March 31, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent The Sweet Smell of Success By Sadie Stein Perfume ad, ca. 1920. It all started about a month ago. A close friend was celebrating a big birthday, and I planned to buy her a set of nice lotions and potions in a pricey scent I knew she loved. So I looked up the address of the shop, walked across the park, headed uptown, and entered its ritzy, expensively perfumed confines. The man standing inside didn’t look up. “Hello,” I said. He ignored me for an uncomfortably long moment, then looked up and said, “Did you want something?” Read More
March 30, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Morbid Sensitivity By Sadie Stein Saul Bass’s poster design for Bonjour Tristesse, 1958. And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?—Doctor Zhivago I’ve always liked the term morbid sensitivity, which seems to suggest not just something unhealthy but actually dangerous. To be morbidly sensitive is to wallow, to dwell unwholesomely on slights real and perceived—to ping-pong between solipsism and a feeling for others’ pain that results in a Saint Bartholomew–like sensation of emotional exposure. The term is usually used as a descriptor, an observation, but I think that those of us who suffer from the condition, even occasionally, know full well when we’re being MS. The knowledge does not change the feeling, which is one of the most frustrating human conditions. Read More
March 29, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Object Lesson By Sadie Stein Andreas Stolz. I was in a cab with a radar detector. “Red light camera ahead,” droned the automated voice from the front seat. “Doesn’t the city mind those?” I said. “It’s great, but doesn’t the city lose a lot of revenue? Because they point out speed traps, too, right?” “Yes, is very good,” said the driver. “But on the other hand, I guess it does prevent speeding—which should be the real point anyway, right? Maybe that’s a better way to think about it.” He smiled and made a polite but noncommittal noise. Read More
March 28, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Worst. Kid. Song. Ever. By Sadie Stein The other day, my husband and I were talking about putting together a playlist for our nieces: a list of empowering, kid-appropriate songs in which women were treated with respect. We had fun thinking of titles: Aretha and All Hail the Queen and plenty of Dolly, for sure. But also Belle and Sebastian and sixties Brit pop. I started a Spotify station based on “I’m Into Something Good” because I’ve always thought the lines “So I asked to see her again / And she told me I could” were sweet. And then, from this place of idealism, came perhaps the most inappropriate song to place on a little girl’s playlist ever written. 1964’s “Little Children,” which was a number-one UK hit for Billy Jay Kramer and went on to chart at number seven Stateside. Read More
March 25, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent Group Dynamics By Sadie Stein I’m currently observing a real-time courtesy lapse so blatant and so amazing that I must give voice to my electrified horror. The scene: a coffee shop, late morning. The players: assorted people drinking hot beverages and working on their computers, and a pair of German-speaking tourists in (I would wager) their midtwenties. Since the German couple came in, one of them, a woman, has been on a FaceTime call at top volume, with a shouting man. When it started, everyone looked up in irritation; it did not occur to anyone that it could go on very long. After five minutes of yelling, people started to look up pointedly, or resorted to the always-effective tactic of pursing their lips and raising their eyebrows. After ten minutes, the same people began to meet one another’s eyes and shake their heads gravely. Read More
March 24, 2016 Our Daily Correspondent How to Get Out of Bed By Sadie Stein Édouard Manet, Olympia, 1867, etching and aquatint on paper. In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote, At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work—as a human being. What do I have to complain of, If I’m going to do what I was born for—the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?” —But it’s nicer here … So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being? Why aren’t you running to do what your nature demands? —But we have to sleep sometime… Agreed. But nature set a limit on that—as it did on eating and drinking. And you’re over the limit. You’ve had more than enough of that. But not of working. There you’re still below your quota. You don’t love yourself enough. Or you’d love your nature too, and what it demands of you. People who love what they do wear themselves down doing it, they even forget to wash or eat. Do you have less respect for your own nature than the engraver does for engraving, the dancer for the dance, the miser for money or the social climber for status? When they’re really possessed by what they do, they’d rather stop eating and sleeping than give up practicing their arts. Is helping others less valuable to you? Not worth your effort? Read More