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A history actor/interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

Linton Weeks

Linton Weeks joined NPR in the summer of 2008, as its national correspondent for Digital News. He immediately hit the campaign trail, covering the Democratic and Republican National Conventions; fact-checking the debates; and exploring the candidates, the issues and the electorate.

Weeks is originally from Tennessee, and graduated from Rhodes College in 1976. He was the founding editor of Southern Magazine in 1986. The magazine was bought — and crushed — in 1989 by Time-Warner. In 1990, he was named managing editor of The Washington Post's Sunday magazine. Four years later, he became the first director of the newspaper's website, Washingtonpost.com. From 1995 until 2008, he was a staff writer in the Style section of The Washington Post.

He currently lives in a suburb of Washington with the artist Jan Taylor Weeks. In 2009, they created to honor their beloved sons.

  • The truth about koalas (and athletes) shows what we already know: Not everything is what it seems to be. There are some fictions we are wiling to accept as fact.
  • For some Americans, next week's inauguration is a time to protest, not celebrate, the beginning of a second term for President Obama.
  • Jack Lew's unreadable signature — which could appear on new U.S. currency if he becomes Treasury secretary — raises a question: In our age of electronic communication and digital authentication, do signatures even matter anymore?
  • After more than 200 years of intense scrutiny, the meaning of the Second Amendment continues to baffle and elude. Maybe it would help to think about this complicated dictum in a more slant way, like a poet — through simile and metaphor.
  • The week between Christmas and New Year's used to be a sleepy spot on the American calendar. Nowadays, it's crammed with people rushing around reminiscing with friends and families, returning presents and raking in gift-card booty. Others, even perhaps members of Congress, go straight back to work in this fiscal cliffhanger of a year.
  • Nothing is enough to ease a parent's pain in losing a child, but simple gestures of kindness and concern are still welcome even in the depths of grief.
  • Whether by choice or by circumstance, a lot of Americans are spending Thanksgiving alone. Some are too busy with work or school, or can't afford to travel. Others have family tensions or prefer to skip the dinner-table questions and bad jokes. A few are even crossing to Canada, where it's just another Thursday.
  • Post-election pomp and circumstance seem to be in our national DNA, but there have been some low-key inaugurals, including during the Great Depression and World War II. With a looming fiscal cliff, is this the time for a simple swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 21, rather than another megamillion-dollar blowout?
  • "No campaign is perfect," Mitt Romney said on Election Day. "Like any campaign, people can point to mistakes." And so here we are, as the election dust settles, asking seasoned political observers to do just that — point out a handful of foul-ups, fallacies and false steps in Romney's run.
  • A gloomy economy dooms the incumbent? Undecideds break toward the challenger? The tallest guy always wins? Not this time.