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…
Not since Prohibition has there been such a strong and widespread public warning. It feels a little odd.
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…
“Ach! Don’t do that!” The dog dropped his paw, dismayed by my sharp tone. For years he has swiped my arm to get my attention, wangle a treat, stop me from overwork. Now—seemingly overnight, right after my sixty-fifth birthday—my skin has thinned to tissue paper, and his toenails cause blotches…
A brush-up on the toy company’s history points to one simple corporate marketing decision on which this strange trend in crime rests: the death of child’s play, and the rise of adult hobby obsession.
“Honey, you look sick without it,” my mom informed teenage me. Gentle and loving, she was hardly ever that harsh. But she was caught in the cult of femininity, and she wanted to make damned sure her daughter understood the need for artifice. I would like to say I ignored…
The impulse is to think that someone who makes plans for something else also helps bring it about. That fantasy does not seem to be doing us much good as a body politic, but the idea has taken root everywhere, including at Department of State.
A solid old brick house on Clayton Road with a sign outside: Living Insights Center. A meeting place, maybe, some kind of recovery program? I step inside. In the first room to the right, a lifesize statue of St. Therese of Lisieux gazes at an illuminated Qur’an, a silver menorah,…
Introduced to a chatbot, people soon pour out doubts and questions they would not dare reveal to another human being. Why not?
I am not losing my faith. I am wondering where that religion truly is. Is this really the place where God Himself enters into physical form in our midst?