The quinces were weird. We didn’t know what to make of them, figuratively or literally. Did people eat them? They could have come from space. In fact on Sesame Street there used to be a skit that involved two aliens. They couldn’t reach the fruit on their planet’s fruit trees. One alien was too short, […]
quotes
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
We No Longer Drop Dead as Frequently as We Used to
Jacob M. Appel practices medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, and his writing has appeared in numerous literary journals.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Weezer's 'Blue Album,' Twenty Years Later
He was cute; he was vulnerable; he had glasses. Really cool glasses. His hair was unfortunate; his features were delicate; in his videos, he could never quite hold eye contact with the camera. He wore sweaters a lot, and he sang about wearing the sweaters; he was a sweater-wearing dude, that Rivers Cuomo. He sang […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Discovering a Mother's Other Life
It takes us a long time, as children, to get outside of ourselves and realize our parents have lives outside the scope of us. Not just lives before us, or lives after we move out, but wholly private lives that run concurrent with our own upbringing. As her daughter, it took me nearly 20 years […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
The Story of a Journalist Turned Wedding Photographer
Just the other day, I received an e-mail from a photographer looking for an internship. His short note almost brought me to tears: “I come from Sarajevo, Bosnia, and my life has put me though many challenges. I am saying this because I have had the chance to see the worst in humans and was […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Why Did 'Girl Toys' All Become Pink?
Pink is a funny thing. In the early days of the 20th century, pink was not necessarily a girl color. I’ve even heard that pink was considered a popular color for boys because it was a lighter version of red, which has always been seen as powerful and masculine. But as the 20th century went […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
An Environmental Disaster in Chicago
Chicago is no stranger to the hazards of being an industrial town, and residents of the Southeast Side have lived with the more pervasive realities of industry for over a century. Petcoke is the latest iteration of this struggle: another chapter of confusion, ignorance, and inconsistent government action. The wind that blows along Lake Michigan’s […]
Posted inBooks, Quotes
The Future Is Dark: Uncertainty's Creative Power
Rebecca Solnit, writing in The New Yorker, offers a celebration of the imagination’s best ally: the ability to say “I don’t know.” Solnit looks at subtlety and subjectivity in her own writing, and in that of a hero of the art, Virginia Woolf: During my years as an art critic I used to joke that museums love artists the way that taxidermists love deer, and something […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Mad Men’ Creator on ‘Sophisticated Anti-Semitism’ and Success in America
The driving question for the series is, Who are we? When we talk about “we,” who is that? In the pilot, Pete Campbell has this line, “Adding money and education doesn’t take the rude edge out of people.” Sophisticated anti-Semitism. I overheard that line when I was a schoolteacher. The person, of course, didn’t know […]
Posted inQuotes, Uncategorized
The Supreme Court Nominee, The Video Store, and the Changing Face of Consumer Privacy
Potomac Video, the last remaining video rental store in Washington D.C., will be shutting its doors after 33 years in business. Though there are surely plenty of good stories to be found in the some 60,000 DVDs now on sale at Potomac, perhaps the most interesting story is the role the Washington institution played in consumer privacy […]