Hi everyone! Today’s digest is in two parts. The first two articles deal with how we seem not to be making progress on race, especially in education. The second two articles focus on how we deal with death — whether it comes unexpectedly or not. All four articles are excellent, so please consider reading at least a couple of them. Thank you, and enjoy!

Parents Are Hiring Public-School Consultants to Help Them Figure Out Where to Send Their Kids

Why teach when you can instead perpetuate racial and socioeconomic gaps in education? Joyce Szuflita helps rich white parents get their kids into “good” public schools so they don’t “have to” send their kids to $40,000-a-year private schools. I try to be patient with this kind of thing, but there is something really wrong with her line of work. (But again, because I’m not a parent, I don’t have credibility.)

What Abigail Fisher’s Affirmative Action Case Is Really About

The Supreme Court will likely strike down affirmative action at colleges after hearing oral arguments yesterday in the case of Fisher v. Texas. Nikole Hannah-Jones (my favorite reporter on race and education) notes in this 2013 article that the plaintiff Abigail Fisher, a young white woman, likely would not have been admitted to the University of Texas even if the college did not factor in race in its admissions policy.

I find myself playing the piano more lately. This is a good thing! Most recently: Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 2 in A Major.

Unpregnant: The silent, secret grief of miscarriage

I have several friends who have had miscarriages. Sadly, they’re common. But I still don’t know how to be a good friend during this time of grief and loss. Our society doesn’t seem to know what to do, either. This article helped me to understand a little bit, at least.

What Should Medicine Do When It Can’t Save You?

Dr. Atul Gawande — author of Being Mortal, totally required reading — writes poignantly about what we don’t want to talk about: death. He argues in this 2010 piece that our fear of death, combined with our health care system’s desire to keep treating terminal diseases, results in too many families torn at the end of a loved one’s life — when really that time should be filled with love.

That’s it for this week! No new subscribers last week, so it might be time for me to go out there and do some recruiting! If you know someone who might be interested, let me know, and I’ll do the cajoling firsthand. See you next Thursday.