Though I recently gave into the iPhone, I was for many years a Nokia man. And for most of those years I contented myself with the default ring tone, known simply as the "Nokia tune." This tune, which you have heard nineteen times this week, goes something like: yada da...

Leaving for a wedding in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, last weekend, I decided it was finally time to read a book whose jacket and title had piqued my curiosity some years before: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch by Henry Miller. I had seen the book lying in a hotel...

John Eliot Gardiner, the redoubtable British conductor, brought his Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique to Carnegie Hall twice this past week to perform Haydn's oratorios The Seasons and The Creation. If the first concert, which I missed, was anywhere near as good as the second, which I heard Saturday night, there...

The weather last night could scarcely have been more perfect for the Metropolitan Opera's opening night broadcast in Times Square. Between the music -- Tosca -- the pleasant temperature, the multilingual crowd, and the absence of cars, Times Square felt as much like a piazza as it is ever likely...

Being a little behind in my reading, I have only recently started getting through the books I received for my birthday last year. One of these, Bordeaux/Burgundy: A Vintage Rivalry, was an excellent short book by a geographer and former president of the Sorbonne, Jean-Robert Pitte. Of the many interesting...

In several scenes in Muriel Barbery's excellent novel, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Renee, a Parisian concierge, and her housekeeper friend Manuela meet for tea. "I make coffee that we shall not drink," writes Renee, the narrator, "but its wafting odor delights us both, and in silence we sip a...

One of the curious features of life in New York is the way certain activities and establishments, appealing though they may be, acquire a popularity disproportionate to their merits, while others remain obscure despite their good qualities. I suppose this phenomenon, which could simply be called the herd mentality, must...

I will probably alienate myself from most of humanity by saying that the beach has never really been my thing. On my first visit to one, I am told, my ten-month-old toes recoiled from the sand at first touch, as if in shock at this unnatural substance.

Though we...

Strolling down Lexington Avenue in the 80s last night, I encountered what appeared to be a crime scene. Police tape surrounded the east side of the street from J. Lascoff, the drugstore, to Yummy Mummy, a maternity store. On the opposite sidewalk a television crew and a small crowd had...