Values – CHRISTOPHER SCOTT MCNEILL

June 16, 2020

I decided to pursue journalism after spending 18 months working toward a position with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 2018, when investigations targeting Russian interference in the 2016 election had led to heightened animosity toward federal law enforcement agencies

The anxiety of truth

April 26, 2020

The August air was sweltering, and the necktie wasn’t making anything easier. I parked my car in front of an ominous building that might as well have been a fortress—it was surrounded by a tall concrete fence crowned with barbed

Whole and complete yet broken

April 21, 2020

My work is a 15-minute walk from the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento, California, and when I went to work as an essential employee April 20, I didn’t expect for the Reopen California protests happening that day to make

Gratuity in the time of corona

April 13, 2020

I have this one regular customer who’s been on my mind today. Prior to the coronavirus, prior to the shelter-in-place order, he may or may not have left a tip when he came in to my coffee shop—I, honestly, have

A Tuesday with Punch

February 29, 2020

My grandfather passed away in December of 2019. He was one month shy of 96. I was named after him, in a way—while he was born Alexander Christopher, and I gladly carry on his middle name, everyone called him Punch.

Western evocations

February 16, 2020

When I moved to Oklahoma around the age of 10, I was a certifiable Yank in many ways, thrust into this foreign world of horse ranches and pickup trucks. It didn’t take long after we first arrived at some unincorporated

A wanton desire for normalcy

January 30, 2020

In 2016, I fell ill with a mystery ailment that, to this day, doctors have never been fully able to understand. The primary symptom was jamais vu, which is sort of yin to déjà vu‘s yang—instead of the foreign feeling