Last Tuesday, I finally finished sorting out two years’ worth of tax returns, stubbornly eschewing the accounting industry even as my receipts and special forms multiplied to fill the desk. I sealed the envelope then turned and opened up the Number 9 door on my Quentin Blake advent calendar. The main illustration itself, adorned with […]
Miscellaneous
A few years ago, I joined a group of families on a backcountry kayaking trip in Alaska’s Prince William sound. A kid named Will was just about to turn 13, and I was there to watch him come of age. I’d known him as a strong little wild-haired monkey, but on this trip he […]
I am a very selective television watcher. This doesn’t mean that I only watch the best shows, in fact quite the opposite. I’ve never seen Breaking Bad or The Sopranos or Orange is the New Black. My boyfriend has, I think, almost come to terms with the fact that I will probably never finish The […]
On Easter Sunday, between watching videos of puppies frolicking with bunnies and helping neighbor kids hunt for backyard eggs, I spent some time puzzling over the crypto-pagan religious festivals of the first month of spring. The connection, for instance, between chocolate eggs and the resurrection of Jesus Christ; fertility rituals and Virginia ham. And how a triangular cookie — spilling forth […]
March 21 – 25, 2016 It’s Outmoded Diseases Week at LWON, those diseases that we once read about but we never hear about anyone getting anymore. (Not that we don’t still worry about them during late-night WebMD searches.) On Monday, Ann kicked things off with neurasthenia, which “occurs in intellectuals with refined nervous systems and […]
I won’t use her name. How she got the disease no one knows. Her leg was cut off at the knee to stop the infection from spreading, and her name is omitted because she is a respected scientist. What happened in her case verges beyond science. The disease is osteomyelitis. It means, simply, bone infection. In X-rays, […]
Okay, ladies, it’s high time we ceased the knuckle biting and the swooning, the weeping and the throwing of things, and certainly the touching of our own private parts in lieu of honoring the phallus. Someone might think we’re hysterical. For as long as men and women have coexisted, which is pretty much the whole […]
March 14-18, 2016 This week at LWON we ask five pressing questions: Sprickets, cave crickets, roach spiders, camel crickets. No matter what you call them, they are a form of hunched, evil popcorn that will leap toward you. We build them basements, they sproing in our faces. How is that adaptive? Interest in science seems […]
