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By Amanda Knox

A world away, I still heard the stories. My friends wrote me letters. January to June, my childhood best friend was deep in Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, extolling her virtues to folks who still owned a home phone. Other friends were all about Obama. After years of economic difficulty and military involvement abroad, Obama was a vision of hope and change, the vehicle for progressivism. Not to mention, Obama was also the most eloquent rhetorician and charismatic public speaker EVER, hadn’t a grey hair on his head, and upon earning the Democratic nomination, was the first black man to ever run for president. People were discussing politics over family dinners, in the hallways between class, over rounds of beer pong. They were going on marches and making art. On social media, they cried out “Yes We Can!” and on November 4th, 2008, my friends were dancing in the streets along with the rest of them.

By Amanda Knox

Approaching Century Link Field in a throng of green-and-blue people, flanked by an ecstatic marching band, I couldn’t help but think about the Roman Colosseum, and how sporting events have been experienced by humans in the exact same way for as long as civilization has existed. The same spirit of adrenaline-spiked tribalism that motivates Seattlites to show up in droves to watch grown men skillfully kick a ball around motivated the Romans to show up in droves to observe the clashing of gladiator against gladiator, Christian slave against starved lion.

We are the same. As Tim Urban wrote recently on Wait But Why, if you were to swap a newborn from a Medieval farming village with a newborn New Yorker today, no one would know the difference. That’s because the modern human brain hasn’t evolved in over 10,000 years. Some evolutionary psychologists think our brains are the same as those belonging to humans from as far back as 50,000 years. For context, that’s the stone age, around about the time humans invented the needle.

By Amanda Knox

Just under a year ago, my sister Delaney asked me to read and help edit her senior thesis project—an essay about her year volunteering at a local youth tutoring center. “You gotta help me, Amanda,” she pleaded. “I can’t use the verb to be.”

“That’s weird,” I said. English uses to be not only to define states of being, but also as an auxiliary verb, a necessary component of many verb conjugations. Without to be, light is neither a particle, nor a wave. Without to be, I will not be! I scowled. “That can’t literally be what your teacher wants. She probably just doesn’t want you to use passive voice, like, the milk was spilled, as opposed to, I spilled the milk.”
“No!” Delaney huffed. “I can’t use to be at all! I’ll get marked down! Help!”

By Amanda Knox
 
In my pre-teens, I chose to ignore the sour tang that had crept into my relationship with my little sister Deanna. I dismissed her suddenly miserable, disdainful attitude towards me like it was nothing more than one of her frequent bouts of carsickness. She’d get over it.
 
It’s not like I had done something. In fact, from the way she seemed to be angry with me about everything, I deduced that her frustration wasn’t really directed at what I did, but at me. Me personally. And it was baffling. What happened to the kid who crawled into my bed whenever she had a nightmare? The little girl who counted on me to look after her on the playground, and be her voice when she was too shy to speak? Why didn’t she like me anymore?
 
The answer was obvious to everyone else. “It’s just sibling rivalry,” the adults said. “Don’t take it personally.” But it felt personal, and I was at turns skeptical and angry. I wasn’t competing with my sister, so why should she compete with me?
 
Now, nearly two decades later and in the thick of Deanna’s wedding planning, we texted the following exchange:  
 

By Amanda Knox

In my experience, conferences can make you feel high. Between the panels, plenaries, and a sea of old and new faces, you end up inevitably spread thin, over-stimulated, and under-slept. And it’s great, because during those few days packed with professional, social, intellectual, and emotional activity, you’re swept up by a frantic, inspired joy that’s supposed to carry you through another year.

By Marjorie Young

One of the pleasures I relish this summer are the frequent updates from my great-nephew Sam, currently backpacking through Europe with his best friend Aidan. In addition to gorgeous photos on Instagram, entertaining and descriptive text messages arrive daily. The two eighteen-year-olds are clearly having a marvelous time while gaining valuable experience along the way.

By Amanda Knox

I’ve never liked being in a rush. I forget things: my coat, my wallet, my keys. I bump into doors and doorways and stumble over cracked pavement. Or, as was recently the case, I back out of my mom’s driveway and accidentally knock over her mailbox.

Oh, don’t worry—the thing’s a tank. It’s a security box made of seamless steel, including a post sheath. When the back of my Subaru Forrester drove into the mailbox, what gave way was the twelve-inch stretch of exposed 4X4 between the bottom of the sheath and the ground, where the post was secure inside an 80lbs lump of concrete. Chris and I cut the engine, rushed out of the car, and found the mailbox lying in the grass, impermeable, scratch-less even. Meanwhile, there was now a hole in the back of my car, just below the rearview window. A quick Google search on Chris’s phone revealed that the punctured part was called the “garnish,” and replacing it would cost about $500. Ugh.

By Amanda Knox
 
A world away, I still heard the stories. My friends wrote me letters. January to June, my childhood best friend was deep in Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign, extolling her virtues to folks who still owned a home phone. Other friends were all about Obama. After years of economic difficulty and military involvement abroad, Obama was a vision of hope and change, the vehicle for progressivism. Not to mention, Obama was also the most eloquent rhetorician and charismatic public speaker EVER, hadn’t a grey hair on his head, and upon earning the Democratic nomination, was the first black man to ever run for president. People were discussing politics over family dinners, in the hallways between class, over rounds of beer pong. They were going on marches and making art. On social media, they cried out “Yes We Can!” and on November 4th, 2008, my friends were dancing in the streets along with the rest of them.