“Fix Your Hearts or Die”: David Lynch’s Work Has Always Been Deeply, Powerfully Queer by Lex McMenamin

Reading the outpouring of grateful remembrances of the life and work of David Lynch the past few days has been comforting and inspiring. None has been more moving that this piece, written by Lex McMenamin, that reflects on the many ways that Lynch’s cinematic work spoke to the LGBTQ+ community. The beloved and much-memed line from the Twin Peaks revival cited in the article’s title is the starting point. McMenamin compellingly makes that case that Lynch’s humanity, an often undervalued attribute of his art, went deeper and broader than that. This piece is published by them.

Overlooked No More: Karen Wynn Fonstad, Who Mapped Tolkien’s Middle-earth by Brian Kevin

The Overlooked series of belated obituaries in The New York Times turns to Karen Wynn Fonstad, the creator of The Atlas of Middle-earth and other similar works. Brian Kevin has a keen sense of which details from his subject’s life are most remarkable, including — and especially — the unlikely circumstances that led to the 1981 book that earned her fame and veneration among the most faithful J.R.R. Tolkien fans.

Girding for Trump Return Since Day He Left Office by Coral Davenport

Will the webpage pictured above be gone by Monday afternoon? Or will it take the new presidential administration stocked with miscreants and morons a few days to wipe it away in one of many acts of smugly proud irresponsibility? Reporting for The New York Times, Coral Davenport writes about the many scientists employed by the federal government who have firsthand experience with the reckless, carefully cultivated ignorance and authoritarian impulses of the incoming administration and the heroic efforts being put in to lessen the damage. The article’s closing detail, about shamelessly playing to the ego of the small-minded, soulless man in charge as a self-defense tactic, is probably the most telling and disheartening about the era the country is death-marching into.