December 2025
Celebrating
A fiftieth anniversary in Paris, a COVID Christmas in April, a first birthday in America
Sunbeams
At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man’s power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes.
December 2025
Glass Overfull
William Rees on Humanity’s Ecological Overshoot
There has been a boom, and soon there will be a bust, in global human population. And no advanced civilization will be able to reemerge because we will have used everything up. There will be no oil and gas and other supplies of that nature to maintain any civilization that might emerge from the ashes of this one.
On Walking
To love walking is to love the body, and this has been a barrier for me. Walking requires us to be a physical presence moving in a physical space. Your body is on display, with all its jostling parts and creaky joints. I know it’s vanity—this self-consciousness, this awareness of other people’s eyes—but it was something I shouldered when I walked, something that made me seek the comfort of a climate-controlled car.
House Hunting
Our sordid credit history seems to sadden more than shock her. Such nice people, she must be thinking. How do these things happen?
The Children's Wing
Other parents see our little girl running up and down the hall, or performing a dance in the playroom, or climbing onto a stool to get the Funny Bunny game from the closet, and they ask why we are here. I have told the story so many times to so many different doctors that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m keeping the details straight. Was it four in the morning or six? What woke us—the trembling and shaking, or the lack of breathing, or the choking sounds?
Don’t Be Alarmed
After her third glass of wine, Beatrice got up to look at Bert and Martin’s wedding photo, the one with the understated silver frame and the two of them making out like teenagers, Martin’s leg wrapped around Bert’s thigh. It was supposed to be a joke, but they ended up liking it. She stared at it and thought, This was the man I thought I was spending my life with.
A Thousand Words
A Thousand Words features photography so rich with narrative that it tells a story all on its own.
The Patron Saint of Suburban Foxes
. . . Her own orange, though, deepens / in shadow to red, like condensed autumn, and makes her almost invisible / against the brick she edges past / on her burnt-matchstick legs
Pinkie Masters
A good scare can cure anything, she says. / We nod, and I thank her but insist / on holding my breath all night.
