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Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week the Non-Expert helps a reader combine travel and eating--with knowledge cribbed from the Food Network star.
Have a question? Need some advice? Ignored by everyone else? Send your questions ‘); document.write(‘via email’); // —> . The Non-Expert handles all subjects and is updated on Fridays, and is written by a member of The Morning News staff.* * * Question: My family and I are going to travel cross-country this summer, but while my wife doesn’t care if we get every meal at a fast-food joint, I’d rather look a little harder and try and find the best dining option in every town we pass through. What’s the best...
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An interview with photographer Tanyth Berkeley about her inspirations, muses, and settings, and a gallery from her “Orchidaceae” series of pictures.
Photographer Tanyth Berkeley creates cinematic and arresting portraits of women that she encounters riding New York City subway trains. Though her subjects all possess unique beauty, they seem familiar; as though you too could have encountered these women on the trains or in the streets. In Berkeley’s portraits, the unidentified faces of our day-to-day lives appear in 19th-century realist landscapes. The women in Berkeley’s portraits gaze away from the camera, their modesty a challenge to the cultural dominance of teen pop stars and emaciated runway models. Tanyth Berkeley was born in 1969 in Hollywood, Cal., and currently...
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June 1 dawned humid and hot. The forecast: A high of 84 degrees and possible late-day thunderstorms west of town. But forecasts--for the temperature or for a busy day of work and play--aren't all they're cracked up to be. A day in the life of 10 writers.
5:45 a.m.—Inwood, Manhattan Thank you, jet lag. Last night I made it to just before 9 p.m. before the throbbing exhaustion began. But, all told, I got a good amount of sleep, due in part to my trusty foam earplugs, which I use nightly. My street is a favorite thoroughfare for the drivers of 18-wheelers; souped up, deliberately mufflerless Honda Civics that sounds like Harleys; and, well, Harleys. This is very different...
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A report from the world of cow singing in England, where our writer was chased by a stampede of excited cattle, eager to hear him imitate Johnny Rotten one more time.
I like to sing to cows. Unfortunately I live in a rather sheepy area of England, so my opportunities are limited. (Mutton and music don’t mix.) When, on a long country ramble, I do find a scattered red herd, my heart lifts and my mind races through old melodies learned in childhood: tunes with lilt and variation, guts and brio. Real music, in other words, not the pop chants of the day, though I do throw in a punk anthem now and then—“Anarchy in the UK” or “I’m...
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Considering what may lie ahead otherwise, no amount of money is too great to devote to the fight against avian flu. But while everybody's spending against each other's contingency plans, we're all left risking something too precious to lose.
Dr. Juan Lubroth is a hard man to meet. Head of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Infectious Disease Group, he is often on the road, traveling the world to organize the fight against highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). It takes more than a month from when we first make contact for us to actually sit down together. So I’ve decided that if I get to ask him only one question, it will be the one...
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Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week the Non-Expert supplies a former Girl Scout with some new badges designed for today's perplexing world.
Have a question? Need some advice? Ignored by everyone else? Send your questions ‘); document.write(‘via email’); // —> . The Non-Expert handles all subjects and is updated on Fridays, and is written by a member of The Morning News staff.* * * Question: dear non expert, my life is a mess. i am a total washout as an adult. i am 23 and i feel like i’m still 12. i am totally unprepared. my friend just said my haircut looks like a tortilla chip (i’m in a starbucks, sweet!!) i am not...
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Come summer, a line is drawn between guys who doff their tops and those dressed in jacket, tie, and sneer. Our author considers undoing the top button.
My mother was casual in her summer wear, though I don’t mean she went topless. I remember sitting at the table with her family in Kentucky when I was a boy. My mother wore the demure gowns appropriate to a Southern belle, even if she lived in coal country and didn’t sip mint juleps like a real belle. But all the menfolk, except my father and me, went shirtless. I thought nothing of it until I heard my father say one time that it did nothing for his appetite to see all...
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UFO freaks, plant-loving vets, and science-minded slave owners people Stephen Wright's novels. Maybe a little off the wall? Maybe not. A talk with the writer about his books and their reflections of the human condition.
The novels of Stephen Wright offer a fascinating glimpse into humanity’s dark side for those who dare to read them. Beautiful and grotesque images repeatedly collide in reams of imaginative storytelling and rhythmic, seductive prose, exposing the dichotomies that haunt the American soul. Meditations in Green, inspired by Wright’s experiences as a soldier during the Vietnam War, won the Maxwell Perkins Prize for promising first novels in 1983. Dense and disturbing, the book observes a veteran’s struggle adjusting to civilian life and how he...
