It’s 9am on a late summer morning, and Leon and I are out in the backyard woefully examining our garden’s fecund bounty. “Hey, there,” a neighbor calls over the fence. “Want some figs?” We look at each other. We share two thoughts: fresh garden figs, how lovely! And: fresh garden figs, yet another perishable to … Continue reading
When Leon and I went on our first trip to Italy in 2012, we accompanied a group of other PBS-loving strangers on a two-week whirl through Venice, Florence, and Rome. I’m glad we did, and not just because our tour allowed us to float past crowds into the Vatican, stream through lines into the Duomo, … Continue reading
A series of young French women moved through my grandmother’s house in the ’70s. They had American boyfriends who made them sad, they had yeast infections and abortions and STDs they couldn’t pronounce in English. They were lonely and young and lost in a large house on a hill with no way to town that … Continue reading
I live so close to the county fairgrounds that I’m listening to the horse race announcer as I write this. One block closer, and the fair committee would have sent us free tickets to assuage our neighborly outrage at having to listen to the horse races by day, the country rock noise by night, and … Continue reading
The blackberry has long gotten a bad rap, and not just by frustrated gardeners seeking to eradicate the stuff. “Bramble” itself means “envy” in folklore. Blackberries typically denote remorse when used as metaphors in fiction. And just as in fiction—Aesop’s version, at least—the best berries inevitably hang at the farthest reach or are hidden beneath … Continue reading
Marriage is a foreign country, population: 2. Marriage is a foreign country where a special language is spoken, a dialect primarily comprised of facial ticks, tongue clicks, and eye flicks known only to its citizens. Marriage is a foreign country in which the customs are odd and not shared with outsiders, interlopers—or even the neighbors. … Continue reading
New York City-based artist William Powhida constructs free-standing columns and paints them to represent sociological inequities in 21st century Western society. He takes shiny reflective metal and turns it into a crazy geometric knee-high puzzle. He can also paint a death head skull and ensure it contains a fair representation of a vagina. Indeed he … Continue reading
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