New York Jazz, Serendipity, and Vijay Iyer
Iyer’s introduction is low-key, almost diffident, and he starts softly, his fingertips barely brushing the piano keys. There is a thoughtfulness in his demeanor, a gentleness.
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Elvis Is Still the King
Elvis is still the king. Right? I mean, he is 68 now, but that is a lot younger than many other canonical rock stars.
On Returning to a Quiet Life (with Virginia Woolf’s Help)
“The Common Reader” honors Woolf with its very name, so I let myself pause and read the essay slowly. At the start of this forgotten diary, I learn, she was staying at her country home in rural Sussex, with “men mending the wall & roof” of the house.
Happy Day, Fathers
I have tried as a father myself to fashion the best of both modeled worlds. If I have made homes comfortable, cooked, done domestic chores, and served all roles in raising and supporting sons, I have also headed out to have a look around and brought back my own answers, which I try to communicate.
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.
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.