Guest Post: Waiting Out the Latter Days

Steven Smith — a photographer who grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormon church, and whom I’ve known a long time — sent me a book he’s just published.  It’s called Waiting Out the Latter Days.  It’s almost entirely photographs which I love but am incapable of reading, […]

Where the Wind Has No Name

Of all the evocative place words humans have come up with, the words for local winds may be the most varied and most charming. There’s the Albrohos of Portugal, the Gilavar and the Khazri of Azerbaijan, and the Shamal of Iraq. There’s the Cape Doctor of South Africa, the Hawk of Chicago, and the Wreckhouse winds of Newfoundland. […]

Birds and Songs and Bird Songs

I walked along the edge of a cliff. Under my feet, grass. To my right, a hundred-foot drop to the waters of the English Channel. A strong wind blew off the water and over the cliff, blowing the loose ends of hair in my face, obnoxiously. To my left was a field, planted with something […]

Redux: Do Peepguins Need Sweaters?

For Easter, we thought we’d bring back this adorable post from 2014. My friends and I didn’t enter this year–we thought someone else deserved a chance to shine. Also, if anyone wants to buy a lightly used Peeps diorama, we might consider selling. It would make great yarn shop decor. On Monday, I asked: Do […]

Holiday Redux: The Ceremonial Stone

LWON is celebrating the holidays by re-running some of our favorite posts. This post originally appeared in slightly different form in July 2014. Sarah dipped her fingers in a red mineral paint and lifted them to her face. She put streaks above her cheekbones and up her chin, her design standing out against a backdrop […]

Holiday Redux: The Beauty of Punctuation

LWON is celebrating the holidays by re-running some of our favorite posts. This post originally appeared in November 2013. Several years ago, I splurged on a gorgeous red hardcover edition of Strunk and White’s classic book on writing, The Elements of Style. Illustrated by Maira Kalman, the pages are filled with fanciful depictions of punctuation […]

Tesser Well

It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind. Behind the trees clouds scudded frantically across the sky. Every few moments the moon ripped through them, […]

Donald Trump Is the World’s Greatest Performance Artist

“For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.” – Stuart Chase Over the past few months, I’ve vaguely been aware that Donald Trump has been stirring up ideas that vaccinating children causes autism. Trump points out that many kids who get vaccinated also get autism. This is […]