May 9, 2025
- The history of swooning over great art
- Marcella Hazan’s culinary legacy
- Trump’s assault on the Institute of Museum and Library Services
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“After a week or so they sent round a message saying they had a surplus of milk pudding. They said they were willing to share it with the rest of us if we went into their camp at noon. All they asked was that we brought our own spoons and dishes. The offer was undoubtedly generous, but we thought the tone of the message was rather curt. Apparently there’d been some kind of blunder. From what we could gather, the blame for the surplus lay squarely with their cooks: it seemed they’d measured the ingredients in the wrong quantities.”
"Each of us has an immediate, olfactory connection to our grandparents, who emit the musty clouds of age; hallways and bedrooms smell like dust, or mothballs, or liniment."
“You have to understand: we were good together. We weren’t even a couple with problems—our days were full of happy hours. I’d accepted a job while we sorted out the mess of my inheritance, and the people there treated me like an emergency fund. They thought that if we found ourselves in trouble, I could inject enough healthy capital to get through four or five bumpy months.”
“This I remember very well: Around two o’clock, the warden came into our office, followed by a tall redheaded woman and a willowy bald man in a loose, mud-colored suit. My first impression of the woman was that she must be a performer at the special assembly—a singer or an actress with a soft spot for child criminals. My assumption seemed reasonable.”