Posture, “the position or bearing of the body,” carries information. My slump is insecure, preoccupied, habitual. Kneeling at work was an eagerness for communion with my colleagues. Much as I roll my eyes over liturgical dance (when it is self-conscious and silly) or arms that are stagily lifted to the heavens, something does feel different—wide open and vulnerable—when your arms are lifted high, not crossed over your bosom in self-defense.
August 22 will mark the 120th anniversary of her birth—a good day, if you are a devotee, to mix a martini with Dorothy Parker American Gin (the owner of its New York Distillery exchanged Dorothy Parker vows with his bride at their wedding) or take a tour with Kevin Fitzpatrick, founder of the Dorothy Parker Society.
We are drowning in dopamine, the neurotransmitter our brain releases with even the smallest reward. Once humans walked miles to pick a single, delicious fig from a tree, Lembke says. Now we order a box on Amazon and eat them one after another. We have more access to larger quantities of more potent, delicious, or novel rewards. We have druggified our pleasures.
When my scale gets out of whack—domestic life bullied by a universal preponderance or inner life swelling to block out the physical world—I find it is time to reintroduce one realm to the other. It is cause for pilgrimage.
Leisure, even subsidized, does not interest me. Given enough books and bonbons, I could adjust. But the real problem is that we will not simply coexist with the machines to which we delegate our prior work. The artificial will subdue us.
The Brooklyn Bridge is, and has always been, us: teeming, diverse, sociable, aspirational, and entrepreneurial, which is a nice word for scrounging.
If Tyrone was not directed by Peele, I thought, the filmmakers must be using his methods, as the trailer seemed to show a Blaxploitation knockoff that pointed at the Tuskegee experiment.
Though you might have glimpsed Ethel Barrymore disguised by a tuxedo years earlier, in 1974 The Lambs became one of the first all-male clubs to admit women—well ahead of the Athenaeum, the Kiwanis Club, the University Club, the Bohemian Club, the Olympic Club, the New York Athletic Club, the Missouri Athletic Club…. These days, almost half the Lambs are women.
Fans of the St. Louis Cardinals are nonplussed, perhaps even offended, by the idea that this year the Cardinals are sellers, in last place, and what adds insult to injury, in the central division, usually considered weaker than the eastern or western divisions of the National League.
No one spoke of picnics in English until 1748, when Lord Chesterfield used “pic-nic” to describe a casual mix of card-playing, drinking, and conversation. The word did not refer to an outdoor meal until 1800. But “pique-nique” had joined the French language far earlier, derived from the verb “piquer,” to pick at something, and “nique,” a trifle, a bagatelle, something of scant importance.