For the past few years, I come every Saturday to my little corner of the digital world to celebrate the pieces written by other people that most deeply burrowed into my brain when I read them during the preceding week. Tradition further dictates that I note the passing of one calendar year into the next by highlighting the sextet of articles that I admired most. Because I’ve already offered my commentary once, I’ll instead share of portion of the respective author’s words to make the argument of excellence. These are shared in no particular order.

The Dungeons & Dragons Players of Death Row by Keri Blakinger

In late 2019, Wardlow was moved to a cell in the section known as death watch, for the men who have execution dates. Wardlow had just received his: April 29, 2020.

At first he said he wasn’t going to play D.&D. anymore. But Ford started discussing how the players were facing a potentially world-ending threat. Wardlow knew he had to join the game to save the story. “I’m in,” Wardlow told him. And so Arthaxx, his character, opened his eyes.

Searching for Meg White by Melissa Giannini

A few days later, Blackwell, who in addition to his archivist duties is also a co-founder and co-owner of Third Man Records, consoles me with the fact that he also tried and failed to get Meg to do an interview a couple of years ago timed to the 20th anniversary of the band’s debut album. “On the one hand, the journalism dropout in me feels that. I’m like, ‘Yeah, she needs to talk,'” Blackwell says. “But on the other hand, God, it’s so much fucking cooler that she doesn’t. It’s not like she’s living on a tropical island and no one sees or talks to her or anything like that. But her current operational way forward—this media blackout—is fucking badass, and it’s rock ‘n’ roll.”

What Growing Up on a Farm Taught Me About Humility by Sarah Smarsh

The profound humility instilled in me by my upbringing left no room in my worldview for exceptionalism of any sort. It also left me troubled by the ways that most humans calculate the value of things — animals, plants, land, water, resources, even other people — according to hierarchies that suit their own interests.

More than once, while wrapping meat, I sliced my finger on the sharp edge of the butcher paper. There was nothing special about my blood. It was red just like the pigs’ and the cows’. It was clear to me that there was nothing special about me or my family, either, doing that most essential work of feeding others. Nothing special but also nothing lesser.

the only good coffee is bad coffee by Helena Fitzgerald

Diners only exist at weird, nowhere times, the three pms and the four ams, and that’s what diner coffee tastes like. It’s true, of course, that you can go to a diner at a normal hour, for a normal reason. But when you order coffee, the specific way in which it tastes bad, as though it were somehow possible to forget one of the ingredients in black coffee, reminds you that it’s not ever actually a normal hour at a diner.

To amplify Trump? Or not to amplify? There’s actually a good answer. by Dan Froomkin

When, for instance, he accuses public officials and the media of treason punishable by death, reporters should categorically state that what he is doing is classically authoritarian behavior. Then they should ask Republican leaders and Trump supporters to say whether or not they agree with him and why.

And reporters should do that every time Trump says something alarming.

Michael Stipe Is Writing His Next Act. Slowly. by Jon Mooallem

When he wasn’t racing in circles, he was daydreaming. All his life, thoughts, feelings and sensory information have coursed through him at gale force. His attention is perpetually whipsawing elsewhere or vaporizing entirely. He will say, over dinner, “I’m sorry, but the clavinet took me completely out of the conversation,” when a clavinet suddenly enters the restaurant’s background music. He will say — laughing at himself, after you ask about his difficulty concentrating — “You’re not going to believe this, but ask me again because my mind wandered in the middle of the question.”