In House | Page 8 | The Common

Reading Place: Secrets, Poetry, Solace

April 29, 2013 Essays, In House

Slate has a new travel blog celebrating strange and beautiful places around the world. Recent entries include a tunnel of flowers, a theater that has been remodeled into a bookstore, and a movie theater that floats in a lagoon.

Speaking of mysterious places, Stonehenge is seeking a general manager. Details at The Atlantic.

In New York City, where I live, I’ve always been fascinated by the High Bridge, a pedestrian bridge that links the Bronx and Manhattan. It’s been closed for decades but will open up next summer. The New York Times profiles the High Bridge neighborhood, in light of these upcoming changes.

Annals of Mobility

April 15, 2013 Essays, In House

By SONYA CHUNG

The dog is 13 this year; that’s 91 in human years. He’s pretty spry, all things considered, but the changes are noticeable and frequent as of late: he is slower on our walks, resists the longer distances, has trouble with stairs and with standing up or lying down. We’ve just invested in a ramp for the car. I’m reluctant to subject him to long car rides anymore, given how stiff he is afterwards from limited space and dehydration. This is the dog who’s traveled cross country twice, and up and down both coasts several times.

Changing Places: Mining Mongolia

April 1, 2013 Essays, In House

By MELODY NIXON

I hadn’t come to Mongolia seeking an education in the politics of development, but the signs of rapid, double-edged growth were everywhere. In Bayan-Olgii, the westernmost city, a huge entourage of Western foreigners driving foreign vehicles tore into the yurt camp where I stayed one night. They shook the felt walls of the camp with their shouting and drinking and ramen noodle-making, and the next morning did burn outs in the gravel driveway and honked as they left, showering pebbles over the camp owners’ barelegged children.

Around the town of Bayan-Ollgi sat multitudes of great, hulking tourist vehicles, resting at roadsides like over-fed weight lifters. They were protected by new, fat tires, for the sand, and strapped to their roofs and sides were shiny water and petrol cans, spare tires, tool kits, maps and jacks – all the accouterments of a military reconnaissance mission. I had the strong impression of being in an invaded country, watching a civilian-clothed army loot stores for bread and toilet paper.

Masks, Memory, and Memoir from the Ivory Coast

March 18, 2013 Essays, In House

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

“Salt,” I said to my brother, pointing to the white crystals sprinkled on the bookcase in our late father’s home office. “At least, I think it’s salt. If it were sugar, there’d be ants everywhere, right?”

Marc swiped his finger across a shelf and gamely stuck his finger in his mouth. “Yep, salt,” he said.

After moving my mother to an assisted living, I was packing up the remaining possessions in her apartment, including my parents’ African art collection.

I’d first noticed the salt in a closet where the overflow of masks, statues, carved wooden utensils, and other objects were kept. They had bought them in Côte d’Ivoire and surrounding countries in the late 1960s, when we lived in Abidjan, then the capital. My father, a Foreign Service officer, was posted there. It wasn’t hard to guess who had done the sprinkling. The ladies who looked after my mother were all from West and Central Africa. To someone, these objects, which my parents collected for their beauty or cultural interest, must have had a spiritual significance.

Reading Place: Last Gasp of Winter

March 4, 2013 Essays, In House

By HANNAH GERSEN

This time of year, I’m always hoping for one last snowstorm or cold snap. I love winter, and am always sad to see it go. To give the season a proper goodbye, these links celebrate all things cold things cold and snowy:

Annals of Mobility: Walking Places

February 18, 2013 Essays, In House

By SONYA CHUNG

In an early episode of MAD MEN, Betty Draper and her friend Francine are gossiping in Betty’s kitchen about their new neighbor, the scandalous Helen Bishop, divorcee and single mother.

Francine: Have you seen her walking, up there on tree ridge? Where the hell is she walking to?
Betty: (shakes her head as she smears cream cheese onto a celery stick) I don’t know.

Later, when all the ladies have gathered in the same kitchen for Sally Draper’s birthday party, they go around and share their honeymoon stories. Helen tells them she went to Paris.

Interiors

February 4, 2013 Essays, In House

By HANNAH GERSEN

Last weekend I stopped by Film Biz Recycling, a thrift store that sells props previously used on the sets of TV shows, movies, and plays. It’s a place I’ve been curious about for years, having heard of vintage treasures to be found amidst its workaday prop items. I wasn’t sure what to expect, and upon entering was somewhat jarred by the hodge-podge of items, arranged with no particular logic. A toy piano stood next to a stodgy-looking coffee table, which sat beneath a shelf of Cuban cigar boxes and a framed copy of the rules of the board game “The Game of Life”. Across from this tableau, on the other side of the aisle, were an egg swivel chair (like the one in Sleepless in Seattle), a wooden 1950s baby blue high chair, and slew of fake flowers.

Reading the Wrong Book on Vacation

January 28, 2013 Essays, In House

By JULIA LICHTBLAU

Christmas Day, 2012. I’m riding a packed flota back up to chilly Bogotá from the tropical lowlands. The fringe over the windows is jiggling to the beat of the motor, syncopated by potholes. I sit behind the driver, facing a life-size, crown-of-thorns decal of Jesus’ head, deep-sea blue. Vallenatos jangle over the bus loudspeaker. A stop is wherever someone wants off. The driver pulls over. People jump out.

blue man

What a setting. Anything could happen. An accident, le coup de foudre, a kidnapping. This is Colombia.

Changing Places: The New Siberia

January 21, 2013 Essays, In House

By MELODY NIXON

Many Anglo-Westerners think of Siberia in terms of its weather (freezing), its animals (tigers and woolly dogs), its history (gruesome and gulag-filled), or the distances it encompasses (gargantuan). In their conceptions of Russia’s east, twenty-first century writers don’t stray from received stereotypes. Siberia is described in one piece in The Rumpus as the junk drawer below the kitchen radio to which you send unwanted things; in another recent selection of writings “on the near and far,” Siberia is the “far” place, down from which cold winds slither.

Annals of Mobility

January 14, 2013 Essays, In House

By SONYA CHUNG

In a Q&A with PBS, filmmaker Perry Miller Adato talked about her documentary Paris: the Luminous Years (2010), which I recently learned about and—because I am hopeless when it comes to all things Parisian—I immediately watched. About the unprecedented gathering of artists in Paris during the early part of the 20^thcentury, Adato said: