Missouri in the 1870s: How People Lived
Fairness was demanded, compassion urged. No one worried about HIPPA. Nor did the news need to be momentous.
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Missouri in the 1870s: Marriage and Its Scandals
Marriage in 1870s-era Missouri was a competitive but disorganized sport, each ceremony removing a potential rival from the fray.
Thoreau’s Quiet Quitting
In “Henry at Work: Thoreau on Making a Living,” John Kaag and Jonathan Van Belle note that Thoreau was hardly a slacker. “What is leisure but opportunity for more complete and entire action?” he asked. By walking four or six hours and thinking as he went, he managed to write several thousand words a day.
No More Library Fines!
The book I am reading at the moment is due back. Do I bother to renew it electronically? And if I have no more renewals, do I keep it and finish or bring it back anyway? It seems that only money, not respect for other readers, has driven my actions all these years, a terrible realization on which I prefer not to linger. Money is the yardstick for value, right? And what has more value than books?
Inescapable Stories
Words, stories, and art, are approximations, part of their pleasure. Think of the obsessiveness of long-career artists to make meaning through time.
Alan Lightman’s (and Everybody Else’s) Search
“Einstein’s Dreams” is one of those elegant, deceptively simple books you know you need to reread a couple thousand times to fully grasp. Not that the book contains answers; what it contains are possibilities that act like crowbars, wedging your mind open. Now Alan Lightman has a new three-part documentary, “Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science,” that acts the same way.
Black History Month Note 1: Let’s Talk About Ethel Waters
Ethel Waters did not initially have any grand ambitions for herself, certainly not to be in show business. Her first forays into the world of formal employment were hotel and kitchen work, typical for a lower-class Black woman with a spotty education.
Who Needs a Purpose?
Depression, emptiness, anomie, acedia—we have all sorts of words for this soulsickness. A midlife crisis is simply the announcement of a need for a different, more compelling purpose. Quiet quitting says the job was not worth doing.
Recipe Stories: Toast
Everybody is off on some trip. Get real. Make toast.
Choose Your Treat
Dogs used to have the run of a neighborhood; there were fewer rules about where they could eliminate, fewer leash laws, more actual jobs they could do for us. Now they are pampered and controlled with an iron fist by people terrified of fines, lawsuits, or disapproving neighbors.