Read from "Skiing Walhalla" in Where the Rain Children Sleep: A Sacred Geography of the Colorado Plateau by Michael Engelhard with new essays and a new preface by the author:

"I awaken to dishwater light and the SHUSHing of snow sliding down the tent fly. Poking my head through the entrance I find our campsite muffled by cloudbanks. Already, Kate hovers near the canyon rim, eager to capture the sweet light of morning with her camera. By the time I’ve wriggled into my ski pants—condensation showering me from the domed ceiling—and coffee is steaming on the stove, there is movement in the abyss. Wet shrouds drag across ponderosa-clad slopes. Where the fabric thins, the sun bleeds through in an amorphous smear. Elsewhere, gashes reveal Toroweap ridges and pinnacles perched atop raw-boned Coconino scarps. To the northeast, a thick broth spills across the Painted Desert, barely contained by the glowing rim of Vermilion and Echo cliffs.

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Read from "1993" in Things Seen by Annie Ernaux, translated by Jonathan Kaplansky, foreword by Brian Evenson:

"April 8

Condominium meeting. People talk about staircases, basements, etc. Every issue tackled becomes an opportunity for people to show their knowledge, “we need to install meters at such and such a place,” to tell an anecdote “in the building where I lived before,” a story “the other day, the tenant on the fifth floor.” Stories are a need to exist.

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Read the beginning of Chapter 2, "Captivity" from In the Neighborhood of Zero: A World War II Memoir by William V. Spanos:

"After a rough crossing of the English Channel, the 106th Division arrived at the battered seaport of Le Havre, a city that had been virtually leveled during the Normandy invasion, where a convoy of U.S. Army trucks, “The Red Ball Express,” was waiting to transport us to our destination. During the crossing our officers had informed us that we were being assigned to an area in the Ardennes Forest, specifically a mountain area called the Schnee Eiffel, west of the village of St. Vith in Belgium near the Luxembourg border. We were, they said, going to replace the 2nd (“American”) Division, a renowned unit, desperately in need of respite, having been in combat since the invasion of Italy in September 1943. Although the ground we were to take over from the 2nd was on the front lines separating the Allies from the German forces, it was, we were relieved to hear, an inactive zone, providing the perfect conditions for easing a raw and inexperienced division into combat action.

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Read from "Long Live the Red Terror!" by Fan Shen, from American Lives: A Reader edited by Alicia Christensen:

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