Seeing The Doctor
“The Doctor” mocks identity politics even as it turns them against us, casting women as men and White actors as Black characters. After years of all of us choosing up sides, art proves the project impossible.
By Jeannette Cooperman
The Case for Travel
Travel, done with an open heart, stitches new connections. It is a way to not feel lonely.
Old—and New—New York
Few of us know New York inside-out. That means we are all in this together, looking hard, following breadcrumbs and tips and our GPS. I inhale deeply and realize the city runs on coffee and cannabis.
The Cooper Hewitt: Peace, by Design
Moving through the exhibit—pausing, stunned, at one project after another—you realize just how powerful design can be, and how many ways it can work.
The Elevation of the Penis
Why? Why, why, why, would men put themselves through such a risky surgery, inserting something static into an organ that expands and contracts? What made size the ultimate measure of a man?
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.
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.
How Trash Transformed into a Tangible Metaphor
The desolation that troubled T.S. Eliot comes from a soulless industrial greed that has yet to explode into wanton consumerism. He is mourning spiritual and intellectual decay. I am mourning the trash we then generated to fill that emptiness.
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.
The Brilliant Dr. William Beaumont: Unethical or Just Aloof?
The Missouri State Medical Association describes Dr. William Beaumont as “beloved by all who knew him.”Except perhaps the man in closest proximity.
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.