Gesundheit

These thoughts on sneezing first ran back in October 2015, and I loved the responses. Feel free to share more examples of achoo styles from friends and family! —— When we were kids, my brother was the sneezer of all sneezers. There was never just one, or even two or three. It was always 17. […]

10,000 Hours of Midlife Crisis

It’s been said and often quoted that 10,000 hours of doing anything will make you a master. Never mind the squishy definition of mastery that makes it apocryphal, I believe it. When the term mastery is used, I figure it’s not that you’ve risen flawlessly to becoming a great chef or engineer, but that you’ve […]

Farewell David Corcoran, Dearest of Editors

One of the finest editors I’ve ever known has died, and I’m heartbroken.  David Corcoran was my first editor at the New York Times, but over the 12 years that I knew him he also became an advocate and a friend. David was kind and supportive like a good dad. His tenor let me know […]

#YouHaveToYell

Tim Ryan–a mostly forgettable startled-looking white man candidate for the Democratic nomination for president–just debuted a new hashtag and some accompanying merch: #YouDontHaveToYell

Rearticulation

In 2015, Sarah Grimes picked up this river otter’s carcass on a rugged beach covered in tumbled sea glass. She removed its skin and flesh and soaked its bones first in warm water, then Borax. She kept each section of the skeleton — legs, paws, spine – in a separate mesh bag so the bones […]

Snark Week: Literally the Most Terrifying Creature on Earth

Imagine I was to describe a creature to you. Something truly terrifying. Something out of a nightmare that no amount of drunken elves could wash away. It’s small enough to hide almost anywhere in your house but big enough to crawl up onto your bed at night. It drools, shits and pisses everywhere it goes. […]

Snark Week: Every Other Creeping Thing Besides Us

You know what I have a problem with? Every creature but us. With their membranes and slotted eyeballs, they make almost no sense. I couldn’t know a speck of what a chicken knows, or how to see through the eyes of a millipede as it clatters over fallen leaves. I can write as many times […]