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Dear Honorable President Trump: We were so sorry to hear that your (outstanding, excellent, bitchin’ good idea) deal to buy Greenland fell through. The island would have made for some lovely golf courses. And we can imagine luxurious Trump Towers dotting the coast, offering vistas of both sea and greens. You’re such an amazing and successful businessman because you recognize a really smart investment when you see it.

St. Louis Park High School, Minnesota, 1979, on the strange and stormy night of our graduation ceremony. A gypsy fortune teller sets up her tent in a small corner of the parking lot, and she offers glimpses of an event 40 years into the future. We newly-minted graduates see our older selves gather at a gleaming Colossus of Football, built over the ruins of a more prosaic facility for which construction would commence

If you want to justify not getting out of bedthis morning or yesterday and also give hopeto people who use pebbles and shells for money, start a winery in your backyard. Call it The FaintingGoat and make pinot noir that’s available only for barter. First obstacle: your backyard  is a narrow strip of concrete and broken homebrewgrowlers, overturned tomato crates, gnawed chicken  bones, crumpled To-

His spoon rises sparkingat my near peripheral. Dessert: dainty custard, vanilla, whip-creamed & coveredin cookie crumbles. He doesn’t see the flames as I do, attuned to the accidental. Each blaze passes bristly lips,snuffs. How does fire taste? I glance down at the centerpiece candle.It looks delicious, candied. At my side, the convex mirrorstreaks, a willow-o’-wisp. I’m a fool to believe in dragon kisses,though

The game proves to be a closely contested, nip-and-tuck affair, with the outcome on the line in the bottom of the ninth and assorted Rangers on the basepaths. The Twins’ reliever managed to find the third out, though, securing the visitors a 4-3 victory. Highlights were monstrous home runs by Twins’ batsmen Jonathan Schoop and Max Kepler, the former of which deposited into section H of the bleachers, where it bounced

Last February in New England. The snow, as predicted, falls all night. I wake with the alarm at 5 AM, don the warm and crappy clothes, and in the darkness I rev up the snowblower and proceed to clear the driveway. One hour later I am driving the Saturn Vue southward and westward. The morning snowfall is wispy and fog-like, and it collects in undulating patterns on the highway. Eventually I arrive in New Haven, Connec

Do you know about the cronuts? Let’s talk about the cronuts. I had learned of cronuts about 7 years ago, which means they arrived on the scene much earlier because I am notoriously slow on the uptake. A cronut is a combination of croissant and donut, invented (or at least, perfected) by a man named Dominique Ansel, and by all accounts, a real delicacy. For his Internet show, comedian Jerry Seinfeld drove his special

Agnes Moorehead, in her role of Endora, used to invade my dreams and nightmares. When I was ages 7 and 8, I was very impressionable, very serious, and very literal, which made Endora the most powerful and frightening character of all media, real and fictional. In the dreams she was not evil or malicious—she never turned me into a goat or a werewolf, or made me speak Italian, as she did to poor Darrin on the televisio

A For my overnight in Geneva, I felt a little funny booking myself into the Nash Airport Hotel, mostly because “Nash” is a name I associate with the United States and not Europe, and certainly not Switzerland. My sixth-grade teacher enjoyed reading aloud the works of Ogden Nash, the American poet and humorist. I have visited Nashville, Tennessee, which was named for Francis Nash, a hero of the Revolutionary War. Nash