Riding in the Jenny Biplane, an American Icon

It was all safe as houses, and twice as fun—an opportunity of a lifetime, and powerful enough an experience that I still have a hard time overlaying it on my childhood dreams of flying in a Jenny. For now, let me say that on this day a complicated little freedom machine called the Jenny—built to aid warfare, at once fragile and powerful in its utility, and as beautiful as a moth in the daylight—transported me through time and space and let me return to people I love.

How a Big-City Airport Invents the Future

Before taking charge at Lambert, Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge held management positions with its later deserters, American Airlines and Trans World Airlines. Thus she has spent most of her career in St. Louis, riding the city’s swings between Midwestern pride and a Midwestern inferiority complex.

Public Orgasms, Corpsing, and the Giggles

Orgasm is a little more specific than laughter, which is definitely contagious. But both topple the boundaries, letting us inside the mind and body of another human being. As we listen, we, too, lose a little of our habitual control.

Fat-Sorrow and the Fever of Extravagance

Luxury matched its dictionary definition: “the state of great comfort and extravagant living.”Now, guided by social media, ads, fashion magazines, and influencers, we grab at the tiniest extravagance.

The Dubious Art of Death Cleaning

In the slog of cleaning out the most intimate possessions of someone you loved, you remember who they were, what habits anchored them, what delighted them, what mattered to them.

America’s Anxiety About Anxiety: a Q&A With Dr. Rebecca Lester

Spidery, creeping, impossible to ignore, anxiety spins uncertainties that cling no matter how frantically we brush them away.

Home Is Where One Starts From

Lynette Ballard first read Eliot as a sophomore at a small rural high school in Dixon, Missouri. “Oh, my goodness,” she remembers thinking. Modern poetry went straight to the core of her. By the time T.S. Eliot died, she was a freshman at Mizzou, planning to become an English professor.

Jammed Keys and Snarled Ribbons

Why is it unthinkable to design a laptop with a glossy enameled black surround, brass edges, beautiful keys, an elegantly framed monitor? Because we want no friction, no weight, no reminders.

Jerry Springer’s Opera Buffa

Jerry Springer deliberately performed a public service (an admittedly lucrative one) by reminding those of us he shocked that people behave in ways that make us cringe

Let Your Soul Catch Up to Your Body

We are creatures whose machines overpower them, and we want the machines’ clarity, information, and ease because we are soft-bellied, emotion-ridden creatures. The division is internal, not civil.

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