A dreary spring day, cold and wet, is what I remember. And standing, nervous, at the edge of a scraggly “crowd” of about twelve people. We were in Saint Louis U.’s quad, and this was my first (and almost last) protest. Something about hostages in Iraq? God help me, I cannot remember. All […]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to hang out with people who are like you. There is nothing wrong with wanting to live near them, work with them, and party with them. The problems start when the similarity is a stark, flat-out category with a history of larger discrimination, and people try […]
This year’s Super Bowl was two big rivalries for the price of less than one, given how handily the Philadelphia Eagles defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 and how deftly Kendrick Lamar used the biggest stage in the nation—the N.F.L. halftime show—to score another round against his hip-hop rival, Drake. The […]
With the increasing ubiquity of streaming media and those platforms’ strategies for cross-promotion, it becomes easier and easier to make new discoveries of old films and shows. That is how I recently discovered Sasquatch, a documentary series released on Hulu in 2021. Sasquatch follows a journalist as he follows the trail of […]
My gal pal has a type. Not a type she prefers, but rather a type that prefers her. Her appeal to this type of guy is so reliable that when she sees a man of this type—most often, these days, in a grocery store—she begins to prepare herself for the eventual approach. […]
The three-martini lunch, once standard, turned scandalous in the seventies, hastily replaced by light beer and wine coolers. Then came a defiant resurgence of glam cocktails and cigar bars, followed by a wave of sober-curious shaming, and then the triumphant redemption of red wine as healthful. Which was followed—while the applause still roared—by […]
My only trip to Paris was a three-day whirlwind many years ago. With no time for the Louvre, I went instead to the Rodin Museum—and fell in love. The white roses climbing a stone wall outside the entrance; the stillness inside, despite the crowd; sunlight streaming through floor-to-ceiling arched windows, lighting the sculptures’ […]
Thoughts are pricy these days; a penny will only buy ambivalence. Should our nation’s tiniest coin be preserved or officially abandoned? It has shaped our figurative language, our notions of thrift, our attitudes toward money. Yet we are a practical people, and it costs well over one cent to mint a […]
Remember when we fantasized about where we would go to college or who we would marry? Now my sixtysomething cohort fantasizes about where they will retire. And Lord, but my friends are practical. A ranch house, they say, all one floor. Or a “villa”—if ever a word was inflated, it is this one; […]
My friend Larry called to warn me about the “evil Robin Hood” he had discovered furthering “the degeneration of societal norms.” Larry owns an art gallery and is tuned in to all manner of associated subjects, from Braque’s congruence with Picasso, to prison art, to intellectual property issues. The thing he saw […]
