Amsterdam Authentic
“This city’s a shopping mall with pot,” I said. Matt, who’d hopped a bus from Heidelberg (where he studies something lucrative and boring) to meet us in Amsterdam, thought about this, nodded, and grinned. “Yeah.” “Why would you go to another country to buy a watch?” Luke asked. We’d seen it go down on the flight to […]
Anne Frank
Words can change the world. Can and have since we first spoke them from our lips and scrawled them on our parchment. Standing before Anne Frank’s diary, I find myself shaking with awe and frisson. The cursive between those covers – the work of a young girl – has changed lives; her book carries all […]
Cat Ladies in Cold Climates
The cat lady is a global phenomenon. In every nation, in every era, there she’ll be, communing with her feline companions in tongues long lost to man. I encountered my first cat lady when my family moved to our house on 2nd Street. Kitty corner from the concrete patch we call our backyard lives Joan, […]
Copenhagen on Wheels
A confession: I hate bikes. I hate bikes when I’m walking, I hate bikes when I’m driving, and I hate bikes most of all when I’m biking. I grew up in New York City, where the fervent eco-fitness fanatics who commute by bike ride a twice-daily gauntlet of murderous motorists and plugged-in pedestrians, where a […]
Eating the Danish
After a long day trading agony for tedium, we awoke in Copenhagen at 2:30. We’re staying with our friend Kelton Minor at Egmont, a student cooperative. It’s kind of like a college dorm, but in Denmark, so everyone is so beautiful it hurts to look at them. Luke being sensitive, Kelton took us to a […]
My Karma Card’s Not Working
“Southern regrets to inform you that their 11:45 Gatwick Express has been delayed.” “Uh oh.” We hadn’t left much room for error that morning. “Southern regrets to inform you that their 12:15 Gatwick Express has been delayed.” “Now it’s at 12:15?” Luke and I were watching the London Overground timetables in Victoria Station. Every one […]
Faggots Is Meatballs
“This is an authentic 13th Century carving,” said Paul Hyams, “and I know it is because I saw it done myself.” The recently-retired Cornell professor has all the dryness of an hourglass, a sharply British wit that would’ve made him an excellent screenwriter, but instead led him (tragically) down the path of academia. Hyams was […]
New, Old, Just Out of Sight
There’s something wonderful about meeting old friends in new places. You are you and they are they and there you all are, a thousand miles away from where you met a thousand years ago. I had the pleasure, yesterday, of meeting a number of old compadres in London’s East End. The first, Zoya, an artist […]
Hats, Guns, Pie
In olden days, they navigated by the light of the stars. Today, we find our way by the wifi of the Starbucks. Thusly, Luke and I calculated and recalculated our caffeinated route to Buckingham Palace, where we went to have tea with Queen. We arrived at four o’clock sharp, only to be told by a […]
Luke Drinks Tea
After an afternoon spent admiring decapitated statues and Zulu headrests (keep your hair styled! keep the bugs out! keep in touch with dead relatives!) at the British Museum, Luke and I went to the Twinings Tea Shop. I should mention now that Luke’s passion for tea far exceeds that of a normal man. Luke’s tea-drive rivals […]
