I like to think that there are a fair amount of things about me that are notable. My refusal to wear socks until it snows. My obsessive love of cleaning out the lint trap and making tiny lists. One thing people tend to hang onto, though, as soon as they learn it about me, is that I don’t want to have kids. It’s pretty rare, apparently, for people I know to come upon a woman…
Last week I got an email from Jesse Lerner-Kinglake at Just Detention International, a health and human rights organization that "seeks to end sexual abuse in all forms of detention." She thought Toast readers might be interested in participating in their holiday campaign to send letters and cards to prisoners who have experienced sexual assault. Last year, JDI delivered 10,000+ unique holiday messages to incarcerated survivors – a record total that we hope to surpass…
I’ve known Kate since high school, where we were friendly and I also silently worshipped her from afar. Kate, now an attorney, is still lovely and funny and smart and she appears to have passed her good genes onto her daughter, whom she calls Poppy. Of course, many children are cute, beautiful, charming, and so on, but in this case, Poppy is professionally so. At not even two years old, she is a full-on baby…
Recently, I talked to Kate Scheibel, a second year Ph.D. student in plant biology at UC Berkeley, about GMOs and her personal experiences with genetic engineering. You’ve said you do a lot of work with plant pathology. What does that mean? Plants, like animals, have pathogens that will infect them. Each cell is responsible for recognizing when it’s being invaded by pathogens. I mostly work at a cellular level: imagine a receptor with a circle…
uuuuuuugghhhh my life
what is it?
what's wrong? uuuuuuuugh
is there something specific that's the matter?
or anything I can do to help? uuuugh my liiiiife
do you want me to come over? uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuughghghghhhhh
this is just to say
i have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
but when i opened it again later
the plums were back
as if they had never left
only this time
they were
glowing slightly
Previously, once: Text Messages From a Ghost. October 21 hi hi i hope im not waking you but did you mean to blow out the candle just now sorry who's this im outside on the porch i just i wasn't sure if you meant to blow the candle out or not it's really dark outside without the candle do you want me to come out and relight the candle? that would be nice thank…
darling Emma have you seen our friend Mr. Martin? he was to take me to tea this afternoon but he isn't here oh Harriet! do you really still like him?? oh I did yes i told him you were not virtuous and i think that got rid of him i didn't think you still liked him you wouldn't have liked him for much longer anyhow lol what would your name even have been if you…
hi hi I got you a present you did? I drew you something oh wow is it horrifying? no do you promise? William? do you promise me that it's not horrifying? i drew you something William you know what I mean what do you mean by horrifying is anyone being flayed alive in it or committing suicide or does something have eyes that shouldn't have eyes you know what I mean horrifying…
Previous entries in the series can be found here. hey how do you pronounce “Soc” What? i mean is it like “sock”because it looks like that’s how you’d say it but in my head I think of it as being pronounced “soash” huh like rhymes with cloche I guess that makes sense why do I even know what a cloche is what kind of a gang is this what do…
hey where are you? hi where are you? you’re like two hours late it’s almost midnight i can’t get out of the house right now is your car blocked? do you need a ride? no it’s like there’s this bird there’s a bird on your car? no he’s sitting on my statueit’s like mm it just keeps looking at megot those fiery bird eyesyou know? what? fired up…
Back in April, law student/author/friend to The Toast Meagan Hatcher-Mays wrote an article about the Baby Veronica case, which had just then reached the Supreme Court. The response she received was overwhelming. We asked if we could speak with her about the details of the case and the reaction to her piece. Meagan! Thanks so much for being willing to talk with us about this. No problem! So you wrote this piece about…
“This is how it is with Mary: If you want to know who she is, you ask theologians; if you want to know how to love her, you have to ask the people. In turn, Mary loved Jesus with the heart of the people, as we read in the Magnificat. We should not even think, therefore, that ‘thinking with the church’ means only thinking with the hierarchy of the church.” "Oh, my God, Real Housewives comes back tonight?…
Peckerweight Books 333 E. 234th St. NY, NY, 10011 Attn: Brian of "Brian's Picks" Dear Brian, I was dismayed to walk into Peckerweight Books and find that you had selected A Tumescent Marriage, the much-anticipated third novel by bestselling author Nick Grossman, as one of "Brian's Picks." I have been a loyal consumer of your bookstore for years, even after tearing my hamstring in Zumba class and realizing that ordering from Amazon would be significantly more…
