Travel
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As is our custom, we journeyed from New York to Washington (and back) on the so-called "Chinese bus." It's a bargain: round-trip between Chinatown here and Chinatown there for just $35. It's a non-standard, non-greyhoundish, no frills experience. It's also shoestring capitalism in the raw. When a potential passenger arrives at the East Broadway departure…
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Today we paid a call on the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s an uncompromising, vibrant building, all the more grand for being plunked down in the rusty old Bowery. The space is wonderful. But the stuff on exhibition is, in my less than humble opinion, ludicrous. A mattress covered with buttons. A cage made…
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The Ranch Restaurant (family-owned, not a chain) in Rochester, Minnesota offered a splendid salad bar. In addition to the conventional fare (greens, onions, tomatoes, peppers, etc.), there were some items that were distinctly regional: herring in wine sauce, baked beans, cherry jello topped with whipped cream, chocolate pudding and also Watergate Salad. Watergate Salad, new…
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We've named our GPS navigatrix, who gives instruction with a schoolmarmish London accent, Dorcas (which is, along with Prunella, one of my very favorite English given — or as they call them,"Christian"– names). Dorcas has proved to be, on the whole, a reliable friend. She had a little trouble in Cincinnati, where, it turns out,…
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Today In Cawker City, Kansas, we made a pilgrimage to the world's largest ball of twine. It's enormous: 40 feet in circumference and 14,000 pounds (when last measured and weighed in 1986). And still growing. We were offered some twine to add our bit, but declined. It would be desecration — like adding a stone…
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We're just back from a week in Greenwich Village. Here are some of the stores that were within two or three blocks of our temporary residence: "Beasty Feast Pet Food Supplies"; "Cherry Boxx" (sex toys and outfits); "Golden Rule Wine and Liquor"; "Henrietta Hudson Bar and Girl"; "Badlands Entertainment" (xxx videos); "Condomania" — all kinds…
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A few weeks ago, I noted that in The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin made the case that early humans were prey more than they were predators. Now I've read a new book on the subject: Donna Hart and Robert W. Sussman, Man the Hunted (Westview, 2005). The book's title is a bit misleading because it concentrates…
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There's more neighborhood mountain lion news: yesterday a seven-year-old boy, walking in the rearward of a group of six or seven hikers, was pounced upon in the mountains just west of town by a big guy. The child was bitten and clawed but is now recovering. Family members drove the lion away. In my view,…
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We're in Washington D. C., this week and inadvertently wandered by the Mayflower Hotel. A memory: in July of 1952, I stayed at the Mayflower for a few days with my father's sister, my peripatetic and eccentric Aunt Mollie. It was a rare and unique event. I came from an automobile-less family, and my…
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In Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Abducted by Aliens (Harvard, 2005), Susan Clancy recounts interviews with fifty or so "abductees." Each person's experience is unique, but the various stories can be melded into a composite narrative. "I was having problems with anxiety and depression. I was at Fenway Park with my buddies watching…