At circus arts studios like New Haven’s Air Temple Arts or Polefly Aerial Fitness, you won’t find sword swallowing or fire breathing, carnival lights, or big yellow tents. Juggling, trapeze, lyra, clowning, Chinese pole and hand balancing are no longer the sole domain of circus performers. The circus arts, once a spectacle, are now a […]
One day last fall I thought I was leaving the Yale Law School Library but went down the wrong set of stairs. They led me into a dim hall full of tightly packed wooden shelves. I wandered past congressional hearings and city charters to the repository of Supreme Court briefings, through which I proceeded uncertainly, […]
Deep within a New Haven laboratory, there is a tiny room meant to eat sounds up. It has low ceilings and huge gray cones sticking out from the walls, like a funhouse. When I talk, my words sound flat and far away, as if I have just stepped off an airplane and the world is […]
In Ghana, the women carry everything on their heads. Canisters of propane, bowls of groundnuts, platters of water sachets. The clear bags gleam in the equatorial sunlight. In the rural towns, where there is no plumbing, this is how water is transported. Half a liter of liquid is sealed in a few inches of plastic. […]
On Oct. 25, the PEZ Visitor Center in Orange, Connecticut, declared it an early Halloween. In honor of the upcoming holiday, the factory, which doubles as a historical landmark for PEZ enthusiasts, announced that all visitors under the age of 12 who arrived in costume would receive free admission. It was a modest treat, but […]
The third bingo game of the night was well underway when Joan Crawford, the mistress of ceremonies, announced one of the evening’s door prize winners. A tiny, white-haired woman also named Joan got up from her seat and shuffled to the front of the bingo hall, grinning. She celebrated the win by motorboating her fellow […]
A bundle of sage sits below my dorm room window. When lit, its smoke cleanses my mind, body, and spirit. It rids the air of bad energy, and it keeps me sane. It reminds me of home: a reservation life that never eludes me. The sage is placed alongside my hand-beaded Yale pennant, my moccasins, […]