One Tree Is Enough
The tensions that wire our lives do not go dead. Every time I try to look away, they crop up again, disguised or insidious. But Sylvia Plimack Mangold fixed her gaze and stared them down.
Dispatches
Solar Eclipse 2024: the Band of Totality Tour!
Strong feelings shaded yesterday’s total solar eclipse in North America, ranging from worries about terrorism against big crowds gathered in rural areas, where first-responders would be overwhelmed, to fervent hopes for the rapture.
The Conspiracy of Bad Coffee Is Real, but Ending Soon
(Jakub Dziubak via Unsplash) Every so often the forces of new scientific findings and opinion columns align to produce a certain sense of dread and unease. In this case, that dread and that unease are acute if you believe in the power and pleasure of a…
Was the Eclipse Anticlimactic?
Totality. Just the word feels like an exhale. The reassurance of awe, of completion. The promise of grasping an immensity whole, rather than contenting oneself with the usual sliver.
Will Our Hyphens Join Us or Divide Us?
This is a concept country, like one of those cool demo cars that never get made because they are too flawed to be practical. Except, the nation did get made. We are still figuring out how to punctuate that reality.
New Documentary Shows Steve Martin’s Lonely Art and Happy Life
Fans of Martin’s will be rewarded for watching more than three hours of documentary about his life. What emerges is a portrait of an anxious introvert acting like an extreme extrovert for fun and profit.
Steinbeck and the Baby Bunny
Nature is red in tooth and claw, I mutter to myself. But how could our gentle dog be so cruel?
How Color Left Nature Behind
Our sensual imagination has gone abstract, need-based, overclever, and devoid of substance.
Easter Baskets Will Arrive Per Contract, Cartel Insists
Children grow up, go to school, get jobs, may have their own families, and at some point usually stop getting gifts from magical beings. But it is not that the magic does not exist. It is that the children themselves have become part of the great, benevolent cartel of nurturers of warmth and plenty.
Daniel Kahneman Set the World Right by Showing How We Get It All Wrong
Thinking, Fast and Slow is, in part, an extended lesson in humility. It should humble us all to understand how limited we are. Kahneman’s book is also, fortunately for us, a potent antidote.