(Photo by Chris Korbulic, from Outside Magazine)
I know, I know. It’s hard to make time to read long stories nowadays. Most people get their news in bite-size bits of information passed to them from Facebook, Twitter, or that scrolling bar across the bottom of the TV news station. But I still love sitting down, with a magazine (or my computer) and really diving into a piece of writing. A few stories I’ve read recently in publications and online that I was moved by enough that I’d like to share them here.
Ryan D’Agostino’s The Survivor, Esquire, June 2011
This is a tough story to read, so consider yourself warned. It’s about Dr. William Petit, who survived a brutal attack on his home that left his wife and two daughters murdered. But the story is really about how a man like Dr. Petit survives something like, how he goes on living. His story is a remarkable one, and D’Agostino’s portrait of him is riveting.
Grayson Schaffer’s Consumed, Outside, March 2011
The editors at Outside were first interested in the death of whitewater kayaker Hendrik Coetzee, who was eaten by an alligator on the White Nile in Africa, when they assigned the piece to Grayson to write. But once Grayson started looking into the story, he realized that Coetzee’s life was even more intriguing than his death.
Susan Dominus’ Could Conjoined Twins Share a Mind?, New York Times Magazine, May 2011
You simply must read this story about four-year-old twins Krista and Tatiana Hogan, who are joined at the brain. Doctors and neuroscientists are of course studying the girls, but most importantly, their family is simply trying to give the girls as normal a life as they can. The video accompanying the story is also well worth watching.