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Meredith ap Robert

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The Footnotes

Americans are the frog in the pot, part I: Grand Rapids

Grand Rapids is a weird place to call home. Today it’s all breweries and hipsters and weed dispensaries and overpriced apartments. But growing up, it was Bland Rapids. A place so boring and unimaginative that corporations would come to town to trial new products. If the straight-laced, God-fearing people of Grand Rapids, Michigan, will buy…

June 4, 2025
Thoughts from the 60th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies

The 60th Annual International Conference on Medieval Studies. It all comes down to an awful lot of hurry to talk about some very old texts. But that’s America. An insistent drum whose beating makes you forget the pounding of your pulse, the rhythm of your breath, and cadence of the seasons.

May 27, 2025
Toronto Pearson, Terminal 3, the A Gates

In an airport that welcomes 50 million people every year, I’ve found a quiet corner. Tables empty. Outlets free. Plenty of seats at the bar. Just workless workers and captains of industry, keeping one another company in a world that’s waiting, between resignation and rebellion, for whatever’s next.

May 16, 2025
True or false?

I was 17. I should have been thinking about my summer plans, college in the fall. Instead, I found myself in my senior Bible class, staring down the gates of hell.

March 28, 2025
The failures of social media

Every day, when I open Facebook or Instagram, I’m bombarded by reels of muscular, shirtless men thrusting their pelvises and shaking their asses. Despite relentlessly clicking “see less like this,” nothing changes. But I can’t delete my account, because absence from social media means erasing myself. Are we trapped?

March 2, 2025
America, and the joy of missing out

This Sunday was something quite special for me: the first time in my adult life that I was completely unaware that the Super Bowl was happening. Social media ruined it for me in the end—but what joy, what bliss to be ignorant of American goings-on for just a heartbeat.

February 14, 2025
The religion of getting

When I was 18, I worked as a barista. It wasn’t a bad job. But I will never forget the trainer, I’ll call him Sean, who—in addition to calling me a “PMS-y woman” during training—one day proclaimed, “I have the greatest job in the world.”

February 6, 2025
A week in Wales by train

Wales is mostly rural, and best suited for adventurers (of any skill level) who enjoy the outdoors, want to get off the beaten path, and don’t mind a little rain. While it’s great to have a car, it’s also totally possible to get around by train and bus.

January 30, 2025
The middle ground

The wise among us would advise that there’s a middle ground and I would listen, nod my head, marvel at their wisdom. Yet I find there are things that cannot be said. Can they be set to one side? Or must they be carried on in silence?

January 24, 2025
Diary of a dysgwr

Lifelong learner. A laudable philosophy. Looks nice on your LinkedIn. But in practice? As something more than a slogan? Exhausting. In my 20s, fresh out of school, it felt like an invigorating mantra. A celebratory affirmation of the wonder of the universe. As I approach 40 and find myself nearing the likely halfway point of…

January 16, 2025

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Meredith ap Robert

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