How Trump Has Encouraged the Witches
Once you have done everything else you can think to do to shift the “molecular weight,” you have only three choices: resign yourself to the unbearable, lose your mind, or cast a spell.
Dispatches
Everything I Have is From Disaster
Scholar Mark Edmundson says, “[Harold] Bloom once told a seminar I was in that he used to ask people he’d just met what was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Cuts to the chase, doesn’t it? I’m more inclined to ask about the best.”
Why can’t we…
Everyday Saints
The morning that I woke—grateful all over again for the new ease in life, the new job, the reprieve from what I had expected to be a year of anguish and mourning—and decided my mother was a saint, an absurd and delightful thought came to me: I, the long-fallen-away Catholic, could pray to her!
Dropping Clues to Your Socioeconomic Class
It is obnoxious, ridiculous, and a waste of breath and semiotics. But we live in an invisible hierarchy of, if not class in the British sense, advantages, privileges, access, or the lack thereof. And they have shaped us.
How a Dog Would Want a Politician to Behave
Willie is part of our family, and we know he hates us to be gone, and leaving without acknowledging that feels as though we are brushing those feelings aside. I would rather he know that we know, plus give him a treat so he gets something that acknowledges his suffering. That feels more like a family: All of us aware that we treasure one another’s company, tender when we part, and thrilled when we return.
Pretend You Are Doing Research in Antarctica
Antarctica suits my mood; it is, psychologically, what I fear this winter will be for all of us. No burble of conversation on outdoor patios, no meeting for wine with neighbors, just quick shuddery nods and a dash back inside. However will we find the patience? How do researchers in Antarctica endure it?
The Zoo of Human Quarantine Behavior
The zoo was open again. How had those guys managed?I imagined them all breathing a huge sigh of relief. Puttering around in their habitats with no watching eyes, no screaming children. And then, reopening? Was it a shock to their nervous systems?The next day, I called to check.
Playing Possum
I always find marsupials endearing, that cozy tucking of the baby into the pouch. Even more endearing: Opossums gobble up what we revile—snails, slugs, spiders, cockroaches, rats, mice, and snakes, not to mention about 5,000 ticks, many of them disease-laden, every season.
The Inner and Outer Lives of Oliver Sacks
"Oliver Sacks: His Own Life" is a happy story. The documentary is framed by interviews Sacks did after his diagnosis of terminal metastatic cancer in 2015. He is surrounded by friends and colleagues; he reads from his drafts; he is forthcoming but also plays the joker by telling stories, such as how in his loveless days he cooled his “turgid member” by thrusting it into orange Jell-O for relief.
Yard Sign Politics
Respect does not mean staying silent about injustice in order to keep a fragile peace. But are yard signs meaningful speech, or just a lazy, self-indulgent shortcut that will only piss people off?