A collection of all the articles we’ve published over the past month, for those who like to savor their Magpies’ tidings as an issue.
April Issue, 2024
Ellen Harvey: The Disappointed Tourist
The Disappointed Tourist tries to create a level playing field in which personal losses and larger cultural losses can meet and be recognized and create a new conversation about our love for our physical environment, harnessing nostalgia to create empathy rather than division.
February Issue, 2024
All of the articles from the past month for people who like to savor their magpies’ tidings as an issue.
Vietnam Travelogue
Pia De Girolamo shares a travelogue recounting observations and art from her trip to Vietnam.
Alexandria, The End of the Affair
“I sit on the wall and watch a fisherman wrangle his net; the sea is dark and a little choppy, and I feel an overwhelming sense of sadness.”
My Afro-kwea diary: #1
My goal is to read solely Afro-kwea books for at least the next year. Aside from my anger at the dismissal of African lives elsewhere, this ambition was also motivated by a new wave of homophobia that has spread across the continent … My goal is to counter this intolerance by doing my bit to increase our visibility.
My Rain
“The wind that comes off the Sahara towards the Atlantic is called Harmattan. The breezes over Senegal and Mauritania mingle with the warm waters near Cape Verde and occasionally become one of those end-of-summer storms that plod their way up the Mid-Atlantic states, dropping enormous amounts of rain and causing damage.”
East African Lockdown Drawings: Bamboo and Marigolds
There is a second sort of bamboo growing here, with beautiful varied dark green stripes on a yellow background. My friend tells me that in Vietnam this is special and a spirit might live in such bamboo. There is a large stand of such striped bamboo nearby. I’ve seen no spirits but there are weaver birds occupying the grove, much activity from the birds building their nests. The ground around the stand is littered with failed nest attempts.
Hardly a Day’s Journey
That light and the memory of it: to glide along without friction in the warm spring air and take in that peculiar beauty shining all about is to find yourself suddenly in a higher order of landscapes, a place made more real and more present through the congruence of your solitude and its primeval majesty that demands no more than your awareness and of which you ask only that you be allowed to move slowly through it without intrusion or interruption.
A Letter to My Apologist
The late afternoon light was too beautiful for that moment; out of place in the dreariness of that corner of Abidjan, tucked away among the drab offices of the business district. It reminded me of summer nights in Cape Town when the sun is so seductive you can’t bear the thought of going indoors.
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