20 years ago, I began investigating the banishment from the public square of a photograph I saw on the morning of 9/12/01 and never again. I wound up writing “The Falling Man” because I discovered that @RDPhotographer’s taboo photograph told the stories of so many. 1/ This year, I’ve been hearing that @Facebook has banished the photo from its platform all over again for violating “community standards.” When I tried posting a link to my story, I received the following message: 2/

So, setting up a bookshelf, I bumped into a book by Grace Paley, whom I had never read. I started reading, and was like, Damn, here goes. 1/ The book is "Enormous Changes at the Last Minute," and halfway through it I'm already doing Grace Paley searches on the Internet, and I find an essay from George Saunders. 2/

This is a love story.
It is a love story that takes place against a backdrop of predation, pain and survival. 1/ Last week, I posted a thread about Betsy Sailor and Irv Pankey. In 1978, Betsy survived a brutal sexual assault by a @PennStateFball player named Todd Hodne. Irv, who also played for Joe Paterno, knocked on her door and became her friend, protector, and “guardian angel.” 2/

A woman is raped by a football player. She tesifies against him and lives in isolation in the freshman dorm. One night, there is knock on her door. She opens it, and another football player fills it. “Hello,” he says. “My name is Irv Pankey, and I believe everything you say.” 1/ When @pinepaula and I were working on #Untold, our story about Todd Hodne and his crimes at Penn State 4 decades ago, many people asked us a question about the coaches, cops and players who learned about Hodne in real-time: “What would you have had them do?” 2/

A few days ago, I received an email from someone who had read the story @pinepaula and I wrote about the crimes of a former @PennStateFball player named Todd Hodne. The reader wanted to talk about another Nittany Lion, Irv Pankey. 1/ Irv Pankey is the player who came to the aid of one of Todd Hodne’s victims, Betsy Sailor, after she testified against Irv’s teammate in court. Irv did not know her. His aid was unsolicited and unbidden. But it changed Betsy’s life. 2/

Let's give the devil his due: he's tireless. He has an iron constitution. . He wasn't just a politician; he was a desperate man, and from his desperation he drew the power to hypnotize vast crowds. 1/ He was never anything less than a finisher, which is what made him dangerous, especially down the stretch in an election. Even today, he couldn't do anything but try to make the sale, even to people who supposedly loved him. 2/

Joanne Rogers — Mrs. Rogers — died this morning at the age of 92. There was no one else like her, except maybe her husband Fred. 1/ That I had both of them in my life — Fred for four and a half years, Joanne for 22 — is not just one of the great gifts of my life; it is the gift that seems so unaccountable that it is the closest I’ve come to the experience of grace. 2/