The artist is one who must stand at the still point of a turning world and simply watch, and in watching, see.
I do not remember a Christmas breakfast without tomatoes on toast. It was so regular, so consistently a part of our Christmas morning that I believed it to be a long-standing and worldwide tradition.
For those who’ve forgotten, and those who never knew, just some of the rich, diverse, and beautiful history of a holiday that has, over two thousand years, quietly crept up upon the others to be one of the most celebrated occasions around the globe. Here’s to remembering why.
In the heart of America’s heartland, on I-40 just west of Oklahoma City, there is a patch of federally owned land named Fort Reno. At Fort Reno is a cemetery. Most of the graves there are Germans who died in Oklahoma in the 1940s.
Sprezzatura, as a concept, is impossible to translate fully. It is bravura, a swagger you can back up, a cool beyond cool. It’s the years of laboring on card tricks or juggling, so that you get thirty seconds, somewhere in the undisclosed future in some bar with some stunning person, where you actually pull off the sleight of hand, or the turn of phrase, or just plan catch the tipping glass. It’s charm.
I will not cease from praising matter, through which my salvation was worked.
It was as if fate dropped into their beer mugs and they stared at it as it swirled into some cruel divination, which they imbibed with the relish of a cup everlasting. Here’s to Opportunity. Here’s to Recompense.
I sometimes cast a glance around our house and wonder what it means that some of our furniture was crafted by skilled Mennonite hands decades ago, and some of it comes from Grand Home Furnishings.
As a child, I was proud to be an American—mostly because I was told that my country was the best. That’s what kids dig: being the best.