April 16, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Cookie Summit 2015 By Sadie Stein Macaroon vs Macaron. Photos: Roxana Salceda, Alpha Today I witnessed something special: a rare meeting of macaron and macaroon. Appropriately enough, the summit took place over international waters, between Paris and New York. The tension on the plane was palpable. The macaron was raspberry; it carried with it centuries of culture. Looking at that deceptively simple puff of almond and air, one could detect pride in its ancient pedigree, an easy elegance borne of endless refinement. Its palette was subdued, its flavor subtle, but its presence powerful. Read More
April 15, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Nailed By Sadie Stein Anger may in time change to gladness; vexation may be succeeded by content. But a kingdom that has once been destroyed can never come again into being; nor can the dead ever be brought back to life. ―Sun Tzu, The Art of War I’m very prone to cuts and bruises and scrapes of all kinds—seeing my profusion of scars and Band-Aids and burns, you’d be forgiven for assuming I’m clumsy. I think it’s the certainty of my own nimbleness that leads me to take all kinds of stupid chances. In fact, I average far fewer injuries than I should, given my recklessness. No one was exactly shocked, then, when I showed up at a party not long ago with a bruised fingernail. I’d banged my right hand on the heavy metal door of my apartment while trying to snap back and grab a sock that was falling out of the laundry basket; I almost got away with it. It hurt so much that I ran outside and buried my finger in the snow. The pain abated after a few days, but then the nail turned pitch black. The black fingernail became a source of great fascination for me. I was extravagantly proud of it. “This fingernail is the most exciting thing to happen to me in years,” I said one night, admiring it by the light of the bedside lamp. “Thanks a lot,” said my boyfriend. Read More
April 14, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Leavened by Absurdity By Sadie Stein Innocuous leavening agent, or terrorist threat? Before today, I’d never done my citizen’s duty by reporting a suspicious package to authorities. I guess I’d never seen anything suspicious enough. And in a place like New York, the bystander effect sometimes doesn’t seem to obtain—even if you did see, say, a smoking suitcase riding the subway, three hundred people would have already called it in by the time you managed to get your phone out, each one of them surely going home to announce to friends and family that he, personally, had averted a bombing. But today, I acted. I was in the security line at JFK when I spotted it: an orange can of Davis baking powder. It was unmistakable to anyone who’s done any baking, even if you sometimes buy Clabber Girl because you like the packaging. There it was, standing on the floor, right next to a security cordon and looking, to my eyes, very suspicious indeed. Read More
April 13, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Testimony of Simplicity By Sadie Stein Quaker in disguise? “Personal pride does not end with noble blood. It leads people to a fond value of their persons, especially if they have any pretense to shape or beauty. Some are so taken with themselves it would seem that nothing else deserved their attention.” —William Penn “Upside Down” was the lead single on Diana Ross’s 1980 disco record Diana. The song, written by Chic’s Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, topped the charts for a month, and it’s one of the great late-era disco dance hits: catchy, unexpected, propulsive, feisty. The plot is simple. A boy is turning her upside down, inside out, round and round, et cetera. And then: Read More
April 10, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent A New Coat By Sadie Stein Lanpher Furs ad, 1906. At what age does one outgrow the belief that a new coat will change one’s life? The belief that somehow, the you who wears this costume will grow worthy of it, will stride around a rosy future with a different sound track entirely? Plenty of garments can acquire this magical allure, but because a coat is something one wears every day—something everyone sees, something that has to serve a function and therefore has moral fiber as well as fabric—gives it extra importance. And they’re expensive. Read More
April 9, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Family Units By Sadie Stein A poster for a production of The Bald Soprano at the Pearl. Around 1963, my dad was in a summer-camp production of Eugène Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano. He played M. Martin. Sometimes, decades later, he would quote from it to my brother and I. We know from theatre of the absurd, but we thought the bizarre dialogue—the playwright was influenced by the stilted dialogue of the Assimil English–teaching method—was about the most hilarious thing we’d ever heard. We were especially enamored with a story one of the characters relates in the course of the evening. Read More