In February 1943, when wartime rationing was at its height and many foreign luxuries were unobtainable in Britain, Marjorie Barber sent her friend, novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, a lemon in a jeweler's box.
Sunday night’s episode of Downton Abbey felt different. What seems to be a simple domestic drama can be read, instead, as a dream-like meditation on the menace of war and the corrosive power of secrecy. This episode works through symbols and allusions, rather than Downton’s usual blend of realism and exposition.
American society is always interested in what makes us Asian; it is rarely, if ever, interested in what makes us American. If no one understands what can happen when that second half of the term is stripped from us, no one can keep the injustice committed against Japanese Americans from being committed against other communities.
Sulagna Misra's previous work for The Toast can be found here.
First things first, let’s be realists: pretending to be a man and joining the army is no easy task. You will experience strife, fear, anxiety, enemy combatants, hell (which is what war is), and worst of all, character development. Tread carefully, and use this guide to direct you on your journey.
On March 5th, the Associated Press asked: "What are seemingly jet-propelled cats and birds doing in a 16th century German artillery manual?" It was a good question.
What the cats and the birds were doing was the same thing everything else in the manual was doing: being recommended by one Conrad Haas as instruments of war.
The sparse comments from the historian the AP interviewed were even more unsettling
"In the game of chess, you can never let your opponent see your pieces. -Zapp Brannigan
Battle of Serenity Valley "What makes a good man go neutral? Lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?" The already-catastrophic losses among the Independents at Serenity Valley were compounded after Captain Zapp Brannigan shot seventeen of his superiors in the mistaken belief that they were Neutral agents in disguise. Battle of…
Let this be a testament to the power of the Stepmom. Let this story flex the frayed muscles of hope and faith. Let this be proof of the unseen strings that tether us together like wild marionettes in perpetual flail. But held, somehow, in some unearthly palm. I watched Boeings slam the World Trade Center in English class while still raw from an uprooting, a divorce, and a new woman in our lives. My parents’…
There is a certain point in your 20s when you become an adult, if you haven’t done so already. Not turning 21, not graduating from school. Some event--an arrest, a disaster, a revelation, getting fired, getting humbled, getting an abortion, or some other legitimate voyage out of your well-traveled comfort zone. Nobody actually told me that when I started my 20s, and I didn’t know it was coming until years after it had passed and…
