Putting together my first package for Quarterly Co. feels a lot like assembling the cards and songs and books and other objects I used to send friends and boys in college, except with 100% fewer stickers: Here’s this thing I’ve been reading! Here’s this other, related thing! Here’s a long, gushy letter telling you all the reasons I am sending . . .
“No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street.” — Florence King, Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady, one of several books I’m reading, this one suggested by the fabulous Joan Schenkar.
“Benedict Cumberbatch, who stars in Parade’s End as Christopher Tietjens, the last of the old Tories, dismisses Downton as [a period soap opera].”
On September 3, 1894, Bertrand Russell wrote to Alys Pearsall Smith, his wife-to-be, concerning the importance of creating an environment in which he could cultivate his talents. (She was a Quaker, thus the “thee.”) And (I must confess it) horrible as such a thought is, I do not entirely trust thee to back me up. I have a passion for . . .
My great-grandfather, Zone, the Texan communist carpenter and lothario, made this rocking chair a hundred years ago, give or take. It was good to sit in something so solid (and so tailored to short people) while visiting my mom for her birthday over the weekend. I planned the trip several months back. And then, a few weeks ago, my mom . . .