More than 8.5 million people live across Virginia, the 35th-largest state by area. From the Blue Ridge Mountains, through the Shenandoah National Park, and from the Potomac River to Virginia Beach, here are a few glimpses of the landscape of Virginia, and some of the wildlife and people calling it home.This photo story is part of Fifty, a collection of images from each of the United States.

Whatever the difference might be
to one who knows,
we couldn’t see
from where we stood in soft shadows
any signs that they were swallows
or bats. That there were wings
was without doubt;
you could see small pointed things
swooping out
into the gloaming—
and sometimes back.
One seemed almost iridescent
as I tried to track
its crescent
flight across the hill.

Any time a worst-case scenario doesn’t come to pass, the comforting idea emerges that it wasn’t really in play after all.That pattern is now unfolding, following a week during which the United States Supreme Court dealt a pair of what are almost certainly fatal blows to President Donald Trump’s bid to overturn the 2020 election results.

This article was published online on December 13, 2020.Several months ago, I got into a long discussion with a colleague about the origins of the “Sunday scaries,” the flood of anxiety that many of us feel as the weekend is winding down and the workweek approaches. He said that the culprit was clear, and pointed to late-stage capitalism’s corrosive blend of performance stress and job insecurity.

Ten years ago, the United States was clawing its way out of a miserable recession. Washington was running an annual deficit of $1.3 trillion, and the national debt had reached $9 trillion, roughly 60 percent of GDP. Those figures were frightening enough to spur the Obama White House and Congress to create a panel of experts to address the long-term budget and to kick-start several rounds of government austerity, making cuts to the defense budget and a wide range of domestic programs.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.KATIE MARTIN / THE ATLANTICWelcome to vaccine purgatory.“We’ve spent 2020 adjusting to a pandemic normal, and now a strange, new period is upon us,” my colleague Sarah Zhang, who covers vaccines, notes in her latest.Thus the waiting begins.