When It Sizzles by Rosecrans Baldwin - The Morning NewsI always get such conflicting feelings about France when reading articles like this. On the one hand I would love to live there, but on the other hand I know I wouldn’t last a week without going insane.
It brings to mind the shock the eminent Victorian art critic John Ruskin was said to have experienced upon discovering his wife’s pubic hair, after which he was unable to consummate the marriage. Annulment followed thereafter.
The Year in Pictures: Truth and Beauty
Benelux (a word apparently coined in The Economist in August 1946 by our Belgian correspondent, who tried out Nebelux before deciding that Benelux was more euphonious)
Charlemagne | Going Dutch | Economist.com
He [Vonnegut] often said he had to be a writer because he wasn’t good at anything else. He was not good at being an employee. Back in the mid-1950s, he was employed by Sports Illustrated, briefly. He reported to work, was asked to write a short piece on a racehorse that had jumped over a fence and tried to run away. Kurt stared at the blank piece of paper all morning and then typed, “The horse jumped over the fucking fence,” and walked out, self-employed again.
Excerpt: ‘Armageddon in Retrospect’ : NPR