Storm Damage
The mob storming the Capitol plays through my mind, over and over again, like a bad ‘Game of Thrones’ episode. They have been blind-sided by a man who once looked into a pond and fell in love with himself.
A Life to Dance For
‘I have only one lesson,’ Roger Berlind told a group of Princeton students. ‘Follow your intuition. Do what your heart says.’
The Nativity Scene on Nightingale Street
This Christmas, in a year that took so many magical rituals from us, I think back to my “Grandpa and Grandma Amsterdam,” as we called them, living in their upstairs apartment on the Nachtegaalstraat — or Nightingale Street.
War of the Words
The biggest surprise of this presidential election is that there is no surprise. The country turned out to be exactly as split as it was four years ago.
A Change of Habits
I am no longer the same as I was before the pandemic. I can’t just pick up my old life, pretend there’s not a half-year gap. Social contact, I read, is one of the most complicated things for our brain.
When the Zoombies Appear
This new world is a bonanza for born voyeurs like me. I can’t get enough of studying all the interiors, the bookshelves, the dogs, the idiosyncratic behaviors.
A Lesson to Remember
Do a chemistry test on your mobile while you pay for toilet paper with your little brother in the supermarket. That happened to a student of Kimberly Dempsey, a chemistry teacher at East Side Community High School in New York City.
Forever Flowers
The virus traveling among us has revived an almost bygone tradition: sending postcards.
The History of a Moment
"We didn’t come this far, to only come this far.” Those are the words on the banner an older black woman is carrying through the streets of Princeton.
When the Foxes Play
Now that almost all people are gone, the foxes have taken over the university. In broad daylight they roam the grounds, up the monumental stairs and through the ornate iron gates.