Some people go to Vegas. I gamble on florists, who must keep their stock impeccably fresh by leaving lovely flowers in the Dumpster for me to find. Tacky, yes. But there is never any goop or crud in their Dumpsters, just lovely long stems, a few slimy or blackened but most still crisp […]
Documentaries on subjects we have known in youth offer nostalgia and the promise of something we did not know back then. Jim Henson: Idea Man (streaming on Disney+) provides both—a celebration of the Muppets and details about their creator that many fans may not have known. The film is directed by Ron […]
In Shakespeare’s Sisters: How Women Wrote the Renaissance, Ramie Targoff points out that when Virginia Woolf wrote A Room of One’s Own, “she knew almost nothing about the powerful literary works a small group of women had written—and in many cases, published—around the time of Shakespeare.” Not her fault; those works “had been […]
Michael Eastman wants to walk around my little Southern Illinois town with his camera. A photographer whose work is in museums, who has shot the world’s extremes of beauty and decay, wants to walk around Waterloo, Illinois, and shoot? What the hell do I show him? I make a halfhearted list—the town’s history museum? […]
Matthew Korbfort called me when he was still Matthew Stenfort. I answered the phone in mild amazement. Matthew was in his early twenties and, like everyone his age I knew, he never called anyone. He had never called me. If he was not so young, I would have been full of dread that […]
My friend Larry called to warn me about the “evil Robin Hood” he had discovered furthering “the degeneration of societal norms.” Larry owns an art gallery and is tuned in to all manner of associated subjects, from Braque’s congruence with Picasso, to prison art, to intellectual property issues. The thing he saw […]
“Maybe use a more common word?” My friend’s query is gentle. I asked for his take on an essay, and he marked a few words that might seem obscure, archaic, high-falutin’. A decade ago, I would have complied instantly, searching out smaller, easier substitutes. Instead, I flash back, “Let ’em look it up. […]
“Wow! A Mont Blanc!” I pulled the shiny black pen from the box, smiling at the little white mountain on the tip, the luxe gold rim. Then I realized: it was a regular old pen. My mom had splurged for my birthday on this famous writing instrument and gotten one with a plastic […]
Diogenes—rumpled, rude, sure of his convictions—was nicknamed “the Dog.” The Greek word for dog was “cynic,” which gives his philosophy, Cynicism, a ludicrous etymology, given dogs’ willingness to trust anything we say or do. Diogenes would have welcomed the adjective “ludicrous,” though; it is rooted in the Latin term for a playful jest. […]
Kindly allow me to apologize for my behavior Saturday morning. I now know there is a loud, throbbing machine that sends shock waves through the grass into the ground. I mistook this phenomenon for a love song from what surely must have been a fine male specimen—and promptly humiliated myself. A lady tried […]
