“I sing the body electric,” wrote Walt Whitman. Let the poets praise the body’s galvanic spirit, moral incandescence, and currents of courage and passion. To physician-essayists Richard Selzer and Frank Gonzalez-Crussi goes the task of chronicling the body’s short circuits, frayed insulation, blown fuses, and dead batteries.
Articles with 1989
18th century engraving, after Vesalius
Franklin in 1767 • Painting by David Martin
Franklin, scientist
Tomorrow [Jan. 17] is the birthday of Benjamin Franklin — patriot, diplomat, printer, journalist, author of “Poor Richard’s Almanack,” inventor of the Franklin stove and bifocals, internationally-acclaimed scientist.
Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash
Nature’s own triumphal arch
With snowflakes in the air, this may seem to be the wrong time of the year to be writing about rainbows. But I’ve just read for the second time Fred Schaaf’s essay “100 Rainbows” in his new book “The Starry Room,” and I’m reminded that rainbows are not necessarily a seasonal phenomena.
Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin (1931)
Goldberg had answer
Lots of stories in the news lately about the perils of mega-technology.
Red-winged blackbird • Illustration by Tom Raymo
Going by the clock
Sometime within the next week and a half the red-winged blackbirds will return to Eastern Massachusetts. In my town, the earliest of the spring migrants will arrive on the 26th of February, give or take a few days. Not even an abnormally warm winter will disrupt their schedule.
Buzz Aldrin on the moon • NASA / Neil A. Armstrong
A mixed legacy
Where were you at 4:17 p.m., on Sunday, July 20, 1969?