I congratulate you, my dear Cornelia, on having acquired the valuable art of writing. How delightful to be enabled by it to converse with an absent friend, as if present! —Thomas Jefferson She hesitated, and then, impulsively, "...

?? Sequel time: another summer day looped backwards through the projector, with storms unbuilding to a clear and quiet finish. A tolerably damp morning turned into another downpour, and another downpour after that. When that part was don...

Iron Man 3 raked in a ton of cash this weekend and officially kicked off the 2013 summer movie season, which is set to contain an unusually high amount of comedies. From blockbuster sequels like The Hangover III and Grown Ups 2 to indie ...

109. Frédéric Mistral, 1904 108. Winston Churchill, 1953 107. Pearl S. Buck, 1938 105 (tie). Harry Martinson, 1974 105 (tie). Eyvind Johnson, 1974 104. William Golding, 1983 103. Jacinto Benavente, 1922 102. John Galsworthy, 1932 ...

Almost two years ago, I performed one of my sporadic online bank balance checks, cringing at the damage I knew I inflicted the weekend prior. To my horror, five hundred dollars were missing. I have a shopping problem, but I’m nowhere nea...

First Letter to David Berman and John Hodgman Dear David Berman and John Hodgman, In Bulawayo the bon-bon trees laugh and dance and smile in the happy giggle sunshine pavilion as the candy corn fields blush and bloom. In the late aft...

Recently I went to Carnegie Hall for, I believe, the second time in my life, to see Gabriel Kahane and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra perform Gabriel's "Guide to the 48 States." I went to college with Gabriel, where our closest contact was pr...

Even though it seems unlikely that you are unaware, what with the way the Internet works now, this Sunday is Mother's Day, so you might want to get moving on that if you had forgotten about it. Also, please enjoy this, from last year.---...

We are all scarred. We are all damaged. Life sometimes feels like a cycle of Internet horror stories coming at us furiously, one after the other. Year after year. It’s enough to make you want to start a diary of Internet disasters. I wri...

"Poll: Disdain for Justin Bieber Unites Democrats and Republicans"---See more posts by Alex Balk0 comments