By Stephen Rodrick

Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman orchestrated one of the most ambitious legislative achievements in state history—thirty distinct policy victories in a single 2023 session, from universal school lunches to abortion protections to paid family leave. Then, in June 2025, a gunman dressed as police murdered her, her husband Mark, and their dog Gilbert in their Brooklyn Park home. This profile refuses conventional past-tense obituary framing; everyone interviewed insists on present tense because her work remains alive. The narrative architecture moves between her childhood scrambling through her parents' environmentally conscious junkyards, her three failed Harvard applications (she eventually earned her Kennedy School master's), her door-knocking obsession that flipped suburban districts, and her garden sanctuary where she pruned delphiniums while burning through caucus phone calls. Political violence threads throughout—the fear after George Floyd protests, the credible threats that drove her temporarily from home, her acquisition of Gilbert for protection and companionship. Her final legislative act: voting alone among Democrats to strip undocumented adults of healthcare coverage to prevent government shutdown, texting afterward about worrying for her soul

By Ira Sukrungruang

Ira Sukrungruang chronicles his transformation from a car-dependent life in Columbus, Ohio to pedestrian existence in Exeter, England. The journey threads through his ordination as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, where barefoot alms walks taught him painful lessons about embodiment and humility. At nearly four hundred pounds, he grappled with intense self-consciousness, but those meditative morning rituals planted something crucial: an awareness of how bodies connect to earth, how movement can transcend mere transportation. The shift to England forced confrontation with decades of avoidance.

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By Jeni Gunn, Photography by Alana Paterson

Jeni Gunn earns $2,800 monthly juggling private investigation, emergency management, and landscaping gigs, yet can't afford potting soil for her garden. At fifty-one, she's mastered middle-class camouflage through thrifted designer finds and strategic deflection, fabricating headaches to avoid restaurant dinners, inventing broken pipes when hosting becomes financially impossible, declining Hawaiian trips by claiming she's not "a plane person." Gunn describes becoming "low-maintenance" in relationships to compensate for financial deficiency, comparing herself to plastic lawn: tidy, durable, fake upon inspection. The piece illuminates roughly ten million Canadians navigating similar invisibility, possessing stability's signifiers while rationing condiments and trimming their own hair at bathroom mirrors. Gunn has watered down cream, eliminated bread entirely, and faces retirement with deadpan terror: eventually tottering into the woods to perish from fox bites.

By Francesco Pacifico

Francesco Pacifico watches an American family interrogate a Roman gelateria worker for thirty-plus minutes, parsing every flavor detail as if conducting intelligence operations. Time distorts around their questions; locals become nonplayer characters in their knowledge-gathering videogame, reality only glowing once they've assigned it value and meaning. The essay argues American tourists function as empire's advance guard, inventory-takers who determine what deserves to exist. Rome invited this arrangement decades ago when liberation armies arrived with powdered eggs, creating carbonara and an addiction to external validation. Now the city peddles "made in Italy" because it lacks industrial strategy, needing tourists to flood through like contrast liquid giving shape to identity. Pacifico traces how curiosity converts to commerce: elite tourists request cold brew at dive bars, signaling invisible real estate forces that will deliver it within months. A local businessman builds a Pinterest fever dream plaza catering to short-term rental occupants, erasing neighborhood character for generic Tuscan-Puglian mashup aesthetics.

Really hope you enjoyed the selection of stories today. I am always interested in hearing from you. If you have thoughts on how I can make this email even better, do not hesitate to reach out.

Brett

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