Our Personal Struggles May Be Invisible to Others

From the NPR website, here’s Glen Weldon, noting that his current television-watching habits recall those of some 20 years ago, when he was “working in bookstores” and “trying to make mock turtlenecks happen for me.” “All those bookstores I used to work in have closed,” he added. “Also I’m bald now, so mock turtlenecks just make me look like roll-on deodorant.” (Susan Sawatzky, Colorado Springs)

From The Atlantic, here’s Jennifer Senior about a withholding friend: “Her life was always fine, swell, just couldn’t be better, thanks. Talking with her was like playing strip poker with someone in a down parka.” (Susan Dixon, Kennewick, Wash., and David Schaps, Bnei Brak, Israel)

From The New Yorker, here’s Margaret Talbot on Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and her ideological allies: “The America of 2022 is quite plainly not a country where citizens’ ability to worship freely is in jeopardy. Nor is the nation on the cusp of canceling gun rights. Yet the conservative justices often act as if they were alone in a broken elevator, jabbing the emergency button and hollering for help.” (Sally Corden, Madison, Wis., and Pete Browne, Kansas City, Mo.)

From The Washington Post, here’s Damon Young in his debut column in the newspaper’s magazine, about getting doxxed by white supremacists: “If you’re sincerely paralyzed by the insipid monotony of existence, and feel like an arbitrary assemblage of galactic flotsam scudding toward the sweet nothingness of death, and need an anchor to remind you of the preciousness of life, try Be Black, Get doxxed.” (Kennetha Bigham-Tsai, East Lansing, Mich., and S.R. Cohen, Baltimore)

Finally, The Times! Here’s Wesley Morris on weeping at the movies: “What I’d felt was the ancient power of art to make a puddle of us. ‘E.T.’ led me into a love affair with being made to cry among strangers in the dark. I almost typed ‘being reduced to tears,’ except where is the reduction? Crying for art is an honor, an exaltation, a salute. It’s applause with mucus and salt.” (Jo Wollschlaeger, Portland, Ore., and Mary Allman-Koernig, Port Charlotte, Fla.)

Here’s Molly Young on the new book “Love in the Time of Contagion” by Laura Kipnis: “For three of the book’s four essays, scooting around Kipnis’s mind feels like eating the world’s finest trail mix: no dud raisins to shift aside, only M&M’s and the fancier nuts.” (Barbara Buswell, Oakland, Calif.)

And here’s Maureen Dowd, wittily connecting President Richard Nixon’s nickname for some of his key aides with reports that President Donald Trump may have stuffed important papers into the toilet: “Nixon had the plumbers. Trump’s the one who needed them.” (Karen Shectman, Pittsboro, N.C., and Stan Seltzer, Trumansburg, N.Y., among others)