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The British capital is never empty, and only major television events can clear the streets. So why do movies and science fiction teem with vacant blocks? Does urbanism have room for emptiness anymore?
London is never empty. Even the annual May Bank Holiday, when people traditionally leave the city, shops shut, and the streets feel wide and airy, is a disappointment for the claustrophobe. I’m hoping for a city transformed from its usual schizophrenic self of snarling traffic, angsty crowds, and small moments of rapture into an urban idyll of broad, empty avenues and scattered lumps of lazy pedestrians. It doesn’t happen. The dip in traffic levels is perceptible, but hardly remarkable, and a few parking spaces have magically...
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Our man in Boston talks to writer and off-the-charts associater Lawrence Weschler about his new book, Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, plus publishing as an act of citizenship and the joy of sideways learning.
Staunch Angeleno Lawrence “Ren” Weschler, a New Yorker writer for the last two decades of the 20th century, is the author of a dozen books of so-called “creative nonfiction”: Solidarity; Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees; The Passion of Poland; A Miracle, a Universe; Shapinsky’s Karma, Boggs’s Bills, And Other True-Life Tales; Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder; A Wanderer in the Perfect City; Calamities of Exile; and three nonfiction novellas, Boggs, Vermeer in Bosnia, and now Everything That...
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Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week the Non-Expert introduces a paranoid reader to his personal physician, Dr. Google, who has induced paranoia in more patients than anyone.
Have a question? Need some advice? Ignored by everyone else? Send your questions ‘); document.write(‘via email’); // —> . The Non-Expert handles all subjects and is updated on Fridays, and is written by a member of The Morning News staff.* * * Question: I don’t know why, but I always think I have cancer or an aneurysm or deep-vein thrombosis or something terrible all that time. I’ll have a little pain or discomfort somewhere and then the next thing you know I’m searching for symptoms online and...
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The nation falls in love with an injured horse and a thousand weepy editorials and get-well cards salute his courage. Now our equine hero responds to his well-wishers, albeit via his assistant.
Dear Charlie, Thank you for your letter. It reached me at a particularly tough time, so I really appreciate the concern. It’s quite kind of you to think of me during my time in the veterinary hospital, and that you are including me in your prayers. My tiny, equine brain doesn’t allow me to grasp such concepts as an overarching deity who benevolently creates and sustains the universe, but all the same, I appreciate that you’ve petitioned for my wellbeing to your “God.” To answer your questions,...
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It's the last Wednesday of the month, so it's time for another episode of what the Contributing Writers have recently been loving: restaurants in California, television in Japan, vitamin-laced candy, and more.
I discovered oranges many years ago and never turned back. These things are crazy! First of all, you can drop one on the ground and it’s still good to eat because of that tough skin. And once you get that skin off, it’s like a globe made of sweet, refreshing candy built for sharing. They have zest and navels and come from flowers. Obsessive-compulsives and marijuana addicts can enjoy them on an almost molecular level, as they pick at each orange section and remove its thousands...
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Why are so many news shows so dully casted--except for the flamboyantly named superhero in front of the blue screen? A review of the top 10 best-named weathermen currently rescuing the news.
Think of every TV news team you’ve ever watched. Lead anchor: John, vaguely Midwestern, definitely tanned. Co-anchor: Julie the Blonde/Vaguely Asian or Hispanic. Sports: Hank. Maybe Bill. Or Bob. But only sometimes. Otherwise, Hank. Normal, all-American names, for all-American people, delivering all-American news. But then there’s the person standing at stage left, dwarfed by a giant map of North America. His name? Flip. Topper. Storm. He’s the weatherman. In Greek mythology, the god of weathermen, Isothermes, sneaked one night into Hera’s bedroom while Zeus was away at...
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With more and more kids reneging on their signed virginity vows, it's time for swift action. This updated pledge from LifeTime Ministry explains all you really need to know to keep your ticket to salvation intact.
Virginity pledges, in which young people vow to abstain from sex until marriage, have little staying power among those who take them, a Harvard study has found… More than half of the adolescents who make the signed public promises give up on their pledges within a year.—Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2006 Dear Virgins: LifeTime Ministry would like to take this opportunity to address a recent report by a certain godless institution that claims to have found that many of you have...
