Life meanwhile—real life, with its essential interests of health and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and passions—went on as usual, independently of and apart from political friendship or enmity... -Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace)If my last post was grounded in the mood of the…
"Ifemelu, can I just say how happy I am that you're not an academic? Have you heard his friends talk? Nothing is just what it is. Everything has to mean something else. It's ridiculous...A good education isn't the same thing as making the whole damn world something to be explained! Even Shan makes fun of…
"Shiroka strana moya rodina" ("O vast is my country"), the people are singing. "There's no other country where a man breathes more freely." Swept up in the collective elation, Mom inhales as deep as she can, filling her lungs with what she will always describe as "that smell"--the Soviet institutional odor of dusty folders, karbolka…
If I had to pick my favorite muffin flavor, it would undoubtedly be something fruity, or maybe even with a cream cheese filling. In my carefree college days when I would find myself at Nussbaum and Wu for an afternoon snack, I would choose either blueberry or pumpkin/chocolate cheese, always turning my nose up at…
Riuscire meglio a pane che a farina. [To succeed more with the bread than with the flour, i.e. to have more success than expected.]You could say that this Italian proverb, which I found at the beginning of Carol Field's The Italian Baker (sadly, I speak no Italian), has been the overarching theme of the week.…
There is a silence where hath been no sound. -Thomas Hood ("Silence") I know I've written about pizza before, but, frankly, when all is said and done, it's something worth revisiting again and again. Pizza is just one of those irresistible comfort foods: you put whatever you're in the mood for on top of a…
Dining with Dostoevsky 