December 2011 Archives
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Closing the Door
The Year That Wasn’t
As much as 2011 was filled with noteworthy events, it was also littered with meaninglessly overhyped blips that, try as we might, we shouldn’t forget. We asked our group of writers and thinkers: What was the least important event of 2011?
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Closing the Door
The Year That Was
We gathered writers and thinkers around the world and asked them to sift through the past year of revolutions, deaths, discoveries, and breakthroughs to answer: What was the most important event of 2011?
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New York's Roadside Attractions
Van Cortlandt House Museum
I got in touch with a couple of friends, Meghan (who accompanied me to Historic Richmond Town) and Christine, a Roadside Attractions newbie. I told them about my plans to...
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This Week
To Good Wealth!
Every Friday, starting today: a look back at the week’s headlines, centered on a theme we’ve singled out as particularly important. Sure, another dictator passed, but...
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Brief Histories
The Ghost of Berserker Christmas
Don’t worry this Christmas if your grandfather shoots up the neighborhood—it’s all in keeping with 200 years of tradition that have been whitewashed by consumerism. How wild Christmas—night of carousing, gambling, and booze—became family-friendly.
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Letters From Canada
Why I Won’t Be Screeching
Life in Newfoundland is changing. Nostalgia abounds for simpler, harder times, and outsiders are required to kiss cod on the mouth. But not everyone’s drinking the rum.
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Birnbaum V.
Sven Birkerts
Our Man in Boston sits down for this third conversation with author, critic, and book-world majordomo Sven Birkerts to talk about the current reviewing situation, the best books of 2000, and Amy Winehouse.
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TMN vs. Explodingdog
In This City We Shall Build Our Dreams
How do you make the Explodingdog art? Most everything is drawn one of a few ways. The drawings on Explodingdog.com are drawn with a Wacom Cintiq into Adobe Photoshop. ...
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Gallery
Nobody’s Fool
Since the 1990s, Yoshitomo Nara’s paintings, drawings, sculptures, and ceramics of children and animals have infiltrated the world—to the point that it’s difficult to picture contemporary art without them
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My Contemporary British TV Detectives
Stay Frosty
From time to time I’ve had fun thrashing Midsomer Murders, because it appears to be filmed on a whites-only agenda—my wife and I have a game...
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Growing Up
The Truth Will Set You Free
I knew when I was in trouble—like the time I was 13 and was caught watching porn on my dad’s computer—and I knew I couldn’t escape my fate. Nor would I have wanted to.
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Personal Essays
Along the Horizontal
The link between Occupy Wall Street, the environmental doom of Czech villages, and the noise of a wailing child on a freezing, black morning in Sweden is not obvious—but it does count for everything.
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New York's Roadside Attractions
Society of Friends Meeting House
My trips to view historic sites, then, have taken me deep into Staten Island, just north of the Bronx, and this past weekend to Flushing in northeasternmost Queens, where the...
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Life 3.0
Twitter by Post
Twitter is the contemporary postcard—social updates that are limited by size, but not imagination. For a month, with a billion stamps, our correspondent moved his tweets from the laptop to the post office, and rediscovered the joy of mail.
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Election 2012
Yoga for Presidential Candidates
Running for president is stressful and allows little time for exercise. But a special set of yoga positions, from the Downward-Facing Spiral to a Soaring Newt, can offer just the break from routine that a candidate needs.
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TMN vs. Explodingdog
Let’s Follow This Duck
Sam is publishing a comic story here each week on TMN based on your suggestions. Leave your ideas for next week’s installment in the comments. How did Explodingdog...
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Gallery
The Continental Tour
In his series “Lost Along the Way,” photographer Alex Catt’s carefully composed landscapes from Europe offer a contemporary, oddly romantic update to the tradition of the continental tour.
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The Brakes
Loss
But I am thinking about the characteristics of Schtolenfünken, how sad it is when those who we admire fall from our admiration—a venerable football coach failing...
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Personal Essays
Now That Books Mean Nothing
When you’ve long been identified as a “literary type,” how can it be that receiving books as get-well gifts leaves you feeling empty, angry, and determined to chug YouTube straight?
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New York's Roadside Attractions
Historic Richmond Town
There’s a little Dutch colonial village at the center of Staten Island called Historic Richmond Town. It was established in the 1690s following a wave of Dutch settlements...
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The Heartland Never Lies
Cape Fear
A small portion of the Massachusetts coastline is home to America’s biggest witch-hunt, a history of savage wife mobs, the occasional 400 percent increase of unlucky pregnancies, and the world’s largest deposits of black crystals.
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TMN vs. Explodingdog
We Need to Begin Somewhere
What follows is a brief, explanatory Q&A from Sam. How did you pick the caption to kick us off? Knowing that it might lay the foundation for the...
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Kids Today
Things That Go Fifff Striiik Bam! in the Night
The day you become a parent, your sonic world expands to include hundreds of new sounds to amaze, annoy, and terrify. A field report of 14 alarms and ambient textures.
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Gallery
The Burn
Photographer Jane Fulton Alt discovered the beauty of prairie fires on the same morning that her sister underwent her first chemotherapy treatment.
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Guides
The 2011 Good Gift Games
The problem with a trip down memory lane is that it might strand you in Candyland. Here are 10 new games well worth remembering.
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Personal Essays
Address Unknown
In New York’s St. John the Divine Cathedral, a letter to a dead man, tucked under a plaque near his ashes, offers the first and only clue in a mystery about faith.