Growing Pains

Dear Millicent,
I am supposed to be writing up some grand paperwork, which means that I am eating peanut brittle and reading Joan Didion.  Every summer I teach the youths, sleep on a dorm bed, and begin my annual affair with Dame Didion.  It usually starts by accident (a common excuse for an affair), and once [...]

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Crooked Piece of Man. Or, Odd Saint: Sir Thomas Browne

Sir Thomas Browne was born in 1605 in London’s Cheapside. He went to Oxford, became an apprentice-physician, but stayed invested in religion and what it meant to be a religious practitioner of the healing arts. He ponders—often thoughtfully and sanely—his own temptation to follow typically “Catholic” conventions, like kneeling or removing his cap in church, [...]

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A Co-Scavenging We Go?

Dearest!
I missed you, and want make you drink broth, eat eggs, and retrain your palate to glories of salt! Indulgence and warmth.  Hot Cocoa! Tamales! Dulce de Leche! Or, when all else fails, eclairs and Cheetos (Rich’s eclairs, from the frozen section are highly recommended).  Mochi! I am realizing, as I type, that both my [...]

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Bildungsroman BigFun!

Dear Millicent,
I just finished reading Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, and the ending very much reminded me of an old Jezebel post from this summer about the quarter life crisis versus the return of Saturn.  You know, how everybody in their twenties tends to have a moment where their world breaks a bit, and it is [...]

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