These dispatches, filed from every one of the 50 states, were stand-alone stories that seemed to fit together, jigsawlike, into an epic larger than their individual selves. Invariably, they were just trying to get through another day in America, their wills tested by crime, by fates, by natural disaster. I lingered and listened and, in doing so, I detected a theme that seems to persist no matter the president or the era: shared resilience. If the Mississippi threatens once again to overflow its banks, we work in concert to build a sandbag wall of protection. But I have been to the center of our nation.

Source: New York Times September 29, 2018 17:26 UTC