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Web Geeks Unite! was the original slogan when The Morning News launched in 1999, and though our mission has changed, the spirit is undiminished. Presenting TMN’s 2006 Editors’ Awards for Online Excellence.
If you could name the web’s most useful development over the past year, it might be “Web 2.0,” which, for the uninitiated, alludes to a relatively new breed of web sites-slash-applications that help people more easily accomplish things they are trying to do online (e.g., share photos, keep track of to-do lists, manage bookmarks). But “useful” is not what the web is, at least not entirely. It’s also a wide range of rich, interesting sites that inspire us with their content and creativity. In fact, the year’s...
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Yapping on cell phones has gotten out of hand--on the bus, on the street, even in subways, civil life is trampled with every outspoken call. Ways to exact your revenge.
Some feelings are cumulative. If, say, once a year I were forced to hear some drunk tween screech an unintelligible semblance of words into her phone on the subway at 1 a.m., I could live with it. If this were an unusual occurrence, I wouldn’t be made to feel all of my meager supply of testosterone mixing with adrenaline to form a potent cocktail of annoyance bordering on rage—but I feel this every day. I’m not claiming to be exempt from taking a call in public. When I’m by...
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Our Boston correspondent visits the Hockney exhibit, now en route to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Expecting more of the same, she ends up finding a portrait of her own.
I warn my editor. I don’t read or write art reviews and what I’ve seen of David Hockney, I didn’t like. Moreover, I’m a bad interpreter. Los Angeles is a big part of Hockney’s life and I’ve never been there. I’ve never even been to California. “All the better,” he says, unfazed. “Because the show goes to L.A. after it leaves Boston. Imagine L.A.” “Yeah, but it’s a retrospective of his portraits, not his landscapes.” “Then imagine how L.A. will respond to it.” This doesn’t strike me...
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Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week the Non-Expert taps his vast travel knowledge to help a bride-to-be select the best Caribbean island for her honeymoon.
Have a question? Need some advice? Ignored by everyone else? Send your questions ‘); document.write(‘via email’); // —> . The Non-Expert handles all subjects and is updated on Fridays, and is written by a member of The Morning News staff.* * * Question: Hi. My fiancé and I are getting married in August and we’d like to go to the Caribbean islands for our honeymoon but we haven’t picked out exactly where. Have you guys been there before? If so, what’s a good place that’s not too tourist-y? Thanks!—Camille...
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After dozens of entries and hundreds of footnotes--and the demise of the publishing industry--we’re pleased to publish the winner of our plagiarism contest, Bonnie Furlong, and her story, “The Parlourmaid’s Tale, or, MS in a Dustbin.”
Responding to the recent announcement of our plagiarism contest, 54 people assembled stories that were not entirely theirs and sent them in for review. We read them all. Most were creative, some wonderfully so; some were so good we hope their authors will try to sneak them into credible magazines. But it was Bonnie Furlong’s “The Parlourmaid’s Tale, or, MS in a Dustbin” that won us over with its wit, variety and use of citations, and obvious delight with the form. Our congratulations...
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An interview with artist Peter Haakon Thompson where we talk about icebergs and fishing houses, and a gallery of new photographs about being alone.
Click Here for Peter Haakon Thompson’s “Essentially Public” Gallery About this series of photographs, Thompson writes: “I record my private relationship to places that are essentially public. These images are part of an unbroken eight-year chain of visual self-examination inside of places being by myself, standing still, looking, listening, thinking, and taking pictures. Through my work I locate and then navigate through my private physical/emotional landscape mirrored externally. I explore invisibility, aloneness, emptiness, hiding, the overlooked, subtle traces of human residue in a non-human world, acute isolation.” The following discussion was recently conducted over...
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Erik Estrada wants us to buy land, Ron Popeil wants us to shoot our salad. Promising a better life--free of ills financial and otherwise--when infomercials air on a Sunday morning, the effect can be downright spiritual.
Would you like to own your very own property in beautiful Alabama? That’s right, beautiful Alabama, with some of the best golf courses in all of Alabama. As I sit on the couch on the wrong side of the sunrise, I think that just maybe I would. I nosh on nuts, freshen my vodka, and listen to Erik Estrada sell me on waterfront property in beautiful Alabama, and I seriously consider whether it might be worth it to buy an acre in beautiful...
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Find a new band, listen to the single, expand to a few more songs, then a whole album, then all the albums, and finally, months later, you've exhausted their entire catalog--and listened to nothing else in between. Now: Repeat.
