The booth represents a refusal to fling away old technology—and the memories it triggered. Curious whether the phone booth ever made the local news, I check the Republic-Times archives and learn that this phone booth is new.
Digital originals and currencies could give us a world that is more flexible, uncensored, and democratic. But they will also give us a world in which the very currency by which we live changes value by the minute and nothing can stop it from collapsing.
What if, the next time I feel consumed, swallowed up, I reframe what is happening? What if I make myself the subject instead of the object and thereby own the verb? I have eaten something bad for me—or maybe even good for me, like medicine, but bitter.
America’s oldest sport carries trappings of America’s oldest problems. So does my life, with its ambivalence toward wealth, hating its injustice and excess but craving its—what? Elegance?
Generalizing from survey results, the majority of U.S. citizens are uneasy with the values that form journalism’s core. And no, this is not the alt-right booing section—the responses cut across all ideological leanings.
I like big talk. Sweeping discussions of why we are on this planet and what we should do to fix it. I want people to explain bits of the world to me or, better yet, pull back the curtain so I can peer inside their soul.
A new study is the first to identify 267 genes that distinguish modern humans from chimpanzees and Neanderthals. Nearly all those 267 genes helped shape the behaviors that distinguish us: creativity, self-awareness, cooperativeness, and the ability to do what doctors always nag us to do, take active steps to make sure we lead a long and healthy life.
In the scale of my tiny life, my mother is as timeless as Shakespeare, her insights just as relevant. I fight to remember the past tense, and then I think, Why?
The fact that our costume began as a sturdy and predictable garment, then evolved into a million variations and constant novelty—how American is that?
You will dizzy yourself if you try to find today’s criteria, the organizing principles we use to categorize. Genre can be determined by historical period (regency) or geographic location (westerns); by how tightly it cleaves to established reality (fantasy, magical realism, science fiction, true crime); by what psychological needs it satisfies in us (mystery, romance, thriller); by how it uses language (poetry, essay, novel, play).
The place Count Basie flew us to, home of romance. Home of superstition and dark ritual, too, keeping the night mysterious. The Moon has so many moods, we can moon over unrequited love and moon a frat brother for a prank and sail over the moon with delight. So much, we have projected upon that luminous orb. Including the very air we breathe.
Drugs and machines and experts spin a sense of certainty, a collaborative fantasy we all prefer. Yet a 2000 study in the British Medical Journal found doctors’ predictions accurate only twenty percent of the time—and that was for patients already diagnosed with terminal cancer.