Soft Serve
Soft-serve is a synthetic miracle. Satiny in texture, smoother than any smoothie. Cold white, with none of that buttery cast you find in fresh-churned ice cream.
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Kevin Will Never Stop Looking for Love
Kevin “belongs” to the farm family across the county road and fields. Lee hears that people think peacocks are pretty, but they are supposedly good with pest control too. There used to be three more, but Kevin is now a rare bird in these parts.
Illinois’s Perplexing, Quirky, Venerable Tully Monster
This small prehistoric creature puckered just as we do. It hoped, hunted, mated, suffered, died. And it left a wonderfully baffling legacy.
The Purloining of the Pink Flamingo
The whimsy was born in New England, not the Florida it conjured. Don Featherstone had designed the first pink flamingo yard ornament in 1957, naming the bird Diego and his species Phoenicopterus ruber plasticus.
Betting on Armageddon Then and Now
The Cold War was a depressing fact, and we did practice duck and cover sometimes and other times were taken for drills to the nuclear fallout shelter under the adjoining junior high building. Divine or no, Armageddon could happen.
Trapped in the Wrong…Species?
Therians feel themselves less than 100 percent human—and most prefer their internal species. Rare, new to the rest of us, and at first glance bizarre, the subculture is following the usual trajectory.
SCOTUS Makes Room for Pregnant Pigs
On May 11, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a California law—supported by 62 percent of California voters back in 2018—that bans the sale, in California, of pork from mother pigs so tightly caged or penned in that they cannot stretch, lie down, or turn around. The new law gives them an extra ten square feet. Not much, but if you are pregnant, any breathing room helps.
Off On Some Trip
As a child of the ’60s, I am finding phrases of that era useful again. One of them—“Everybody’s off on their own trip”—did not necessarily mean drugs even then; it meant we walk our own paths. Sometimes these are mysterious to ourselves and others, even when they intersect.
A Diary That Crossed the Battle Line
Ted Engelmann thinks a lot about memory—the traumatic sort, but also the historic, cultural, and sociopolitical memories that should never be erased.
Word Choice
During the First Indochina War, reporters filed stories using cable, and each word cost money, so it made sense to condense Viet Nam, Ha Noi, Sai Gon, and other names. But those days are long gone. Using the correct spelling is more than courtesy; it lets us see the place fresh, as a country with a rich history and culture, not a war we lost.