The rich are different from you and me, as Fitzgerald said; they have bigger toys. Sometimes the toys draw so much water, and provide such a temptation to the unwashed masses, that they require deep-water berthing at their own islands built offshore.
Photo by John Griswold
We have an old bottle of Macallan whisky given to us by my in-laws, who were Scottish immigrants in the 1950s. They told us that a family friend was a foreman at the Macallan distillery, and he gifted them the bottle on the eve…
Poster at St. Louis Science Center. Photo by John Griswold
“Hot damn, mummies!” I heard someone say at the St. Louis Science Center, which is currently hosting the exhibit Mummies of the World. Who is not drawn to gaze on a mummy, even at $19.95 a ticket?
Usually…
Screenshot from Bo Burnham’s recent Netflix special, ‘Inside.’
Comedian-musician Bo Burnham has a song in his most recent Netflix special, Inside, that admits he is “problematic.” In making a joke of something true, he either faces it or is trying to get ahead of criticism (or both),…
Trooper Haylie Polistina, from the Illinois State Police Public Information Office, at the Illinois State Fair. Photo by John Griswold
The Illinois State Fair was canceled in 2020, for the pandemic, and for years before that I was living elsewhere. As we walked across the Fairgrounds yesterday to…
Artist’s diagram of the interior plan of the Hindenburg, 1936. Wikimedia Commons
Humans desire a “home,” distinguished from “a house” or other dwelling by emotional attachment.
Like the house, a home might have walls, a toilet, running water, a bed, the means to keep and cook food, some…
Screen capture from the Royalty Exchange website
Remember when Michael Jackson bought publishing rights to songs by The Beatles, Springsteen, Elvis, the Stones, and others? He did so, famously, after Paul McCartney, collaborator and once-friend, told him it was a good investment. Then Macca spent 35 years trying…
Photo by John Griswold
My friend Larry was complaining that his flight to Paris was several hours longer, now that he lived in Los Angeles instead of Chicago.
“That means I have to watch three or four more movies in-flight,” he said. He is an actor.
I had just…
Layla, who helps sell Sugartown watermelons at a roadside stand and is a very good girl. Photo by John Griswold.
First, you best get on it, if you hope to drive that road. A lot of the beauty, charm, and squalor remains, but it has changed in the…
Lynd Ward, from ‘Madman’s Drum,’ 1930.
I have written before about preparing book manuscripts for publication. But not only does each time feel different; assembling my own collections feels different from finishing single-arc books, and editing others’ books feels different yet again.
A few weeks have…