Seventeen days in a Danish anarchist town
Waste management is always the trump card of the opponents of anarchy. “Oh, yeah?” demands the smug square, “You want to get rid of the government and all the laws? Then, who’s going to take out the garbage?” The anarchist garbage collectors, that’s who.
In Freetown Christiania, the self-governing anarchist town in Copenhagen, Denmark where I spent seventeen days in the summer of 2010, garbage collection is a festive affair. Like the rest of the town, the dumpsters and garbage trucks are covered in colorful murals. But the brightly painted equipment belies the serious mission of the garbage collection collective, one that, like many aspects of life in Christiania, is stated in a manifesto and evolved at weekly meetings.
Adventures in underground dating
I’d had plenty of dating misadventures, but this was the first time I ended up down a literal manhole.
I had been on one brief, blind date with a guy who didn’t seem interested. But he was my exact age, gainfully employed, and adventurous, so I had to consider it, if I didn’t want to die alone.
What would it be like, asked my therapist, to describe what you want to attract in the present, instead of naming what you fear most in the future?
The writing career capable of supporting single motherhood isn’t Hannah Horvath’s — it’s Lena Dunham’s.
I spent my Girls years watching Sex and the City, and my Sex and the City years watching Girls. I hope my thirties will culminate the way Hannah’s twenties just did — in motherhood, preferably biological, preferably shared. But the financial unreality of the Girls finale is, to use a word you only learn in the classrooms of the kind of college where Hannah Horvath will now improbably teach — problematic.
Hannah Horvath is not just “difficult” or “unlikable” or “flawed” or “complex” or “thought-provoking.” …
Reflections on the Women’s March on Washington
by Emily Meg Weinstein
Days before the election, I started a new iPhone Note. I keep dozens of notes — to-do lists, funny things the kids I tutor say, unsent rants at boyfriends past, grocery lists, promising lines — but this note was just names.
“Elizabeth, Ella, Elle, Eloise, Kiara, Kaia, Kaya, Caiya, Camryn, Katie, Kimberli,” it read. “Mia, Mya, Nia, Noa, Sierra, Serra, Sarah, Zoey, Zoë, Leila, Lila, Layla, Kayla, Cora, Clara, Claire, Clare, Phoebe, Sophie, Regan, Hannah, Hanna. …
