Reading Moby-Dick at the Newberry

Our feelings, thoughts, and memories do not change the great grinding universe. It is Ahab’s main issue, as well as Melville’s.

Goats, God, and the Grind of the Soil

Before the Baetjes built a renowned goat milk and cheese creamery selling their cheeses to gourmet specialty stores such as Zabar’s in New York City, Veronica Baetje remembered the bliss of having “a Heidi moment” in simpler times.

Lunchtime

Ours was a table conveniently located in the cool shade of a tree near the principal’s office. Nobody dared to sit there, even if they were the first to be excused for lunch; it belonged to us, the same way the area around the oak tree in the center of…

Cutting the Slack: Understanding an Economy in Growth Mode

These days, there is talk of a recession: A foreboding conclusion many economists and market experts seem to draw from a slowdown in economic growth. Of course, doom and gloom narratives outsell a rosy picture any given day. However, a slowdown in economic growth is not always a recession. To…

Devil’s Icebox

Before access into Devil’s Icebox was restricted in 2006 due to the bats contracting white-nose syndrome, it was not uncommon for college students from around Columbia, Missouri to hang out in or around the perennially 56-degree cave, especially during the hot, humid Midwestern summers.

A Real National Emergency

This week the nation mourned the one-year anniversary of the Parkland, Florida shootings, which claimed 17 lives. Seventeen used to be my lucky number—the day I was born in September, the age I was when I started college, and the year I gave birth to my only child. A year…

And It Shows

Throughout our days, the either-or fallacy is often presented to us as, “There are two kinds of people…” Ella Fitzgerald crooned about the two kinds of people she could not understand in Duke Ellington’s 1941 song, “Rocks in My Bed”—“that’s a deceitful woman and…

Sesame Street Turns 50

you are likely familiar with Sesame Street, the beloved children’s television show conceived by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett in 1966

Deep in Our Refrigerator*

Dating app based on the content of one's refrigerator

The Lifecycle Adorns Us

Both women bought “DNA jewelry” in the shape of teardrops–one to honor a life departed, the other to commemorate the lives she nourished. My mother Carla chose a silver necklace for herself and her younger sister to house the ashes of their beloved mother, my late grandmother. Jenna, my best…

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