By Bobbie Kirkhart

Hillary Clin­ton is a strong, prag­mat­ic politi­cian. Mod­er­ate­ly hawk­ish, she cast a mean­ing­less vote to sup­port the Iraq War, which she now regrets—though she still pro­claims her sup­port of the war in Afghanistan.

Indeed, her pub­lic persona—her tone of voice, her pos­ture, the ever-present pants suit—gives the appear­ance of con­fi­dence and com­mand. She has always been assertive, many say to a point of pre­sump­tion. She start­ed run­ning for the Sen­ate when she was still our First Lady. No oth­er president’s wife has vied for pub­lic office. From the time she became the first woman full part­ner of Arkansas’s most pres­ti­gious law firm to her stint as a Sec­re­tary of State who advo­cat­ed “smart pow­er,” she has built a résumé that could only hap­pen with excep­tion­al abil­i­ty and dri­ving ambition.

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By Sabrina Völz

The scene is July 4, 2012. 8:56 p.m. Ira Wagler sends an e‑mail halfway across the world, answer­ing an inquiry from a uni­ver­si­ty instruc­tor in Ger­many whom he cor­dial­ly grants an inter­view about his book, Grow­ing Up Amish. “Thanks for your invi­ta­tion to come tour a few uni­ver­si­ties in Ger­many,” he con­tin­ues. “I won’t say ‘nev­er;’ the jour­ney of the book has led to many unex­pect­ed places already. But for now, well, I’m quite con­tent here where I am.”

Lit­tle did he know, and lit­tle did I know then, that his grant­i­ng of that very inter­view would take him not once but twice to Ger­many. And as irony would have it, he will be back exact­ly three years to the day I received that first email. The good news is that he won’t be alone. Your pres­ence is kind­ly requested.

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By Justine Fiebig and Saskia Heike

If images of blonde girls shak­ing their pom-poms and yelling at foot­ball games pop into your mind when you hear the word “cheer­lead­ing,” then you might just want to sit down: The first cheer­lead­ers were men.

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By Michael Lederer

Look through a win­dow and we see the world out­side. Change of focus, and we can see our­selves reflect­ed in that same window.

As an Amer­i­can writer liv­ing in Europe, I feel like an astro­naut on Apol­lo 17. While that mis­sion osten­si­bly was to explore the moon, iron­i­cal­ly the great­est ben­e­fit gained may have been the famous “Blue Mar­ble” pho­to­graph look­ing back at Earth. For the first time in the long-short arc of human his­to­ry, we were able to see our­selves in a wider, deep­er con­text. Een­sy-ween­sy we.

Keep your nose touched to the paint and you can’t see what the paint­ing is about. Micro­scope and tele­scope for the big­ger picture.

Enough metaphors.

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By Bobbie Kirkhart

We were the only two wait­ing in the New Accounts sec­tion in the bank. For us gre­gar­i­ous Amer­i­cans, this is a slight­ly awk­ward sit­u­a­tion. In most wait­ing rooms, we would start a con­ver­sa­tion. We start con­ver­sa­tions with total strangers in doc­tors’ wait­ing rooms, in the halls of court hous­es, dur­ing inter­mis­sion at the the­ater, and in any slow-mov­ing line.

Banks present a spe­cial sit­u­a­tion. They are qui­et, but peo­ple are work­ing all around, often in the same room. The stan­dard open­ing ques­tion, “What brings you here?” may be embar­rass­ing. Strange­ly, this doesn’t both­er us in the doc­tors’ office. We’d rather tell a stranger that we have a sex­u­al­ly trans­mit­ted dis­ease than that we need to refi­nance a loan.

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By Sabrina Völz

“Mom­my, mom­my. The oth­er moth­ers are all unem­ployed,” were the first words out of my son’s mouth as he dart­ed toward our car. Not exact­ly the kind of state­ment some­one might expect from a 6‑year-old dur­ing his first week of school. Beam­ing from ear to ear, I imme­di­ate­ly cleared up the lit­tle mis­un­der­stand­ing, but I real­ized that for him it was com­plete­ly nor­mal to have a work­ing moth­er. Nor­mal. His words were music to my ears and played over and over in my head. I imag­ined what a good hus­band, col­league, and boss he might become know­ing that sim­ple truth. How­ev­er, being a full-time work­ing moth­er has not always been nor­mal, not even in the 21st century.

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