Hunting for the Right Perfume
Perfume is an intimate commodity, something you have to hunt for and save up for. When you find it, you are brought back to your senses, happy to be in your body, protected from anything noxious you might encounter.
Dispatches
Did Shakespeare Have Insomnia?
Sleep is a little death, an end to the flashing, buzzing dopamine hits of consciousness. Was Shakespeare, whose brain hummed with allusions and insight, scared to silence his genius and toddle off to sleep?
Homicidal Pigs, Perverted Roosters, and a Hapless She-Ass
How could we ever have believed animals capable of cold-bloodedly plotting a crime, when we have never credited them with possessing the simplest emotions?
On the Sunny Shores of Peppermint Bay: Remembering Shirley Temple
Her physical vitality seemed to embody hope for the future while her cheerful sweetness salved fears associated with children and families in a decade when 25 percent of American men were out of work, and husbands and fathers who could not cope with the strain of unemployment and failure sometimes just walked away.
Tourne et Retourne: Impeccable
Screenshot from Dumas’ show, YouTube Cooking shows are a busman’s holiday for me, given I have always done the cooking in the family. Over the decades one of my recreations has been watching Jacques, Julia, the Two Fat Ladies, Keith Floyd, and others, including Bourdain, who…
What Ukraine Is Teaching Us
When Ukraine came to us for help, we gave the sort of help we are good at giving: stuff. The Ukrainians already have what we need: the courage of convictions. The kind of patriotism that is not jingoistic, yet is fierce enough to give their lives purpose. They are defending real freedom: the right to live outside a despot’s reach.
Rainy Day Haters
Rainy days are pensive, quiet, thoughtful. They are made for us introverts, and we brew a pot of tea and settle happily into an armchair with a good book while the extroverts paw the ground, check their weather app, pace to and from the window.
Turning Down the World’s Volume
Deep silence is rare; even our thoughts can be scattered and loud. On a hike through an old pine forest to the top of a bluff, a friend and I came upon a sign nailed to a tree. Only one word was scrawled: “Listen.” And so we stopped and listened, and the hush gradually filled with tiny sounds far more interesting than my thoughts.
First Jobs
Lewis Hine, child coal miners, West Virginia, 1908. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Records of the National Child Labor Committee One of my grandfather’s first jobs was child coal miner, family lore says. My other grandfather, also born in the 1880s, would have labored on the…
Spit Take
So how does such a helpful substance wind up a sign of disgust and uncouth manners? There are few signs of utter disdain as eloquent as spitting in someone’s face, and there is an energy to the act, an explosive momentum that must be quite satisfying. Even men of the greatest refinement were once allowed to use spittoons, and they remain next to the seats of the U.S. Supreme Court justices for tradition’s sake.