Anthony Bourdain (far left), c. 1980. This year, the ticks in Hudson are the size of the head of a pin. You look at them with amazement they can be that small. The man I live with examines a tiny black dot I show him, and we go upstairs to get tweezers. He holds my arm under a bright light and grabs the critter, pulling up firmly but not too fast. I can see the
Julia Child on the set of The French Chef, c. 1965. Photo by Paul Child I WANT TO tell you about the drive to NYC early Sunday morning, the car packed with items for a party I’d agreed to cater. The man I live with was driving, and in my passenger seat I fell into a sleep that was deep and uncomfortable and thrilling as a cloud that swallows you. Pure sensation is a thing
Photo by Edenpictures, via Flickr 1. When I was nineteen and living uptown near Columbia University, my boyfriend and I would go to a small bakery. The man who owned the shop worked unassisted, selling napoleons, linzer tarts with current jam, chocolate brownies, milk, and homemade matzohs. His clothes were well worn and pressed. When he wasn’t behind the counter, he sat on a chair, talking to whomever took the seat beside him. The
Laurie Stone at the Morton Street Pier in New York City, c. 1970. Photo courtesy of author. Yesterday, I received a check for the security deposit on my apartment in New York City. It’s done. I lived there for forty-three years. I have visions of the open road, except we can’t go anywhere. In unpacking from the move, I found notebooks I wrote in the 1970s. The particulars of my life are news to me—who
The original 2001 “Rockin’ Road Map,” a guide for campers, volunteers, and parents, created by Misty McElroy. BETWEEN COVID AND kids, parties had fallen off my must-do list. It was an exotic feat that I, en famille, managed to travel across town this past Christmas Eve to a Hanukkah party where, noshing on smoked fish and sugar cookies, I learned that the original Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls was kaput. I was shocked. Misty
Sam Levy, Double Figure, 64″ x 47″, Charcoal on Paper, 2021. I wonder if there might not be . . . another human essence than self. —Anne Carson, “The Gender of Sound” ONE OF THE earliest books I can remember reading was a yellowed collection of children’s prayers, possibly something my Protestant-farmer grandparents had read to my mother in the 1950s. I don’t know the title; I only remember one line: Lord, if you find that
In the fall of 2021, I ran into my ex-best friend at Trader Joe’s. I was surprised to see her; I had moved back to Los Angeles and she still lived on the East Coast. We’d met as undergrads at Spelman College and, while I was in graduate school, I’d lived briefly with her and her husband, but we hadn’t spoken for more than a year. I was pushing my cart through the dairy section,
That year, I asked only one question and spent a lot of time looking out my apartment’s kitchen window. The view was mostly a three-story ailanthus, its leaves orange and lavender at the end of the day. The phone rang. It was my mother. That year, I didn’t like talking to my mother, and I asked questions to avoid having to talk about myself. But really, I was only asking one question: Will I have
The generic-looking typescript (around two hundred pages of printer paper, bound with a rubber band) living in my office at Feminist Press predated me by many years. In 2015, when I excavated it from a drawer, I might have tossed it in the recycling bin but for the sticky note attached in the recognizable hand of my predecessor’s predecessor (i.e., Gloria Jacobs and Florence Howe), warning, Don’t throw away! Beneath that, centered in all caps:
Edgar Degas, Dancer Looking at the Sole of Her Right Foot, c. 1910, bronze. Degas made at least four variations of this sculpture; this version, made with plasteline and cast posthumously, is most likely the one for which Pauline posed. Courtesy of Tate. IN 1899, ONE Amélie Lang, eighteen, was abducted by her friend’s brother-in-law. When her guardian (an aunt who resented responsibility for Lang’s care) found her days later in the apartment where the
