New Yorkers don’t scare easily. They are blasé about crime, absurdly aggressive behind the wheel, and generally indifferent to even the biggest rats. Even vampires don’t inspire fear. I once saw a pair on the N train in Queens, and no one (but me) batted an eyelash. Blood sucking insects, however, are an entirely different […]
Cassandra
At 1:52pm on August 23, my office began to shake. I saw the photos on the walls gently swaying right and left. Since my walls typically remain motionless, my brain had trouble making sense of what I was seeing. Construction, I thought? No, too much shaking. To cause that much motion, a machine would have […]
I am totally in love with potatoes. I’m getting married in two weeks, so I guess I love my fiancé more, but potatoes are a close second. Bolivians love potatoes too. They buy them by the sackful. Bolivia has the distinction of being home to both the best potato and the worst. The best is […]
Several years ago, my mom decided to move from Grand Forks, North Dakota — a city of 50,000 — to Lakota, North Dakota — a town of about 700 people. She had grown up in small towns and had no desire to return to one. But Lakota happened to be the midway point between her […]
Kids will put anything in their mouths. My aunt, who lived briefly in Hawaii, once found my cousin gnawing on a dead lizard. My childhood tastes were less exotic. I loved dirt. Eating dirt was forbidden. I was old enough to understand that. But I could. not. help. myself. My mother would often find me […]
Today I have the pleasure of introducing the latest addition to LWON: Christie Aschwanden (ASH-wand-un), a writer who shares not only my fondness for the term “bull honkey,” but also my intense dislike of liars. Yes, we are two peas in a pod. Except Christie, a serious athlete and professional ski racer, is really buff. […]
On LWON’s first birthday, Richard Panek asked me to explain why being circumcised makes a man less likely to catch HIV. So I will. Here you go, Richard. Let’s be honest. Foreskin is weird. The rules of evolution suggest that it once conferred an advantage, but I can’t fathom what that advantage might have been. […]
One year ago today, the People of LWON published their first post. It was by Josie Glausiusz, it was on flesh-eating algae, and we thank her for setting that tone. Writing LWON — that is, writing what we want to and in the way we want to write it — turns out to be a […]
