The lonely hearts club

Catalogues full of mail-order brides promise that marital bliss is just a 32-cent stamp away. Satisfied clients say that's true. It seems to depend what you mean by bliss.
by David Andrew Stoler

White like me

If there's one new thing happening in race issues in America, it's that whites are being urged to take a look at their own racial identity -- to celebrate it, to cast it off, to write their dissertations on it. But even for the well-meaning academics who are leading the charge, "whiteness studies" opens a Pandora's box of ugly questions.
by Ellen Barry

Brute justice

An abused or threatened animal can't tell anyone it's starving or frightened or wounded. It can't call 911, or request a restraining order. Enter Officer Scott Giacoppo.
by Tom Scocca

Biker nation

Photos by Mark Ostow
Text by Stephen Heuser

Deep secrets

The giant squid has an eye larger than your head. Its tentacles are strong enough to scar a whale. And it may be lurking off the coast of Massachusetts. Meet the biggest animal scientists have never seen alive.
by Tom Scocca

Bug bites

Q: What do beetle abdomens, drosophila eggs, and wasp heads have in common?
A: You eat them. More often than you think.
by Ellen Barry

Hex therapy

Does the light turn red when you get to the crosswalk? Do you lose your keys? Does Friday the 13th have you tense? When you got to work this morning, did you have to step over the severed head of a rooster? The Phoenix offers a guide for the consumer on the wrong side of bad juju.
by Ellen Barry

The Church of Thrift

A growing network of frugality coaches is trying to teach eager baby boomers how to live a little closer to the poverty line. But the Voluntary Simplicity trend is more than just a financial makeover. It's a new American faith.
by Ellen Barry

The urban forest

More than a million trees grow in Boston. The surprise: that there are any here at all.
by Tom Scocca

Killing you softly

It's as formal as kabuki. It should take 20 seconds, adhere strictly to script, and culminate in friendly bilateral denial. It's called being fired. And right now, somewhere, someone is being trained to do it to you.
by Ellen Barry

Scotched

These three men have fought to overcome cultural stereotypes and reclaim their literary tradition -- first as underground writers and now, with the success of Trainspotting, as bestselling authors. But along with all the celebrity comes a lot of senseless hype. On a recent visit to Boston, the `Great Scots' say they've had enough.
by Chris Wright

Scholar in a strange land

German-born literary scholar Werner Sollors seems an unlikely pioneer of black studies, but his groundbreaking work on ethnicity and the color line is transforming the way we see the American experience
by Tom Scocca

The Extraterrestrials of Indian Stream

Welcome to New Hampshire's North Country, where America is considered a foreign power and alien spacecraft have been dropping in for years
by Ellen Barry

Still Waters

John Waters talks about the re-release of Pink Flamingos and what America was like in '72
by Sono Motoyama

Portrait of the artist as a former child star

For a whole generation of television watchers, the fates of former child stars are like a bad traffic accident: we don't like to look at them, but we can't look away. As California director Joal Ryan found making her new film -- which is loosely based on the life of Diff'rent Strokes teen-idol-gone-wrong Dana Plato -- there is a little bit of former child star in all of us.
by Ellen Barry

After murder

As the city of Boston pats itself on the back for the drop in violent crimes, families in Roxbury are still waiting for their loved ones' murders to be solved. They are the human faces of the homicide backlog, and they are demanding a new approach to crime.
by Ellen Barry

Gaelic goodies

Food from the Old Sod
by Jeffrey Gantz

The great PhD scam

by Jordan Ellenberg

Learning to cope

Area universities offer a full range of PhDs in the humanities. But what, exactly, happens to those who earn them?
by James Surowiecki

Keepin' It Real

MTV protects The Real World from the rest of us
by Tom Scocca

Caught in the Net

An online posse hunts an Internet stalker
by Jack Mingo

Hearts and Minds

Twenty of the most romantic things anywhere, according to our ardent but discriminating staff

Secrets from Olives' kitchen

In this excerpt from his upcoming cookbook, The Olives Table, chef Todd English explains himself and offers 10 of his favorite recipes
by Sally Sampson

The dish on the Bowl

One fan's guide to the Pats, the Pack, and Super Bowl XXXI
by Tom Scocca

Ambassador from Mundania

In which the author spends a weekend in the federal republic of science-fiction fandom, recognizes an alien presence, and then recognizes that the alien is herself
by Ellen Barry

Time warped

Never say whenever: relatively speaking, history is just one surprise after another
by Clif Garboden

Mo' better trouble

Why do they call them convenience stores?
by Clif Garboden

Radical remedies

A guide to cold cures you haven't tried, from neti pots to yinqiao, from a molecule of mercury to the 23rd Psalm
by Tom Scocca

Cannibal culture

Nostalgia is the ultimate renewable resource. But the way we've been devouring the last four decades of popular culture, there's not going to be much left to recycle: no butterfly chairs, no cocktail shakers, no pimp jackets, no pea coats, no funky cold medina. What brought on this style apocalypse?
by Ellen Barry

Winter 1996-97 Education supplement

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1996 archive

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