Outsized attention is a given for places like Central Park. But in a city as big and speckled with green spaces as New York, small, local parks are always a quick walk away right when you need them.
"On Wooster Street in SoHo, there’s a long-term installation called “The New York Earth Room.” It’s a swanky apartment, empty save for 22 inches of dirt. You’re not allowed to walk on it. You just look. In college, a design teacher of mine sent my class there for inspiration because “it’s easy to forget the smell of soil.” Honestly, I’d rather go to a park. Parks have plenty of soil. They also seem to me way more worthy of funding than an indoor dirt beach."
Read MoreHazing makes for hot courtship, and how better to love your woman than by hitting her in the face? Realizing her childhood was empty of important life lessons, LAUREN FREY falls under a certain Prince’s spell.
"When I was little, a short man humping the ground in frilly shirts and tight, high-waisted pants bejeweled with metal studs was apparently too much for me. Prince made me feel dirty. So when Purple Rain hit in 1984, I didn’t ask my parents to take me to the theater. I was six at the time, perhaps too young, yet the movie soon shot to number one at the box office, eventually grossing $68,392,977 during its U.S. theatrical release, and despite the R rating, many of the people in the seats were kids my age. Of everyone I know in my generation, I’m one of the few who didn’t see Purple Rain during our formative years."
Read MoreFall semester is fast approaching, when students in our best universities will resume buying their essays off the internet and plagiarizing like crazy—and good for them! Why downloading term papers is an asset to higher education..
"Recently a reporter at the station told me about a story she’s working on for the start of the school year, about how widespread—and unethical—it is for college students to download term papers and pass them off as their own. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and though I agree that trying to pass off a downloaded paper is technically “plagiarism,” which is the same as “lying,” I also feel a more thorough examination of the issue reveals many ways that downloading papers serves the greater good."
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