This week, Halloween week, my birthday week, was a grand week. I am up to 13 days of skiing this year, and I hiked straight up Double Dipper and skied every day. My inning schedule went out the window, but sneaker spiking up the mountain every day has me in pretty great shape, I am…

By Daris Howard While we were traveling through Peru, our university group spent many hours studying old churches, archeological digs, and ancient artifacts. But the thing I loved most was to see how common people lived, especially while traveling through Ollantaytambo in the sacred valley of the Inca. There I learned some very interesting traditions.…

It was nearly three years ago that the journalist Farhad Manjoo published the seminal Slate article “This Is the Greatest Hoodie Ever Made: How American Giant created the best sweatshirt known to man”—still surely the most influential and frequently cited work in the annals of hoodie journalism and the main catalyst for the popularity of…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week's Horoscopes are coming out under a Void-of-Course Cancer Moon, with aspects that include Mercury's entrance into the sign of the Scorpion, along with a conjunction between Venus and Mars at the 23rd and 24th Degrees of Virgo. As far as that goes, it's a sign…

By Joe Rankin Harry Potter rode one during the Quidditch matches at Hogwarts. The Wicked Witch of the West zipped around on one in the Wizard of Oz. We’re talking, of course, about witch’s brooms. No one knows exactly why witches were associated with with flying brooms. But the trope is remarkably persistent. The witch…

By Brady Crain The mountains looked inverted due to the refractive effects of an atmospheric thermocline. This happens when a layer of warm air slides over a layer of cold air. When I went up the chairlift I moved through different refractive “interpretations” of the far off mountains, which finally start to recede as you…

With Halloween right around the corner it’s fun to think about what that holiday was like back in the 50s and 60s–the time of my youth. "Back in the day” it was very unusual to see kids trick-or-treating any place but in their own neighborhood. It was a rare sight if a carload of kids…

As an actual male fan of the writer/director/actress Lena Dunham, I subscribed to her new email newsletter—called “Lenny”—almost as soon as I heard about it. Dunham’s fame stems from having created the HBO program “Girls,” a critically acclaimed but only marginally popular sitcom that nevertheless serves as one of the primary totems of Millennial culture.…

By Dom Cioffi This is the time of year when the outside temperatures begin to drop to uncomfortable levels, meaning extra care must be taken so life doesn’t get too distressing. Anytime the thermometer settles below the 32-degree mark, you have to grab that cold weather parka, you have to start warming up your vehicle…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week's Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Capricorn Moon with a bevy of aspects that will see me talking about the same old thing, if I don't find something better to do. Because the Halloween cross quarter is right around the corner, I'd…

By Dom Cioffi I started my to-do list days early because I knew Saturday was going to be my first weekend in months where I had no plans. I wasn’t traveling, my son didn’t have a game, and there were no parties – this was my big chance to knock out all of those things…

  By Madeline Bodin It came from the lake. It is a life form nearly as old as life itself. Living peacefully in the depths for eons, it is awakened by humankind’s abuse of the environment. It strikes out with toxins that attack nerves or the liver. Attempts to kill it only make it more…

Another boring week in the world of Brady, with the exception of one wonderful surprise. I have to say that not having a daunting race to train for makes the world a little more dull. Fewer reasons to get up in the morning and do masochistic things to myself. I have kept running and walking…

The apparent association between craft beer and cycling is one of the more perplexing aspects of microbrew culture. In my early 20s, I noticed that brewery gift shops seemed to sell a surprising number of cycling jerseys—from Allagash to Stone, they’re as ubiquitous as branded pint glasses, and once or twice my brother and I…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week's Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Capricorn Moon, in the midst of aspects that make me wonder how well anyone who's trying to have a normal life might be coping. So much is coming to a head, our illusions of 'normal' are…