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LUNCH BREAK READS

TGIF!

Closing the week out with some heavy stories about abuse and pollution, something a little more esoteric…marriage, and a story of hope from Central Park.

Also, I was really blown away by the early support our Lunch Club announcement received yesterday. Next week, I will be rolling out The Lunch Club webpage where paid subscribers can access the LBR Reading Lists, the Weekend Edition, and my monthly note called Source Notes. If you have already signed up, thank you! If you’re thinking about supporting the newsletter, you can see the options here.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Brett

01 • 17 Minute Read
THE NEW YORK TIMES John Leland
How Three Chess Friends Battled Demons and Saved Two Lives
Three men met over chessboards in Central Park. Frank Ames studied South Asian textiles, Paul Trahan lived alone near the Dakota at 87, and Lincoln Cyrus, 64, slept on a 59th Street sidewalk while running a donation chess table. When Frank found Paul incoherent in a filthy apartment last September, he called 911, then recruited Lincoln to help. Lincoln hauled out 96 bags of garbage, moved in, and became Paul's Medicaid-funded home aide. Both men frame their struggles as battles with spirits and demons rather than mental illness.
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02 • 17 Minute Read
THE ATLANTIC Honor Jones
How to Save Marriage
A friend got engaged but refused to move in with her fiancé, and that small puzzle anchors a look at Stephanie Coontz's new book, For Better and Worse. Coontz, 81, has spent three decades arguing that the male-breadwinner marriage was a brief 20th-century blip, not tradition. History holds far more variety in how couples have paired and survived. More than a quarter of American 40-year-olds have never married, a record. Coontz wants that history to free people to build marriages that fit them. Egalitarian couples, she notes, report more love and better sex.
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03 • 14 Minute Read
STAR TRIBUNE Andy Mannix and Jeremy Kohler
In This Church, Child Sexual Abuse Has Gone Unchecked for So Long That It Spans Generations
Children in the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church were sexually abused for years while preachers urged forgiveness instead of calling police, reporters found. The Scandinavian-rooted faith teaches that a forgiven sin is erased, and that anyone who keeps raising it harbors an unforgiving heart. That doctrine shifted blame onto victims. In Wyoming, Charles Massie allegedly abused at least seven girls across 832 incidents, mostly during Sunday services. His brother Clint was convicted in Minnesota. In one family, three generations of Peldo women were abused. Swedish elders plan a visit this summer as criminal cases mount across the United States and Canada.
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04 • 9 Minute Read
GRIST Maddy Lauria
Blood in the Well: One Town's Fight Against the Slaughterhouse Polluting It
In late 2019 the taps in Trish Leigey's home in Loganton, Pennsylvania ran brown and reeking. Tests found bovine DNA in the water, which her lawyers tied to Nicholas Meat spraying liquefied slaughterhouse waste on nearby fields. The processor kills roughly 1,000 cattle a day and employs about as many people as the town holds, so few neighbors wanted to complain. Leigey did. In December a jury found the company liable for nuisance and trespass and awarded her group $145,000. The waste spraying simply moved to other fields. Lax right-to-farm laws and a 1994 guideline leave the practice barely regulated.
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