A Film Crew’s Wistful Take on the Midwest
When the crew arrived, tumbling out of a giant van, they thanked us for opening our home. Fair enough; we seldom clean. But they kept talking about our home, which is cozy but hardly striking.
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Six Reasons the First Hearing of the Jan. 6th Committee Did Not Go Well
General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, in taped testimony in the first night of hearings, courtesy US House The first of the public hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol aired on multiple platforms tonight.
Aspic, Really?
Within its cool glop sit pieces of meat or fish, eggs or veggies. The original idea was to preserve them, sealing out air and bacteria. A liver pate, for example, turns crusty when exposed to air, but encase it in aspic and it will stay as fresh as a mummy.
There Be Demons
In modernity, that external force crawled into our skull; we speak of inner demons, including addictions, compulsions, and voices of doom or self-mockery. The shift is not as dramatic as it seems: in the second century, Clement of Alexandria was already noting how easily we can be possessed by our own appetites.
You Can Be My Wingman Any Time
“Top Gun: Maverick,” the second movie in the now-franchise, broke the Memorial Day weekend record for a movie release and is Tom Cruise’s new “biggest domestic box-office debut,” earning $550 million globally in only a week. Somewhere there are admirals celebrating the range of their wingmen.
Has Life Ceased to Be Fun?
Craving fun is a miserable experience; you feel boring and old and bogged down. But realizing what I am craving and why—that is already helping.
The Difference Between Incels and Femcels
And now there are femcels, with their own online community and a symmetrical loathing of the men who do not want them.Would it be better to return to the stigma of “spinsters” and “old maids”? Hardly.
On the Vagina, Whose Ownership Is Currently in Question
Basic sex-ed should have straightened us out, but instead it took writers and artists to scrub off the shame. Half a century ago, Judy Chicago threw her now-legendary dinner party in honor of thirty-nine strong, famous women, designing porcelain plates with vulva and butterfly forms for the installation.
The Complex Fate of Being a Proud American
We were proud to be Americans, “groomed to it,” to use a phrase. I do not regret this at all, for as I recall I think most of us were happy as children. Our circumstances were not such that we thought, I suppose, that it was self-evident that we should be unhappy. I do not think, for quite a while in my childhood, I really knew what unhappiness was and certainly did not know what racial grievance was or what it was to be unhappy as a Black person.
Writing About Nature While We Still Can
taking notice matters, these days. Maybe that is why nature writers often try too hard: they see the species dying away, the ground burning, and know they need to write about it—but there is no time left to fall in love with the facts, as the leisurely Victorians did.