March 23, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Ideas of Heaven By Sadie Stein The Bobbsey Twins series. “If there’s a heaven,” my mom said recently, “I imagine it’s filled with brand-new Barbara Pym novels I’ve never read.” There’s a particular desolation to finding you’ve reached the end of a beloved author’s body of work. Just as discovering a writer can give you a where-have-you-been-all-my-life thrill, it’s easy to feel bereft when you’ve exhausted the trove—especially if the author in question has been dead for some forty years. In an era of easily accessible books, this poses certain questions. Once, you might have had to put yourself on a list at the library, wait for a call, or line up at a bookstore at midnight—now the next title can appear on your phone the moment it’s available. Do you take the glutton’s approach—binging, immersing yourself—or do you mete out the treasures carefully? Read More
March 20, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Germaine, or the Master Puppeteer By Sadie Stein “And what is the advantage your puppets would have over living dancers?” “The advantage? First of all a negative one, my friend: it would never be guilty of affectation. For affectation is seen, as you know, when the soul, or moving force, appears at some point other than the center of gravity of the movement. Because the operator controls with his wire or thread only this center, the attached limbs are just what they should be … lifeless, pure pendulums, governed only by the law of gravity. This is an excellent quality. You’ll look for it in vain in most of our dancers.” —Heinrich von Kleist, “On the Marionette Theatre” Besides being World Poetry Day, the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, World Down Syndrome Day, Truant’s Day (in Poland), Harmony Day (Australia), and the Anglican Commemoration of Thomas Cranmer, tomorrow (March 21) is World Puppetry Day. Read More
March 19, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Hypotheticals By Sadie Stein A cheese-ball scanner, one of many found at a typical airport. I’m not saying I smuggled a cheese ball through security and onto a domestic flight. That would be illegal, and I would never encourage anyone to break the law, by word or deed. Besides, only a total sociopath would have the hubris to boast of having pulled off such a feat. But let’s say I had. Let’s say the cheese ball in question contained not just cheddar, blue cheese, and cream cheese, but also mustard and many seasonings. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that it had been rolled in finely chopped nuts. Let’s say I’d thought, These cheese balls are so good, and I’ve made such a large batch, that I believe I shall bring one to my parents. Read More
March 18, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Vetting By Sadie Stein Be afraid. I remember a local TV commercial that was, by the standards of the day, pretty high-concept, if low budget. It advertised the services of an area veterinary clinic, and it portrayed two dogs on leashes, Muppet Babies–style (the viewer only ever saw the owners’ legs). “What’s the matter?” says the friendly Labrador to the tiny white Maltese. When the Maltese responds, her voice is high with strain, vibrating with nerves. “Ooh! Gotta go to the vet!” she squeaks. “Gotta go to the vet!” Read More
March 17, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Taking the Cake By Sadie Stein A St. Patrick’s Day postcard, 1908. We live in the age of the Cake Wreck. Online, no confectionary disaster, no late-night slip of the icing tube, goes undetected or unmocked. It’s all in good fun, and at the end of the day, presumably most of the desserts still taste okay. Part of the issue is that there’s so much cake perfection in the world today. At any moment, Pinterest and Instagram are teeming with examples of whimsy and skill at which most of us can only marvel. Between the ludicrous and the ideal, what’s left? Read More
March 16, 2015 Our Daily Correspondent Impressions By Sadie Stein From Photographs of British Algae Some claim that Anna Atkins—born on this day in 1799, in Kent—was the first woman to take a photograph. Others that hers were the first photos ever printed in book form. Atkins was a botanist, an artist, and an accomplished nature photographer. Her father was a scientist, and he encouraged his daughter’s early interest in botany. Both her father and her eventual husband, John Pelly Atkins, were friendly with the pioneering photographer and inventor William Henry Fox Talbot; it was probably Talbot who introduced her to the techniques she would come to use in her art. In her books on British algae and her later work on plants and ferns, Atkins worked by contact-printing cyanotype photograms, and by “photogenic drawing,” the process by which light-sensitive paper is exposed to the sun. Read More