They met in Boston around Christmas in 1943, sang and played guitar at her house and shared a kiss he said he would never forget. By 1944, Leslie L. Upcraft, an Englishman, was aboard the H.M.S. Cubitt, serving the British Royal Navy while his girlfriend, Barbara Russo, a high schooler who dreamed of becoming a…
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On my way into the Metropolitan Museum of Art recently to see “Pen, Lens & Soul: The Story of the Beautiful Project,” an exhibition of poetry and photography by black girls and women based in Durham, N.C., I looked up to its facade. And there I saw Wangechi Mutu’s stately African and divinely inspired female…
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I don’t think of myself as a contrarian, but I am fascinated with wines that seem to have gone out of style. Our last subject, Rioja Gran Reserva, was one such wine, and so is our next, Valpolicella. Light, crisp, refreshing Valpolicella used to be a famous name among Italian reds, but it has been…
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It’s been widely accepted in the wine world for years that people can no longer be expected to age wines as they might have half a century ago. For one thing, the wine-drinking public has changed enormously. Where once the market for wines that aged along glorious arcs was small, wealthy and dynastic, interest in…
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A national opioid epidemic. Legal marijuana. Continual attempts to redefine problem drinking. Is it any wonder that the addiction memoir (made modish in the 1940s and 1950s by Charles Jackson’s thinly veiled roman à clef, “The Lost Weekend,” and “Junky,” by William S. Burroughs; revived in the 1990s and 2000s with “Permanent Midnight,” by Jerry…
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Julie Wong, born in Queens, tasted her first banh mi under the Manhattan Bridge when she was 16. Incredulous that she’d never tried one before, her boyfriend, Chris Hui, dragged her to a tiny stall in Chinatown with no seats and a kitchen equipped with little more than a toaster oven. It was a meeting…
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My brother died last year and bequeathed his entire (small) estate to me. He had one child, a daughter, to whom he left nothing. Feeling sorry for her, I told my niece I would give her half of the estate. (None of this becomes official until April.) But my circumstances have changed dramatically. My husband…
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Marc Jacobs’s fall 2020 show was more than just a showcase of his latest collection, it was a feeling. What began with legendary choreographer and “punk ballerina” Karole Armitage seizing the spotlight at Manhattan’s Park Avenue Armory quickly descended into carefully curated chaos: over fifty dancers running, writhing, and undulating among a stream of models…
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On a mid-February afternoon, dozens of women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, ascended to a hotel rooftop in Manhattan, dressed for brunch in pink blazers, pink tank tops, pink eye shadow, even pink hair. Heart streamers cascaded from the doorway. Sangria flowed freely, the mimosa bar was stocked, and the waffles were limitless. There…
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FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — Jalaiah Harmon is coming up in a dance world completely reshaped by the internet. She trains in all the traditional ways, taking classes in hip-hop, ballet, lyrical, jazz, tumbling and tap after school at a dance studio near her home in the Atlanta suburbs. She is also building a career online, studying…
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