Photograph via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

I’m walking, as I do pretty much every day, along the Eastern Promenade near my home in Portland, Maine, when I feel my wedding ring slip off. Luckily, my hands are in my jeans, so no harm done. I slip the ring back on without breaking stride and return to contemplating Casco Bay. I make it another ten yards or so before it happens again. When the ring slips off my finger a third time, I give up and leave it there at the bottom of my pocket. Though the jeans I’m wearing are relatively new, I double-check anyway to make sure there’s no hole in the pocket. Having read Tolkien, I know some rings want to be lost, others to be found, and I’ve already lost one wedding ring, though that was decades ago.

The ring in my pocket doesn’t actually want anything, of course. It’s just a piece of metal and has no meaning other than what I attach to it. It’s sliding off my finger because it’s January and bitter cold and my skin is dry and—­who knows?—­maybe I’ve lost a couple pounds. As I said, it’s perfectly secure right where it is, yet here I am fretting about its safety and unable to reconcile its being in my pocket when it belongs on my finger.

My parka has a tiny pocket with a zipper, and I consider putting the ring there, but that would further distance it from the finger it’s supposed to be on. Also, the zipped pocket of my parka carries its own risks. I’m seventy-three and my memory is becoming porous. Sometimes I have to page back through whatever novel I’m working on because I can’t remember the name of a character who’s been absent from the last couple chapters. And like many men my age I too often find myself in front of the open refrigerator, peering at its contents in the hopes of spotting the reason I’m standing there. Am I even in the right place? Is what I’m looking for in the washing machine? The silverware drawer? The pantry? If I put the ring in the pocket of my parka where it can’t possibly fall out, will I forget doing so? If so, then two or three years down the road the ring will go with the parka to Goodwill, and in the meantime I’ll be left to contemplate what it means that I’ve managed to lose not one but two wedding rings. To some people—­maybe even to me—that might appear subconsciously intentional. My therapist, if I had one, would surely agree, which is why I don’t have one.

Part of the reason I’m fretting is that this would be a terrible time to lose the ring. For the last several months my wife has been suffering from headaches that we’ve been unable to diagnose. MRIs and biopsies seem to have ruled out the most terrifying scenarios, but there’s something scary about not knowing, especially in the wake of the pandemic, which reacquainted all of us with mortality and the uncertainty of the future, realities that in the beforetimes we managed to sequester in the back of our brains. To lose my wedding ring at a time when my wife’s health is in question would mean something, wouldn’t it? Yes? No? Read More

Iris Apfel sits for a portrait during her hundredth-birthday party at Central Park Tower on September 9, 2021, in New York City. Photograph by Noam Galai/Getty Images for Central Park Tower.

Against the backdrop of a cold white room, Iris Apfel’s yellow outfit, which she wore on the occasion of her hundredth birthday, sings its own joyous song. Both here and elsewhere, Apfel, an artist and fashion designer, often paired gorgeous things sensually by color and texture, rather than by invoking some obvious theory or idea. She was not afraid to wear a yellow tulle coat with yellow silk pants (which she designed herself in collaboration with H&M). She celebrated yellow vivaciously; she took up space with yellow. With her arms raised in this picture, she looks like some sort of bishop or religious figure. Her open palms throw spectral glitter upon us. A spiritual icon. Just by looking at her, I feel her upturned palms manifesting my dreams. Read More

New York, November 9, 1965. Courtesy of AP Photo/Robert Goldberg.

Something has changed since Richard and I got married in December. I’m not sure what. Have you ever looked in the mirror and noticed you are able to cock one eyebrow higher than ever before? I’m happier. I didn’t imagine I would feel this way when I went downstairs to his studio and said, “I think we should get married.” He looked up from his book and said, “Okay.” Was he bemused, half smiling? I can’t remember.

It’s been three and a half months since we met with a judge in the courthouse in Hudson, where we live, and he pronounced us “married people.” Afterward, Richard and I had happy hour drinks on Warren Street with a friend. For the first few weeks, we imagined the marriage dividend was we wouldn’t get on each other’s nerves as much as before. This has proved untrue. Read More

The UFO Welcome Center in Bowman, North Carolina, which was destroyed by a fire. Photograph courtesy of Jane Stern.

I was fortunate to have traveled America’s blue highways in the golden age of roadside attractions. The year I fell in love with roadside attractions was 1971, when my husband, Michael, and I (newly married and fresh out of college) crisscrossed America, hunting for small-town cafés, diners, and BBQs, compiling a book that would be called Roadfood.

Back then, to review these unheralded mom-and-pop cafés was strange. Foodies (a term that had yet to be popularized) were interested only in eating at gourmet bastions in big cities or abroad. These Continental restaurants were expensive; they served French or northern Italian food and had waiters wielding big pepper mills.

It did not take us long to realize we liked eating and traveling more than we liked what we’d studied, so as card-carrying contrarians with a car and a few bucks in our pockets, we decided that simple American food needed a champion. We spent the next three years on the road, scouting out these places. We drove two hundred miles a day and ate (on average) ten meals a day. When we weren’t driving or eating, our attention was drawn to weird things by the side of the road. Read More