AlabamaFlorence: A college is asking people to quit using plastic confetti as a photo prop on campus. The scenic University of North Alabama is a popular spot for photo shoots in Florence, but school officials say some of those sessions are leaving behind plastic confetti that’s shot into the air. Birds and other animals can…

The Little Women press day took place in Concord, Massachusetts, which is about a half-hour and 200 years away from Boston. It’s one of the hallowed places in American literature, the home of Emerson, Hawthrone, Thoreau and of course, the woman of the hour, Louisa May Alcott. On a bright, beautifully snowy morning in early…

BOSTON, MA – SEPTEMBER 19: Tom Waits is honored and performs at the PEN/Song Lyrics Awards for … [+] Literary Excellence honoring John Prine and Kathleen Brennan & Tom Waits at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on September 19, 2016 in Boston, Massachusetts. (Photo by Paul Marotta/Getty Images)Getty ImagesTom Waits turned 70…

The Dolphin Letters, 1970–1979: Elizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Their Circle edited by Saskia Hamilton Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 504 pp., $50.00 The Dolphin: Two Versions, 1972–1973 by Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 195 pp., $18.00 (paper) Harriet LowellElizabeth Hardwick, Robert Lowell, and Harriet Lowell, mid-1960s. Lowell was carrying this…

The Wonder Years recently announced a 2020 tour where they’ll be playing one acoustic set and one electric set each night, and they’ll have a second installment of their Burst & Decay acoustic EP series out before then too. Burst & Decay, Volume II was produced and engineered by Early November frontman Ace Enders, and…

Obscure gems from Cincinnati’s 1975-82 punk underground   For decades, Peter Aaron of the Chrome Cranks has been intermittently worked on a compilation that would document Cincinnati’s subterranean music scene of the mid 1970s through the early 1980s. Initially conceived of as a cassette release as far back as 1987, the project has finally seen…

Here’s a way for you to make a difference.Dec. 3, 2019Dave Eggers in 2018. In an interview with Vox, Eggers said “We’ve evolved to the point where our ideas of privacy have evolved or our value of it is almost completely gone.”Credit…Stephen J. Cohen/Getty ImagesSince the start of the Privacy Project, the most common response…

Amid all the imperial aspiration, wooly-minded New Age mythologizing, and pure unadulterated commerce, the obelisk stands tall.Left: Place de la Concorde. Number 6 in the series Curiosités Parisiennes, early 20th century. Postcard; offset lithography. Courtesy Leonard A. Lauder. Right: Monolite Mussolini Dux, via Wikimedia Commons By: Brian A. Curran, Anthony Grafton, Pamela O. Long, and Benjamin…

You can’t escape stories of tech companies dipping their toes into banking. This year, Google revealed it’s working on a check-clearing platform for 2020, and Facebook relaunched its own payments platform. Apple launched a credit card in partnership with Goldman Sachs’ Marcus digital bank, too. As hardware sales and ad revenues dry up, these companies…