The Catskills Gas Rush

It was a weekend house—until I got a letter from the landman, telling me I was living on a huge, untapped source of natural gas. Riches beckoned. How much were my environmental principles really worth?

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David France
We All Forgot the Condom

You may have heard that HIV infection is on the rise, or that the effort to develop a vaccine has dead-ended. But in recent years, with every new setback and breakthrough—including sensational word of a new “morning after” pill—gay men have been changing their behavior, adopting ingenious methods to keep the virus at bay. As a result, the one commandment of the past twenty-five years—always wear a condom—is fast becoming a relic.

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David France
The Science of Gaydar

As a presence in the world—a body hanging from a subway strap or pressed into an elevator, a figure crossing the street—I am neither markedly masculine nor notably effeminate. Nor am I typically perceived as androgynous, not in my uniform of Diesels and boots, not even when I was younger and favored dangling earrings and bright Jack Purcells. But most people immediately read me (correctly) as gay.

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David France
Love and Terror

Yusra Abdu's mother and father had no idea what their 17-year-old daughter was planning, or if they suspected something, they're not letting on. In the Palestinian West Bank, surrounded by Israeli soldiers and steeped in a half-century of warfare, it is not always wise to say what you know. To hear them tell it, Yusra is as wonderfully frivolous as teenagers come, a girl obsessed with music and fashion, a girl who "if you bought her a new dress every day, she wouldn't say no, " her grandmother tells me one afternoon in the chilly four-room apartment the family shares.

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David France