THERE WERE A HALF-DOZEN wonderful family shots in our batch of holiday Polaroids — but so far I’ve had eyes for only one picture in the pile. It shows Tom, our older boy, and my wife holding a horse, with James, our grandson, in the saddle, steadied by myself, Granddad. A New Yorker, 3 years old, James hasn’t been on a horse before. He’s looking at the camera, not at us, or at Terence — Terence is the horse — but what is his expression? I keep coming back to the shot, trying to read James’s face. Is he enjoying himself? Is he the kind of kid who, a bit older, will think it’s cool — or whatever they will say then — to spend a horsy summer in the Berkshire hills?
Family
Tiemann Place to Hyde Park (Rites in Sun and Shadow)
Thanks to Columbia U’s expansion, a chump can now get a chi chi egg/sausage McMuffin for $10 in my hood. That bad deal goes down at Butterfunk Biscuit Co—one of four mini-restaurants in the deeply unfunky “Manhattanville Food Market” located on the first floor of a building in CU’s sterile new STEM complex just above 125th St. Don’t this…
make you want to go home to a Pre-Columbian West Harlem?
Reconsider Baby
Dell Curry is divorcing his wife of 30+ years and this man aims to help (“Do you like Tumeric??? Charcoal Ice Cream??? You better learn to like it.”)
I Will Keep You Alive (Excerpt from the Levins’ “Cardiovascular Romance”)
Bob and Adele Levin’s I Will Keep You Alive: A Cardiovascular Romance is this husband and wife’s joint account of Bob’s heart attacks and recoveries. The Levins’ write-ups of their own emotional states, as well as their angles on vagaries of our country’s healthcare system, make their book a national resource – a map of the future for countless Americans fated to cope with hearts gone wrong.
Against “Affirmation”
Nathan Osborne’s empathetic angles on yearnings of this generation of “teentwenties” reminded your editor to check 4thWaveNow–a website that provides a forum for parents and other allies who resist the credo of “affirmation” that pushes young people with gender trouble to pursue medical “solutions” to their problems.
Preface: What I Want to Be
The summer of 1957, when I was sixteen, I had entered the 18-and-unders, at the USTA sponsored Clay Court Championships at the Newton Tennis & Squash Club, in hopes of ending a four tournament out-in-the-first-round losing streak.
TV Diary III: “My Brilliant Friend”
Laurie Stone posted on My Brilliant Friend–the TV adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novels—as each episode appeared. Here are her responses to the final shows of the season…
Dreams Fade Into the Everblue: Lori McKenna’s Bygone Humanism
“Here is what I know” is the first line of “A Mother Never Rests,” the opening track off country singer Lori McKenna’s latest LP. “Even when she’s sleeping she’s still dreaming about you”–her voice is weary yet sure of wisdoms both received and earned. McKenna dives into the laundry-list of domestic chores and anxieties expected of a mother in red-state America.
A Response to “When Children Say They’re Trans”
Son of Bibi: Or Three Men in a Car
Uri Avnery covers the latest news of the Netanyahu family’s trumpery.
NO, I don’t want to write about the affair of Ya’ir Netanyahu. I refuse adamantly. No force in the world will compel me to do so.
Yet here I am, writing about Ya’ir, damn it. Can’t resist.
And perhaps it is really more than a matter of gossip. Perhaps it is something that we cannot ignore.
Among Women
Growing up I used to have a dream…not of being President, or rich, or famous. The dream I had was sinister. Its props were a slide and stairs and landings. In the dream I would take the stairs to the slide then ride down the slide and at the bottom step off onto a landing only to find another slide. I would sit down on it and continue into the depths, ever deeper…