“This is the best band. Just the best one. The Brian Jonestown Massacre. And I have no idea what this song is called. But it’s completely amazing. Get any of their records. You can’t go wrong…They have some of the best records ever made. Ever.” That’s Courtney Taylor from the Dandy Warhols, introducing his cover of a song called “Stars” written by BJM. The performance is nothing to write home about, but I credit the preceding encomium for turning me...
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Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week the Non-Expert helps a forlorn scientist understand why his friend and co-worker chose to quit her job and leave the state.
Have a question? Need some advice? Ignored by everyone else? Send your questions ‘); document.write(‘via email’); // —> . The Non-Expert handles all subjects and is updated on Fridays, and is written by a member of The Morning News staff.* * * Question: I moved to the deep South to take a good job as a government scientist. My position includes money for research, a laboratory, and a full-time technician. My new boss “suggested” I hire a local girl, which I did. After making her cry repeatedly...
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Our man in Boston talks to author and 2005 Rooster winner David Mitchell about his new novel, Black Swan Green, the appeal of Bill Evans, and the differences between sex and writing.
Readers of The Morning News should be no strangers to the name David Mitchell, as his third novel, Cloud Atlas, battled fierce competition to win the inaugural Tournament of Books in 2005. And the book pages of major dailies have contributed a near tidal wave of review attention for his latest opus, Black Swan Green, which confirms his burgeoning popularity—as American newspapers are (tragically) invested in being cultural weathermen. Even my octogenarian mother has read Mitchell, although she complains about his postmodernist tendencies. David Mitchell was born...
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Producing music from printers, hacking Speak ‘n’ Spells for backing vocals--it's not trendy garage band style, but then, it's not exactly rock and roll. A look into the engrossing world of circuit bending.
I switch on my Casio SA-1, hit the trusty “demo” button, and—after I am serenaded for a few excruciating seconds with the immense sonic ugliness of Wham’s “Jitterbug” (rendered in full 32-note polyphony)—my finger hovers over a big plastic key. A “num lock” key, salvaged from an old Acorn computer keyboard, it protrudes rather incongruously from the pad of rubbery push-buttons usually used to control the little instrument. After a moment’s hesitation, I tap it. A circuit that I’ve connected messily to one of the...
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We don't yet know whether the avian flu will become a pandemic. So why are we preparing for a plague instead of fighting the virus where it currently rages--in the animal kingdom? Conflicting reports and strategies still march on, but time may be running out.
In early February I happened to visit a farm in Umbria where there were chickens. On my drive home, I became seized with terror when I heard on the radio that avian influenza had been detected in Italy. For weeks I had been following the virus’s westward progress on maps at the website of FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). I had read about the disaster in Turkey, where the...
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Whatever Kaavya Viswanathan's legacy, she has inspired us to take pleasure in others' misfortune. And as there happens to be a word that means just that--schadenfreude--many writers have been more than happy to remind us of it.
Perhaps in her headier moments, Kaavya Viswanathan imagined she’d make a contribution to our language. It was certainly possible: Novelists from Kurt Vonnegut (“so it goes”) to Joseph Heller (“Catch-22”) have deposited words and phrases into our lexicon, and the chance of such success is so arbitrary, so unpredictable, that it could happen to anyone. By starting so young, and with the potential for so many books in her career, Kaavya had statistics on her side. More books, more language, more chances...
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Experts answer what they know. The Non-Expert answers anything. This week a Romeo's troubles are too difficult for the Non-Expert's small brain, but luckily some famous detectives agree to take on the case.
Have a question? Need some advice? Ignored by everyone else? Send your questions ‘); document.write(‘via email’); // —> . The Non-Expert handles all subjects and is updated on Fridays, and is written by a member of The Morning News staff.* * * Question: Dear Non-Expert—I like this girl lately and I don’t know if she likes me more than as a friend as she’s normally really nice to people. Although I seem to have seen her gaze at me from time to time, and when we...
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'Tis the season of graduation ceremonies, when many will be told it's the first day of the rest of their lives. Our Contributing Writers disagree, and offer the ultimate commencement speech.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll spare me a minute, I’d like to offer a few pieces of advice for today’s graduates… Ask not, ever1. Some people will say your college years are the best of your life—ignore them2. I find that, sometimes, when your miss your bus, you can run really fast and catch up to it at the next stop!3 Also: Write more letters, especially if you’re in jail4. Use a colon after an independent clause to introduce a list of particulars, an appositive, an amplification, or...
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