Sarah Laskow

Driving into New York City is a special kind of skill, requiring patience, cutthroat merging, and, sometimes, a willingness to navigate the backstreets of New Jersey. Driving in New York City, and especially in Manhattan, is also a skill, requiring the same patience and cutthroat merging, along with a willingness to pay upwards of $50 a day to park. People do it every day, but of all the places in the United States, Manhattan is perhaps the most hostile to driving.

My obsession with salsa, gazpacho, and the line between them began with a joke. A friend had, or so her husband reported, faced her nearly empty refrigerator one night and in a moment of panicked hunger started eating salsa for dinner. Only salsa. No chips. Just spoon straight in the jar. “Did she add water and claim it was gazpacho?” I asked.She had not. But could she have? The suggestion is not absurd. Salsa is an oniony, peppery, tomato-based food.

The old, epic story of agriculture in North America had two heroes, long sung and much venerated. One was human ingenuity. The other was corn.That story went something like this. On this continent, agriculture—and therefore civilization—was born in Mesoamerica, where corn happened to be abundant. The more advanced people there began cultivating this knobbly little plant and passed their knowledge north, to people in more temperate climes.

Parents know that winter is the season of sickness. Your kid will have approximately infinite colds. You, too, will have approximately infinite colds. Last winter, COVID precautions kept sickness at bay. But this year, school is in session, day-care colds are spreading fast, and the only cohort of people in America not yet eligible for COVID vaccination is our youngest children.