If you asked me, I would say I am not a perfectionist. I know this because I am so painfully aware of how many times I screw up or fall short, and how much is always left to do…. Oliver Burkeman does not share my denial, but he does share my compulsions—to do […]
Well, I am back to being an essayist/journalist/travel writer/critic/blogger/feuilletonist, after a month’s vacation, a word that comes from a root that means “empty” or “free.” Vacated. Ah, but from what? Despite my time off, the back of my couch is lined with (new to me) half-read books—Dorothy Day, Leslie Fiedler, Adam […]
Spoilers throughout. Deserved spoilers, maybe even a tad vengeful, because Playground humbled me on so many levels at once. First and most happily, Richard Powers’s descriptions of the strange, almost unfathomable beauty beneath the sea are the most lyrical and engaging I have ever read. As a boy, he wanted to be an […]
Sneak a peek at the palette of an artist. It will be far more interesting, and revealing, than peering inside their medicine cabinet at a party. In The Artist’s Palette, Alexandra Loske, a British-German art historian, demonstrates the game, describing fifty idiosyncratic selections and arrangements of colors, then showing us the art that […]
Weeks ago, the sweet family across the street put up their festive holiday lights. The house on the corner followed, then three more houses, all before I had even managed to order a Thanksgiving turkey. I curse the lights. Typically American, I mutter, meaning of course U.S. American, where we are so arrogant […]
On Monday, November 25, Leonard Slatkin and the Chamber Music Society of St. Louis will present D.BachL, presumably pronounced “debacle,” a tribute to the composer Peter Schickele (who died on January 16 at age 88) and his comical alter ego, P.D.Q. Bach. It is sure to be a night of fun […]
One of the glaring aspects of our modern world is that we talk faster than we shop by an order of magnitude. Sure, it has always been true that we communicate faster than we acquire goods and services. But never before have we been able to talk to so many people […]
The three-martini lunch, once standard, turned scandalous in the seventies, hastily replaced by light beer and wine coolers. Then came a defiant resurgence of glam cocktails and cigar bars, followed by a wave of sober-curious shaming, and then the triumphant redemption of red wine as healthful. Which was followed—while the applause still roared—by […]
When I edited a city magazine, a smartass friend suggested a department called Why So Ugly? There would be no shortage of examples from the built environment. Big boxes, glass towers, strip malls—it is as though a child drew these shapes, then crafted them from whatever cheap stuff was close at hand and […]
In the 2024 presidential race run-up, Kamala Harris supporters took solace in the prediction of Allan Lichtman and his famous election forecasting system built around thirteen “keys” to the White House. A historian and professor emeritus at American University, Lichtman had correctly predicted all but one presidential race since 1984. Lichtman […]
