Of Pilgrimage
When my scale gets out of whack—domestic life bullied by a universal preponderance or inner life swelling to block out the physical world—I find it is time to reintroduce one realm to the other. It is cause for pilgrimage.
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What Should We Delegate?
Leisure, even subsidized, does not interest me. Given enough books and bonbons, I could adjust. But the real problem is that we will not simply coexist with the machines to which we delegate our prior work. The artificial will subdue us.
What the Brooklyn Bridge Still Says About Us
The Brooklyn Bridge is, and has always been, us: teeming, diverse, sociable, aspirational, and entrepreneurial, which is a nice word for scrounging.
‘They Cloned Tyrone’ Not Just “a Bootleg ‘Scooby-Doo’”
If Tyrone was not directed by Peele, I thought, the filmmakers must be using his methods, as the trailer seemed to show a Blaxploitation knockoff that pointed at the Tuskegee experiment.
May The Lambs Flourish
Though you might have glimpsed Ethel Barrymore disguised by a tuxedo years earlier, in 1974 The Lambs became one of the first all-male clubs to admit women—well ahead of the Athenaeum, the Kiwanis Club, the University Club, the Bohemian Club, the Olympic Club, the New York Athletic Club, the Missouri Athletic Club…. These days, almost half the Lambs are women.
What the Baseball Sellers Buy
Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals are nonplussed, perhaps even offended, by the idea that this year the Cardinals are sellers, in last place, and what adds insult to injury, in the central division, usually considered weaker than the eastern or western divisions of the National League.
Picnics at the World’s Fairs
No one spoke of picnics in English until 1748, when Lord Chesterfield used “pic-nic” to describe a casual mix of card-playing, drinking, and conversation. The word did not refer to an outdoor meal until 1800. But “pique-nique” had joined the French language far earlier, derived from the verb “piquer,” to pick at something, and “nique,” a trifle, a bagatelle, something of scant importance.
Testing Fate With an Eight-Buck Notebook
For forty years now, I have written on scraps, old looseleaf, and green-tinted steno notebooks (both sides). I did not want to be precious about my ideas or my scribbled rough drafts.
Technology and Stories
The change in film technology is another of those things, like the technology of warfare itself, that sometimes leave us agog, like British Army officers sitting atop camels in a desert and watching one of the first biplanes fly past.
The Elephant on the Patio
I have watered this plant copiously, backed off watering, fed her miracles, scooted her huge pot inch by inch toward more light. I feel like an ardent suitor who cannot win my love’s heart.