Lake Charles, Louisiana, after Laura

Recipe Stories: Monkey Meat

By John Griswold

Bargoers said aloud by rote, cynically but accurately, “That ain’t no Jimmy Dean,” because whatever the meat was, it was not pork sausage. Everybody called it monkey meat, or mystery meat, which did not diminish patrons’ appetites and in fact sold more skewers due to its mystery.

Different Styles in Business Management

By John Griswold

Nobody should want to run a business like the lighter factory, with its puny, per-unit profit scheme. No American company would even try to do what the Chinese do, by hyper-control of their people.

Of Learning to Pay Attention

I think more about what else in my social life I should see, ask, remember, and do, even when I can do little. Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald: Relationships are the brutality that sustains.

“They’ll Pass You By, Glory Days”

By Jeannette Cooperman

We want to live in a world of our own choosing, want this so badly it hurts. So we take revenge on that secret desire by tagging our yearnings “nostalgia” or “romanticism.” But often we are taking our own wistfulness too literally.

How Truth Dissolved

By Jeannette Cooperman

Pay attention here, because you are about to lose your soul. What you are told, from this point forward, will largely depend on what someone who hopes to profit from you has decided you want to hear.

The Speculative Value of a Stolen Literary Bust

By Noa Ablin

By the time it was gone, the change was subtle but unmistakable: one corner left without its figure, one pedestal left bare. But to understand why that absence matters, it helps to understand who Kate Chopin was and the stories she wrote.

Standing at the Edge of Two Worlds

By Wen Gao

Having lived in the United States for a few years, I have either struggled to understand democracy in practice or struggled to keep up with it.