An iambic perambulation to secure essential supplies in adverse conditions spurred by Pounding the Pentameter and based on true facts! (See weather screenshots below.) A Winter Expedition Upon a bitter weekend’s iron freeze, We ventured forth where Broadway sidewalks run. The need for apples, yoghurt, toothpaste, cheese Compelled our steps beneath a leaden sun. The wind, a blade, sliced keenly…
Why We Are Afraid of Poetry
When Herman Melville began writing poetry, even his wife treated it as faintly embarrassing: “Herman has taken to writing poetry. You need not tell anyone, for you know how such things get around.” – Elizabeth Melville in a letter to her mother in1859 regarding her husband’s shift from fiction to poetry. That mixture of shame and dismissal has a name:…
The Inventory of After
The Inventory of After The Britannica sits on the shelf, volume S gone, a gap where the history of salt once lived. The silent engine of the fridge buzzing in the kitchen at 4 a.m., a single spoon in the sink: a monument to a meal unshared. You look for a sign and get instead the clogged sink and the…
Red Ellen, the Fiery Particle, and Murder
Politicians seem to have shrunk. My brother and I were chuntering about it recently: how the figures we grew up with appeared more substantial, some even approaching the once-serious idea of statesmanship – a word that now feels faintly antique. Of course, the world was different. Times change, and so do our perceptions. Still, one tangible difference was that many…
Maybe
Read the guidelines for W3 #192 at the Skeptic’s Kaddish METAPHYSICAL POEM by Frank O’Hara When do you want to go I’m not sure I want to go there where do you want to go any place I think I’d fall apart any place else well I’ll go if you really want to I don’t particularly care but you’ll fall…
On the Train with Josephine Herbst
In 1903, when Josephine Herbst was six years old, her mother took her four daughters on a reduced-fare train ride to Portland, Oregon. We lived in Sioux City, Iowa, and we might have been dropped accidentally by some great auk on a transcontinental flight, so unreasonable it seemed that we were stranded in the middle of a country that offered…
Penguins and the Poet
This was the challenge of the W3 Prompt #191 today: Write a poem of 10 lines or fewer that places someone—or something—in a delightfully improbable location. Think sharks in a bathtub, a dragon in a bar, or any unexpected presence where it clearly doesn’t belong. Surprise us. Amuse us. Happy writing! You can read all about it here: https://skepticskaddish.com/2025/12/24/w3-prompt-191-weave-written-weekly/ My first thought went to putting…
Measure for Murder
Clifford Witting’s Measure for Murder (1941) belongs to that strand of Golden Age crime fiction whose pleasures lie as much in social observation as in puzzle-solving. One of the enduring appeals of the genre is the glimpse it can provide into an England now almost unrecognisable, yet still just within living memory. Here that includes the novelty of car ownership,…
The Sordid Boon
The Sordid Boon Relentless doom-scroll gently civilizes Our minds, once prone to thought and other crimes. Authentic selves come in standard sizes – Pre-vetted truths, convenient for our times. Lived experience shall guide us like the Star, On this, good citizens, there’s no debate. We now identify: my pronouns are – And silence stamps the form: Approved. The State. Fluid,…
The Worst of Marxism, Psychoanalysis, and the Musical Theater
The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune, by Alexander Stille This is a very readable book, and what follows isn’t so much a review as a reflection prompted by it. The sordid shocking story it tells – of the Sullivanian therapy cult that operated in Manhattan from the 1950s until its collapse in 1991 –…
Ancient and Modern (Thursday Doors)
Lots of great doors in Norwich including the wonderful ladies lavs in the Castle. (I expect the gents is just as good.) Work on the Cathedral began the year 1096 and but the chapel dedicated St Catherine of Alexandria is a later 14th-century addition. This beautiful etched glass door to the chapel is by Sally Scott 1989. Above the door…
Challenges
A blog post mentioned a Esther Chilton prompt, so I took a look. Here was the very short story challenge from November 27th: Tell a story in 54 words using the following words somewhere in it: HUSKY, ACNE, SPACEMAN, WHEELBARROW, LETTUCE. Here was my contribution: The spaceman, his skin scarred by acne and dehydration, pulled the wheelbarrow from the now…
Bad Girls and Barbara Shermund
Biographical details about Barbara Shermund’s life are sparse, but Caitlin McGurk makes the most of what little is known. Her book Tell me A story Where the Bad Girl Wins: the Life and Art of Barbara Shermund includes a lavish selection of Shermund’s cartoons and artwork, reproduced in generous, glorious abundance. Shermund drew some cracking cartoons, many of the best…
2841 Broadway (Thursday Doors)
I like to follow a trail. This one began with a doorway and took me to Paris décollage, Zohran Mamdani, cupcakes, dumplings, and taxis via 1920 fashion with a few odd detours along the way. It started with a photo of an empty storefront I’d taken for no particular reason: 2814 Broadway, August 2025 on an unprepossessing block between West…
Turkey Again
I’ve been reading Tell Me a Story Where the Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund It’s a biography and art collection by Caitlin McGurk celebrating the pioneering cartoonist Barbara Shermund who drew for The New Yorker and Esquire. More on that anon. Here’s a seasonal cartoon from Barbara Shermund from 1958 I won’t be eating turkey…