Reading archive 2023-12-09

A harvest of memories: A family reunion. The annual corn harvest. An antique wedding dress. In rural Iowa, an aging couple with diverging politics reflects on the past and what people owe one another in the present. - "As Verna continued driving, now through farmland covered in drying corn crop, she passed solar panels, farm equipment and ethanol plants, all made possible by some combination of government grants, tax deductions, and subsidies. Sometimes she heard complaints about low-income families supposedly abusing safety-net programs like Medicaid. Verna wished her neighbors acknowledged what the government did for them, too. She thought about how the county wouldn’t even have an ambulance service if not for the now-maligned coronavirus relief funding. Nobody seemed to be making that case to voters here."

Trump camp escalates attempt to limit second-term talk from outside allies

Diminutive and mysterious, the Pentagon’s X-37B set to launch again: The space plane has spent the equivalent of 10 years in orbit over seven missions. But what those missions were remains unknown.