What We Need to Thrive
Some of us need to be in a certain place, or with certain kinds of people, or in a certain emotional climate....
Dispatches
“Best in Show” at “Art in Bloom”
Saint Louis Art Museum’s Art in Bloom, now in its twentieth year, is the museum’s most popular event, a long weekend of activities centering around the pairing of specific works of art in the galleries with flower arrangements, which reimagine them, by mostly professional floral designers and garden club members.
America’s Culinary Icon Is Not Done With Us Yet
Like war in the Middle East, military-grade weaponry, partisan enmity in politics, and utility trucks and RVs, the hamburger endures because it delivers recombinant flavors in huge doses of fat and salt that land in the stomach like a firm, reliable handshake.
And if AI Writes a Good Parable?
Last week, I read a delightful story on a friend’s Facebook page, full of specific details about a farmer who realized that someone was taking eggs and potatoes from his farm stand without plunking any money into the honor jar. She was hungry and broke—times were increasingly hard—and too proud…
Horror Is Becoming Our Favorite Entertainment
The masochism of it never sat well with me. Watch, on a screen, your nightmares acted out? Fix your eyes on that screen while your heart pounds faster and faster, your breathing shallows, your guts clench, and the worst possible things happen? It sounded like a mad scientist’s torture experiment.
“Six-seven!” and the Nonsensical Gestures of Pop’s Rapid Onset Obsolescence
How did a complete lack of meaning, paired with simple gestures, become a grand celebratory act for this generation?
Where Did I Put My Glasses?
It was all so amusing when it happened to other people. To old people. Such fun to say dryly, when one’s parent scrambled, frantic, to find their glasses, “They’re on your nose.” But the other day, I was the one hunting for the glasses on my nose. Granted, I have…
What Killed the Cat
I was railing again about Eve. For Eve. Why should she take the rap for humanity’s fall, just because she had a healthy curiosity? Then I remembered Pandora, whom we blame just as angrily for the unleashing of our woes. But think of living with that box, gazing at it…
Cartoonists of Instagram: Dave Contra
Cartoons are one of my favorite things on Instagram, especially when they touch on humor, confusion, sadness, practical philosophy, and cultural critique.
How Frederick Wiseman Harnessed Reality to Give Us Other, Possible Worlds
No other filmmaker, documentary or otherwise, makes us feel not just that we were there, but that we are there every time we watch these films. That assessment sounds cliché, but when discussing Wiseman, even terms such as verisimilitude fall short.