Sleep Mask

Not long ago, a travel reporter from the Washington Post contacted me about a story she was working on. The topic was tiny lights in hotel rooms—the annoying little beams emitted from TVs, smoke detectors, alarm clocks, air conditioners, and so on. Many hotel guests find this constellation of artificial twinklers unwelcome at, say, 3am.  The reporter […]

Mattress

According to an essay I once read, the U.S. electorate tends to select a president because he’s perceived as having some crucial quality that makes up for something his predecessor lacked. So, for example, we have Joe Biden now because he seemed eager to unify the nation after the divisive Trump era. And we had […]