Dear Reader,

We’ll keep this quick. This week, we explore ways of caring – for loved ones, for music, for you, the reader.

Our writers investigate the modern dilemma of “chalance” and caring too much, grapple with loss and the distance that comes with it, and share stories of people who are denied care when they need it the most. Reportage on the dedicated players of the chapel organ and students kickstarting a Gender and Sexuality Studies journal amid the federal government’s attacks on DEI round out the issue by showing the ways people devote themselves to the activities they care about.

We produced this issue in a bleak time for expressions of care. Stories from the political world – cuts to global aid and viciously cruel deportation policies – herald what happens when our country’s leaders lose this essential component of human relations. The pieces in this issue, we hope, demonstrate that care is not a practice to be discarded, but one to be held close.

With Nasslove,

Frankie Solinsky Duryea & Alex Norbrook, EICs