The Ward, a reading group founded by Tennessee-based author Susan Meachen, largely went dormant after a September 2020 post — supposedly written by her daughter — was shared from her page announcing that she had died by suicide following bullying and harassment from members of the book community. Now, more than two
A young male walrus named Thor has ventured far from his usual polar habitat in the past few months, turning up in the town of Scarborough in Yorkshire (he has also been spotted on the south coast as well as in France and the Netherlands). Large crowds gathered behind a
You might not recognize the name Wendy Froud (née Midener), but in the world of movie effects and puppetry, she’s practically a legend. Froud was sought out by directors like Jim Henson early in her career and created countless iconic TV and movie creatures. She played a crucial role
The sun is not yet up when Boots O’Neal starts his workday. As the 89-year-old cowboy readies his mount in the predawn quiet, he stuffs his hands into well-worn leather gloves. He pulls down his silverbelly hat and grunts his way onto the saddle, planting his tall-topped boots in
I'm going to take a bit of a break from the newsletter over the holidays, to be with family and probably eat too much, and I hope you are doing the same with your families for the holidays, or keeping the holiday in whatever way makes you happy.
On a dark and stormy night in May this year, exactly 125 years to the day that Bram Stoker published the definitive vampire novel, two people pored over a document more than 500 years old in a room in Transylvania, signed by Dracula himself. Gleb and Svetlana Zilberstein’s mission?
A long-lost avant garde painting was returned to Hungary after nine decades thanks to a sharp-eyed art historian, who spotted it being used as a prop in the Hollywood film Stuart Little. Gergely Barki, a researcher at Hungary’s national gallery in Budapest, noticed Sleeping Lady with Black Vase by
On the witness stand, Stu Bykofsky confessed that he didn’t really want a going-away party. After 47 years as a journalist at The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, Bykofsky found out that the editors at the Inquirer were taking his beloved column away from him. Two days before
Director James Cameron wants to put an end to a debate that has gone on since the movie first hit theaters, exactly 25 years ago today. Namely, could Rose have scooched over to make room for Jack on that floating hunk of wood, keeping him out of the freezing water
As a teenager, Judith Love Cohen went to a guidance counselor to talk about her future and professed her deep love of math. But the counselor had other advice. She said: “I think you ought to go to a nice finishing school and learn to be a lady.” Instead, Cohen
The Artemis I mission, an unmanned flight to the moon and back, just returned with some spectacular photos. The mission was a test to see whether NASA could get a capsule to the moon and back, before the space program tries to send astronauts back there. As veteran blogger Jason
It gives me great pleasure to link to this excellent piece on the underlying weirdness of Canada's national creature, the beaver. "There is an element of the sacred in the beaver, if only in its deep weirdness. One million years ago, beavers the size of bears roamed