That tangled bouquet of masks I kept hooked over the indicator light in my car? Shoved into the glove compartment. The shared calendar on a wall in the kitchen? Filling up. We made it through these weird years, and the last thing I want to think about this spring is the pandemic. […]
How does a guy with a doctorate in public policy analysis, an MBA, and master’s degrees in applied economics and public health wind up painting Kermit and the Duff’s beer can from The Simpsons—and winning national acclaim for his bold, textural canvases? Graffiti. David Ruggeri was a sweet Catholic boy scared of […]
“I’ll keep watch,” a sweet stranger offered, and after a second’s hesitation, I pushed through the swinging door of the men’s room. Desperado. Man, it was weird in there. The row of urinals looked sinister to me, like something used for some bizarre, coercive sanitary ritual. I missed the overpowering floral scent, […]
Would drop earrings be too much at the office, the guy asks the fashion columnist, proud to be on trend. From coded ear piercings that nobody could ever, forgive the pun, keep straight, men eased into the pirate’s hoop and Brad Pitt’s armful of bracelets, and now their jewelry has exploded: dazzling […]
The women who cracked German code during World War II must have gone home every night exhausted. I picture them in basement rooms, smoking, drinking coffee, working with scrunched foreheads until late at night. Now, with less camaraderie and thrill, we are all code-breakers, scrutinizing media to uncover its slant. I had […]
I was embarrassed every time my husband walked through the room and saw what I was watching. Three episodes earlier, I had admitted that both main characters were driving me nuts. That the con artist was charmless, the journalist an odd combination of schoolgirl emotionality and driven, self-centered obsession. That she actually […]
For years, I have deluded myself into thinking that the future hinged on attitude. Kids in poverty needed hope and a stronger sense of self, confidence, possibility. Those who were depressed or cynical needed to be grateful for what was good in life. Last week, I read a piece in Psyche by Jennifer […]
On this day, the fortieth anniversary of his untimely death, I come to praise Philip K. Dick, not to bury him. Despite PKD (as he is known to admirers near, far, and wide) only being 53 years old when he passed, on 2 March 1982, from a series of strokes that compounded […]
I fell in love with Lowell in college. I was seduced by the tautness of his language and the grandiosity of his worldview. “Skunk Hour,” with its painterly composition of a town in Maine, its deliberately pedestrian observations, its seemingly casual lineation, the incorporation of a song lyric (“Love, O careless love”) that […]
“The drumbeat of war.” Media outlets all over the world latched onto that phrase, and for weeks, its driving, propulsive beat moved the news of Russia and Ukraine forward. CNN let us hear from Ukrainian business leaders “as drumbeat of war grows louder”; other outlets noted that “Drumbeat of war is already hurting […]
