grazing the internet, January edition

The best stories I read last month, from the New Yorker archives to a look at the New York subway system

Lately: For my dad’s birthday last weekend, we ate at Annie Gunn’s, a restaurant deep in the St. Louis suburbs that’s been around since 1937, when the area around it was just the flat, empty floodplain of the Missouri River. It was delicious, and if you ever find yourself in St. Louis and with enough time to drive about 25 minutes west, I highly recommend it. … Back at home in D.C., I’m in desperate need of slow cooker recipes. Right now, I work late into the evenings on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, which means if I don’t start putting my CrockPot to better use, I’m going to turn into a bag of takeout. Last week, I tried this sausage and lentil soup, which looked hideous and tasted great, and now I’m open for more suggestions. Leave them in the comments, please. Or, alternatively, teach my husband how to cook. … And finally: Sorry for the lack of newsletter last week. To make up for it, this week, I’m sending two. Keep an eye out for a recipe for blueberry-lemon curd muffins.

a Rodin ballerina at the St. Louis Art Museum

I’d like to take a mulligan on January.

On New Year’s Eve, my husband and I bickered about something meaningless, and when I woke up around 6 the next morning in New Orleans, I saw a news alert on my phone about a terrorist attack that had taken place two blocks from where I’d been sleeping. Things didn’t get much better after that. There were the fires in California, of course, and that historic southern snowstorm, and in D.C., it was bitterly cold. Then on Wednesday night a jet and a helicopter crashed and plunged into the Potomac. Sirens blared past my house. The sadness is insidious, invasive.