(The word “avifauna” popped into my head but I looked it up just to make sure that the feathers which remain of my Latin are still intact.)
From Harper’s Weekly Review:
A town in Italy was terrorized by peacocks, a seagull made its nest outside the Polish pavilion at the Venice Biennale, and the annual European Seagull Screeching Contest took place in Belgium.
No idea why I woke up early this morning thinking, “Why did her fairy godmother give Cinderella glass slippers?!”
Maybe the fairy godmother had taken a quick handout from Cinderella’s throughly rotten stepmother. In any case, FG must not have put a lot of thought into the shoe situation because there is no way glass slippers could be at all comfortable — not to slip into, not to stand up in, not to walk in, and certainly not to dance the night away in, especially if they were stiletto glass slippers.
Even if they were glass ballet-type slippers. The only way women’s slippers with or without heels are moderately comfortable is if they can flex. Pick up a glass slipper and try to bend it. You can’t do it, although if you’re very strong you could break it. (Be careful; those shards and splinters are all over your floor so get out the broom right now and sweep them up, certainly before you walk barefoot on your floor.)
Now I understand when Cinderella was running down the palace stairs to get to her gilded carriage before it turned back into a…
…her foot slipped out of one glass slipper. Or she kicked it off because her feet were aching like crazy and had blistered but she couldn’t get to the other slipper while standing on one bare foot, before the clock struck midnight. And this makes me wonder how she clomped or hopped down the stairs and into her pumpkin carriage, one glass shoe off one glass shoe on, diggadigga dumpling somebody’s son John.
Anyhow, why did they have to be glass slippers?
I have no more to say on this subject.
From Harper’s Weekly Review with my comments:
“This is not a regime-change war, but the regime sure did change,” remarked the U.S. defense secretary.
It did not.
A source close to the American president’s national security team said “they still don’t know what the goals are” in Iran.
The “team” is probably still talking it over.
P.S. These items came from a March 10, 2026 Harper’s Review. I wish there were an icon or emoji or something I could paste in here to show you what I’m doing now, which is SIGHING.
