenomenon of hygge to bring coziness and ease to readers homes, work, and lives.
âThe Art of Showing Up: How to Be There for Yourself and Your Peopleâ by Rachel Wilkerson Miller. Miller, senior lifestyle editor at BuzzFeed, defines showing up as the core of creating and maintaining strong meaningful bonds with friends, family, coworkers, and internet pals.