Domestic Affairs · Natural History
The small, fast, agile thing working your bush is almost certainly a bee, just not one of the two you grew up naming. A field key for the other nineteen thousand species.
By Wren Marsh
Domestic Affairs
The musty note in the bathroom is not a nuisance to mask. It is an early-warning chemical signal, and your nose is absurdly good at reading it.
By Vera Stipple
Domestic Affairs
Linen bedding spans a twelvefold price range for one fiber. We priced the whole bed three ways, did the per-night arithmetic, and checked what the money actually buys.
By Hollis Carver
Domestic Affairs
Owning the right number of socks is not a personality. It is a buffer calculation, and it fits on one line.
By Iris Petty
The Parlour
The history of extraterrestrial arrival, assembled from the only archive available. With corrections, and one personnel matter regarding our staff illustrator.
By The Editor
The Kitchen Desk
The second meal is cheaper, faster, and better, but only if you design it into the first one tonight, while the oven is already hot.
By R. Dunmore
From the Editor's Desk
We do not cover what is new. We cover what was always true and somehow never written down. This is a policy, not an oversight.
By The Editor
Diversions · Puzzle of the Day
Once a month, on the 13th, the crossword loses its manners. The answers are unprintable. The clues, very nearly.
Attempt it →
The Sections
What the household owns, cleans, stocks, repairs, and shares its premises with.
Food, cooking, and provisioning meals that continue tomorrow.
What the household reads and watches, listed rather than reviewed, and kept here all year: the registers, the tens and the family files.
The puzzles page, and the strip. Sincerely presented. Quietly impossible.
Notes on the edition, and notices from the paper.
