We were in Central Park after dark scanning the shadows for movement. Every now and then a rabbit, raccoon or rat scurried by. But they weren’t the animals we were looking for. Suddenly, sirens punctuated the quiet as emergency vehicles sped along a nearby road. The park’s only resident pair of coyotes began calling as if on cue. We listened to their yip-howls, grabbed our cameras and hurried to the nearest lookout.
Central Park’s ghost dogs are famously good at hiding, but their loud howls enabled us to find them on a nearby lawn. Romeo and Juliet, as we’ve come to call them, were out in the open bonding affectionately with each other. Romeo, the smaller of the two, playfully lay on his back with his paws in the air, much like a domestic dog looking for a belly rub, while Juliet licked him on the face. Something caught Juliet’s attention, and she looked up, flashing her alert, amber-brown eyes. Romeo stood, and his upper coat—a mix of gray and brown with reddish hues—became visible. They trotted off together, and we photographed them while admiring their perky ears, long legs and bushy tails. Soon, they disappeared into the darkness.
Yet arguably the novel's biggest impact has been the conversations it has started. Women, especially, have pressed the book eagerly into the hands of friends, sisters, mothers, strangers, urging them to read it. Many have called it life-changing. Some have hated it. But everyone who reads this book has something to say about it.
Taking on a big book is making the time to relax, but also to think in the longer term and commit to something bigger. So many people picking up bigger books and reading them with others is a sign that we want to look forward, to think deeper, and to seek community and connection. Sounds like a hot summer to me.
The journey started with a train to Paris, arriving at Gare de Lyon. I decided to take an Uber to the airport. That was super interesting, because Uber drivers always like to chat, and when you’re sitting in the car and say “I’m going to Antarctica for a year” they just look at you, with the three backpacks, like, You’re not serious, right?
At the Paris airport, I met some of the French crew for the first time. We flew to Christchurch, New Zealand, (with a layover in Singapore) and that’s when I really connected with the other two women going to Antarctica. We sat next to each other, discussing things like, “How is it going to be?” “What did you pack?” “Did you take more clothes than they’re giving us?” “Do you have special equipment?” It was a chat about everyone’s strategies, what we did, what we had, if we took medical supplies from the lab.
Everyone is searching for something in Kyoto: the “real Japan,” a moment of Zen, the perfect shot. What they find amid the rising tide of tourists is something else — a modern conundrum with no obvious solutions. Tokyo and Osaka are big enough to soak up tourists in the same way New York and London can, but Kyoto is hemmed in by mountains, which keeps the city from expanding. (There are 1.4 million people living in Kyoto today, as many as there were in 1975.) It also makes the glut impossible to ignore.
Like a summer vacation, “The House on Buzzards Bay” moves at a languid pace showing the calm, restful days at a beach house, until those peaceful times take an abrupt turn.
Samuel Irving “Si” Newhouse Jr became chair of Condé Nast, the magazine group owned by his father’s media company, Advance Publications, in 1975. Under his stewardship, Condé’s roster of glossy publications – titles such as Vogue, GQ and Glamour – broadened to include Architectural Digest, a revived Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. Newhouse spent big in pursuit of clout, and his company’s extravagant approach to expenses became the stuff of legend. Condé positioned itself as a gatekeeper of high-end living but, as Michael Grynbaum explains in Empire of the Elite, its success in the 80s and 90s was down to its willingness to embrace “low” culture.
Perhaps there are two kinds of people in the world. There are the collectors, the enthusiasts, who want to keep, save and preserve: “Nequid pereat,” they might say, “Let nothing perish.” Then there are the others, already on the phone to the skip-hire company. Lally MacBeth is firmly of the former persuasion. If you’re of the latter, The Lost Folk might make you hyperventilate, so crammed is it with places, practices and stuff. The word “save” appears many times. So indeed does the word “skip”, as in “saved from a skip”. But persist, because you might see the culture of the UK in an unexpected light.