Margaret Renkl

1 week ago | nytimes.com | Margaret Renkl

When officials at the General Services Administration, which manages the federal government’s real estate holdings, announced on March 4 that they had identified 440 government-owned buildings for potential sale, they noted that taxpayers should not be paying “for empty and underutilized federal office space.” If you accepted that statement as a true accounting of the Trump administration’s motives, you probably gave the matter no more thought.

3 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Margaret Renkl

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall, / That wants it down," Robert Frost observed in his poem " Mending Wall." I am one of those somethings. When the speaker of Frost's poem wonders what use a wall might be that encloses no livestock, I wonder that, too. When he asks his neighbor just how it is that good fences make good neighbors, he is asking the question of my own heart. I was irked 30 years ago when our neighbor said she intended to install a free-standing fence between our driveways.

3 weeks ago | chapter16.org | Margaret Renkl

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: This essay originally appeared on November 17, 2017. ***If I’m ever in the unfortunate position of having to choose my last meal, I will choose a ham sandwich on lightly-toasted Pepperidge Farm bread and a cup of tea with milk and sugar. This is what I ate for lunch with my grandmother most afternoons when I was in grammar school. I went to St. Nicholas in the Heights section of Jersey City.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Margaret Renkl

If you're ever booked into a Davidson County, Tenn., jail - no matter how minor the misdemeanor, no matter if your case is later dismissed - the jail's booking system automatically sends your arrest information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Under passed in 2024, local law enforcement agencies here are obliged to honor any resulting detention requests for 48 hours beyond normal release time.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Margaret Renkl

It's full-on springtime now. My blackberries are sending out new canes, and the passion vines have broken ground. The nestlings in the bluebird box are old enough for their cries to be heard across the yard. The front-stoop skinks are awake, the first lightning bugs are blinking in the trees, and the first ruby-throated hummingbird has migrated safely back to Tennessee from his wintering grounds in South America.