Most summer nights at the Banff Centre for the Arts, classical music wafts out of a concert hall, attended by a small but dedicated audience of regulars. The musicians are young. The audience is old. On a July night I wander over to a recital of the Brandenburg Concertos, played in period style, with string […]
This month I’ll be writing from the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada’s Rocky Mountains. They’ve assigned me a writing studio in the woods and each day I make the short hike to work from the hotel-style residence rooms. In the hallway this morning I press the elevator button and the door opens. I […]
We were a ragtag bunch at the KyoRyuKan theatre in the year 2000, all washed up there for different reasons. One man had been a master kimono maker before his building burned down and he lost everything, including all of his precious silks. Another man arrived promptly at nine every morning to ride out the […]
Clenching your muscles increases self-control. So does having a loud super-ego, or at least some form of inner monologue. Isolation disrupts our will power, as does having too much dopamine in our systems, like ADHD sufferers chronically do. Sugar boosts self-control. So does a short burst of exercise. For smokers, the same restorative effect happens […]
Last month, Erik took a hard look at a staple in Hollywood’s menu of plot devices: the knockout shot. Now we turn to a movie trope that hits a little closer to home. Our very own Sally needs your help in the investigation: Dear LWON readers, I’m a boxer with a problem: I can’t punch […]
The first commercial object I remember coveting – and receiving – was a Spears toy hand loom. I must have been about eight. My family was not one in which children made wish lists for Christmas, let alone by brand name, but my friend Kathryn had this thing and I needed one. I was actually […]
The Finkbeiner Test for gender-neutrality in science reporting took flight last week, offering female scientists the hope of having their work represented in print without gratuitous pink sprayed all over it. A scientist’s partner’s profession and their family responsibilities are irrelevant unless specifically shown otherwise. But now, I find myself with another journalistic quandary: Strict […]
I have to admit, that very first episode of Survivor, oh so many years ago, held a certain wow factor for me. I was amazed they were allowed to do such a thing, back when it appeared as if they were truly going to leave a group of people to their own devices on a […]
