Madame X
I loved John Singer Sargent’s Portrait of Madame X the instant I saw it. The subject, I imagined as a coolly aristocratic Frenchwoman in her early thirties. The artist was a man half in love with her—and half in hate.
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The Integrity of ‘Tori and Lokita’
Tori and Lokita has an integrity of vision. Its pacing is unlike any blockbuster, so we are allowed to follow characters down the street at a human pace, and listen to them perform, by demand, the entirety of a special song they have memorized to the customers where they run drugs. The consequences to them of events beyond their control, due to choices made by other people, are realistic and heartbreaking.
Banksy Does Not Approve
Visitors to the exhibit grab drinks at the bar. Photo by John Griswold The traveling Banksy exhibit looked good in the online ad, and there was a warning of “high sell-out risk.” I bought quickly, for two of us, mine a VIP ticket for extra access, so I…
Turning Spit to Silk
Sea silk’s fascination is its rarity, but also its impossible lightness. You cannot even feel it resting in your palm.
Starry Starry Skies (No More)
Seven years ago, scientists took measure and reported that 80 percent of the world’s population (and 99 percent of those in the United States and Europe) lives under skyglow. Put more starkly, “the majority of children born in North America today will never see the Milky Way.”
The Technium, and how Kevin Kelly Changed His Mind
Thirteen years ago, Kevin Kelly outlined three near-future scenarios for tech’s complexity.
The Cruellest Month
If you were practicing the denial we all need just to get out of bed every morning, enjoying the spring sunshine until you heard those words, consider that you are not recovering from a nervous breakdown, as Eliot was, and Europe has not just been devastated by World War I. Some pain cannot be denied.
Busload of Books
First Book, a nonprofit in D.C., is storing and shipping books so that at each visit, every child receives a fresh, shiny new hardbound book instead of the worn, stained paperbacks they are usually given. Build-A-Bear has joined the partnership to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary, and is giving 125,000 additional books—and 125,000 “reading buddy” teddy bears—to Title I schools across the country.
Anthony Bourdain, Road Runner
The best part of the documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain and the select best of Bourdain’s many shows embodies the complexity of trying to hold all the beauty and pain as he moved down the road.
Breeding Tells
When breeders are only concerned with appearance, they may be allowing beautiful animals to pass on traits that predispose them for aggression: reactivity and fearfulness.