Not “Nice”
Boiled down, the problem is simple: Nice does not speak the truth. Nice dances around the truth, speaking so softly and with so much extra reassurance and bubbling niceness.
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The Midwest’s Lascaux Is Up for Auction
On September 14, Picture Cave—the hidden Lascaux of the Midwest—will be auctioned off to the highest bidder. The auction terms also note that Picture Cave is “subject to prior sale,” should there be an exceptional pre-auction offer—so this may already be a done deal.
My Guilty Adoration of Veronica Mars
"Veronica Mars" is teenage in a way that takes you right back to all the angst, idealism, feverish passion, and blithe fun. But the show is also a noir crime drama that in many ways feels quite grown up.
Free the Nipple
When a woman’s nipple has been injured, scarred, or rebuilt after a mastectomy, it can be shown. When a woman’s nipple is hard at work feeding an infant, it can be shown. And no one will object if a woman’s nipple has been distanced by history and glammed up by a gold leaf frame. An artist from the Renaissance may reveal a woman’s nipple with impunity.
Oh, Bo: He’s Problematic
Screenshot from Bo Burnham’s recent Netflix special, ‘Inside.’ Comedian-musician Bo Burnham has a song in his most recent Netflix special, Inside, that admits he is “problematic.” In making a joke of something true, he either faces it or is trying to get ahead of criticism (or both),…
Haiti’s Curse
Painting by Jean Walgens Pierre, age 12. Dried veggies, small scoop. Red beans, big scoop. Vitamin powder, medium scoop. Rice, big scoop. Dried veggies. . . . People poured into Chaminade’s gym this morning, squinting as they tried to find friends camouflaged by hairnets and masks. Now we…
First They Stole Love Letters, Now Email
Young people despise email, even at work. I picked up on this subtle fact when every source under thirty provided only a cell number—or demanded mine. Email is seen as too formal, too anxiety-producing, and one’s phone as more casual and friendly than one’s keyboard.
Illinois State Fair a Constant Through the Years
Trooper Haylie Polistina, from the Illinois State Police Public Information Office, at the Illinois State Fair. Photo by John Griswold The Illinois State Fair was canceled in 2020, for the pandemic, and for years before that I was living elsewhere. As we walked across the Fairgrounds yesterday to…
Uprooted by Modernity
Simone Weil might not have cherished a strong sense of place or family or chummy associations herself, but she understood solidarity—and she knew it was already eroding.
Handbook for Our New Alien Overlords: “Home”
Artist’s diagram of the interior plan of the Hindenburg, 1936. Wikimedia Commons Humans desire a “home,” distinguished from “a house” or other dwelling by emotional attachment. Like the house, a home might have walls, a toilet, running water, a bed, the means to keep and cook food, some…