What Do Women Want? Ask Colleen Hoover
The success of Hoover’s books reminds me how prissy and bourgeois I am. Hoover’s fans say her work leaves them speechless, in tears, happy wrecks.
By Jeannette Cooperman
Evil Finds Horror in the Everyday—Then Laughs at It
The show’s first stroke of genius is the team’s camaraderie. In a time when we dare not even hint at our beliefs to a stranger, “Evil” gives us three people with entirely different world views who—here is the miracle—respect one another’s points of view.
When Coral Reefs Die, Even the Midwest Loses
If one of us goes days without food, the blood drains from our face, and we collapse. Without a meal, soon, we will die. Coral’s widespread bleaching signals the same fate.
I Wish I Had the Discipline to Fast
Fasting has been accorded such power, and it has taken so many forms, there must be something to it. Denying oneself can be salutary. It is fun, now and again, to stay up all night.
Pumpkin Spice Sums Up What Ails This Nation
The suite of pumpkin spice stuff comes out earlier each year, weakening the magnetic pull of scarcity that originally made it exciting.
Why the Clothes of My Past Stay Closeted
The idea of resurrecting clothes of my youth half a century later, redeeming the hot sting of embarrassment with carefully chosen accessories, intrigued me. Until I remembered what I would be resurrecting.
Burying Carbon Dioxide Sounds Clever But….
New carbon capture technologies may be “a dangerous distraction” from the real reforms needed to wean us off fossil fuels altogether.
How Did an Estonian Violinist End up in St. Louis’s Concordia Cemetery?
Her early life was a blur, with all those moves—fleeing to safety, getting bombed, getting evacuated, being forced to Berlin, touring, Paris, New York. Her music was the home she carried with her.
Mozart Would Wince at Our Loud Pianos
Today’s pianist, Daniel Adam Maltz, is performing not on a big glossy piano but on the instrument Mozart wrote for: the elegant little Viennese fortepiano.
What if Today’s Elite Were Forced into Exile?
Rebellious eccentrics, these artists were brave in their art and, once they had to be, brave in reality. Had they been able to stay, safe and adored, in Paris, they would have remained remote to us, wrapped in mystique. In exile, they were vulnerable.
Abracadabra! The Magic of Words
We forget to ask what our own words are bringing into existence.
Poor People Go to Hell
All religions should make room for the grown-ups to move toward a more open, meditative, inclusive, deconstructed experience. Maybe we could even hold on to what is best about religion if each denomination stopped insisting it possessed the only truth.