Every week, I page through: nope, nope, nope. All I want is one New Yorker cartoon as funny as they used to be, so I can stick it on the fridge and grin at it when I start dinner. Is it me, have I misplaced my sense of humor in…
Every time I read the news, I hear a faint, French-accented cry: To the barricades! Then I wonder what counsel Victor Hugo would give us. The burning accusations in Les Misérables, his most famous and wildly popular work,drew so much attention that the National Assembly of…
Irrational ramblings and outbursts need not get in the way of love.
Look at the holes in English vocabulary, and you realize what our culture lacks.
How a seedling can hear the rain fall, and how the sound soothes away our stress.
Who knew reading and gardening had such overlap?
“Coffee, Brown” Our morning habits, For Each of us, A pot brews Poured over, Estranged ~a contribution by Andy, in the comments section In his New York Times column, Judge John Hodgman fielded an intensely controversial question a few weeks ago, and…
The following sentence just begs for snorts of derision, and I can imagine Stanley Tucci’s character rolling his eyes. But The Devil Wears Prada 2 parallels to the Midwestern magazine world. Sure, our versions are inevitably smaller scale and far less sophisticated, less privy to talent, couture, exposure. Budgets and…
A few weeks ago, the Sunday New York Times crossword was printed with an error. Mistakes had been made before, but in eighty-four years of cruciform puzzles, this was the first all-out disaster. The error meant that the clues and squares did not line up; the puzzle could not be…
I have begun what the Swedes call death cleaning. Well in advance, one hopes. But we have a big old house chock full of stuff, and I feel the need to lighten; besides, it is fun now, and will be less so if I wait until death is closer at…