Though their lives wound up linked, these three men could not have been more different. Perry Smith was as poor as used-up dirt. Truman Capote sparkled like diamonds and partied with stars: Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra…. Philip Seymour Hoffman landed in the shy middle, living off his talent as simply as one can in New York. What they shared was a sensitivity too raw to hide, and pain that sent them running.
The ginger nut (and by association other cookies of its type, such as those made with black peppercorns) has an aggressive presence but offers scant sustenance. It is meant to aid digestion of other things, to have a warming effect in winter, to relieve boredom, and perhaps to remind us we are alive in the sometimes dry, husky business of life.
Having lived in the United States for a few years, I have either struggled to understand democracy in practice or struggled to keep up with it.
Scrolling through social media, I am reminded that today marks the fifth anniversary of the #EndSARS protests in Nigeria. And suddenly, I realize that the heaviness I felt upon waking is not only fatigue. It is anxiety, not the kind that anticipates the future, but the kind induced by the knowledge of a past that refuses to stay past.
Mr. Dick and his kite may offer an ideal escape from troubled thoughts, but we are drawn to him because he is also heartfelt enough to be real. As pointed out earlier, ‘David Copperfield’ is Dickens’s most autobiographical work. We read fiction because it is not fact. We also read fiction because it never strays too far from fact.
Roasting different vegetables on a shared baking sheet, for example, requires some sensitivity and planning. How dense, how hydrated, how sweet, how easily burned is each one? Which one has an aggressive nature; which is mild? How much time does each require to become the best version of itself?
‘The Knick’ is both an homage to physicians and medical researchers of the past, even those wildly wrong but well-meaning. Above all, it is a portent of what we stand to lose when we cannot, or refuse to, remember all that our modern medical establishment was built on a foundation of trial, error, and incredible suffering and loss of life.‘‘
Why are we humans so impatient with any way of learning the world that is not our own?
No one was protesting in downtown Champaign, with its popular restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. No MAGA believer showed up with an assault rifle, as someone did in Indiana, or with a Nazi flag, as a man did in St. Louis’s Metro East.
Hey, was that a police car honking in support? Mmm. Probably not.