Category: Essays
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All Other Nights: On Passover and Growing Up Jewish in the South
I think I grew into my Judaism. Yes, I was born Jewish, have practiced every year of my life. Even before I understood what it meant, It was always a part of me. I was Jewish the same way I was a Louisvillian or a Kentucky fan. As soon as I was old enough, I…
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To Be a Fan
On Wednesday, March 25, 2015, at approximately 12:30 p.m. EST, the internet exploded. Feeds dissolved, statuses reached dangerous levels of emojis, and social networks everywhere threatened to collapse under the weight of millions of tweens (and a few people outside that age range) losing their collective mind. Never has such despair sounded from the screen;…
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From Rupp to Ruprechtskirche: Adventures in the Big Blue Nation
“…So please, be tolerant of those who describe a sporting moment as their best ever. We do not lack imagination, nor have we had sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller, and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.” – Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch I’ve discussed my upbringing as a Kentucky…
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The Idylls of March
I’ve been thinking about spring lately. T.S. Eliot said April was the cruelest month, but my money is on March. March is a tease. March makes promises it can’t keep. It refuses to stand still, springing forward an hour and knocking my sleep schedule, such as it is, completely off-kilter. This month started with a…
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Ode On A Midweekend
There is nothing so sacred to the millennial as the weekend: the time of sleeping in, of boozy brunch, and of Netflix bingeing. To the average 20-something, Saturday and Sunday are holy days of relaxation as one recharges, regroups, and prepares for the week ahead. To some of us, however, Saturday and Sunday are nothing…
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In The Heart Of A Wooded Mountain
Temperatures dropped below freezing this week, and the will to leave the comfort of my apartment, much less my bed, has become nearly non-existent. As I descend into full-blown hibernation, I’ve been thinking a lot about the outdoors, and my recent lack of interaction with it. As winter sinks its icy claws into my neighborhood,…
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Adultolescence
We’ve talked a lot here on Zelda & Scout about the pop culture phenomena that shaped our preconceptions of the city we now live in — from How I Met Your Mother and Sex and the City to many, many Nora Ephron movies. But nothing shaped my view of the life of 20-somethings in New…
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Let It Snow
This week started off with the promise of a bang. Unless you were living under a rock in the desert, you heard the proclamations of doom, destruction, and Snowmaggedon that, as of Monday, were supposedly bearing down on New York and its Northeast environs with all the force of Westeros (Note: Ask Scout if that’s…
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A Cow on the Roof of a Cottonhouse, or How I Learned to Love Bluegrass
Lawd, lawd, bring him dead or alive Open on a chain gang. Low warbling voices begin to rise over the sound of pick-axes and splitting rocks. With this sequence of sounds, I’m back, twelve years old in my den watching the sepia-toned Mississippi fields of the Coen Brothers’ finest film (in my personal opinion, anyway…though…
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Welcome to New York?
We’ve written before about our love for “1989,” Taylor Swift’s poptastic fifth album and one of our top picks of 2014. I am an unabashed lover of this record. I’ve danced around my kitchen to “Shake It Off,” struggled not to sing along to “Style” (and its mash-ups) on the subway; I’ve even taken Buzzfeed’s…
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