Reading archive 2021-10-31

Hell caves, evil fairies and animal sacrifice: Halloween’s intense Irish roots - "Halloween arrived on our shores in the 1840s with a wave of Irish immigrants pushed out of their home country by the Great Famine. The 19th-century golden age of magazines, particularly women’s magazines, pushed it out of immigrant enclaves and into the broader public. 

"'Middle-class housewives loved reading stories about quaint, regional celebrations, so the magazines would include these stories about Halloween festivities and parties and so forth, and they caught on,' Morton said."

U.S. missionaries have long tried to convert the ‘unreached’ in the Amazon. Now Indigenous groups are fighting back.

How does a pandemic start winding down? You are looking at it.: Coronavirus infections are down, hopes are up, but uncertain forecasts put the Biden administration in a pandemic messaging bind