Poet Karen Rigby’s “Norma Desmond Descending the Staircase as Salome” inspired The Straddler to rewatch the final scene of Sunset Boulevard, in which Gloria Swanson, as Norma Desmond, as Salome, lost in fantasy, descends the stairs for the close-up she is famously “ready for.”
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EditorOctober 18, 2023
Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
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EditorOctober 15, 2023
The Straddler in conversation with a Turkish-born, New York-based architect.
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EditorOctober 15, 2023
Great Leaps Beliefs bear the weight of truths, perhaps because they feel true.
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EditorOctober 14, 2023
In 2008, a group of scientists and researchers led by Dr. Brian J.F. Wong of the Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) attempted to catch a rainbow in their hands.
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EditorOctober 14, 2023
“[T]he high points of the exhibition were two dead gangsters,” writes Graham Greene in The Lawless Roads, about a hapless freak show he attends at the border between the United States and Mexico.
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EditorOctober 14, 2023
“Water is important to people who do not have it,” wrote Joan Didion in “Holy Water,” her 1968 essay, “and the same is true of control.”
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EditorOctober 14, 2023
On Saturday, August 28th, after several weeks of written exchanges, The Straddler traveled to South Orange, New Jersey to pay a visit to Monsignor Richard Liddy.
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EditorOctober 14, 2023