“You know the smell. It’s there every time the first fat raindrops hit the ground—a distinctive, earthy scent that suffuses the air, an aroma that speaks of the changing seasons and promises relief from stifling summer heat. There’s a name for the smell of rain, too: “petrichor,” a poetic portmanteau of the Greek words “petros” (stone) and “ichor” (the blood of the gods in Greek mythology).”
“Landlines encourage connection—without the downsides of smartphones.”
“The phone eats time; it makes us live the way people do inside a casino, dropping a blackout curtain over the windows to block out the world, except the blackout curtain is a screen, showing too much of the world, too quickly.”
“But if I don’t pay it off, actual children — not abstractions, but specific kids with specific names who like specific dinosaurs and struggle with specific math problems — will continue to experience real shame and real hunger tomorrow.”
I Randomly Decided To Pay Off A School’s Lunch Debt. Then Something Incredible Happened.