THE UNKNOWN / IT’S ABOUT TIME. BUT WHAT IS TIME?

Time isn't an illusion, unlike optical illusions that trick your eyes. There's nothing to 'trick' because it has no physical basis. So what is it? Rather than something that 'flows,' a philosopher suggests time is a psychological projection. 

GUEST BLOG / By Adrian Bardon Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University, via TheConversation.com

"Time flies," "time waits for no one," "as time goes on": The way we speak about time tends to strongly imply that the passage of time is some sort of real process that happens out there in the world. 

 We inhabit the present moment and move through time, even as events come and go, fading into the past. But go ahead and try to actually verbalize just what is meant by the flow or passage of time. A flow of what? Rivers flow because water is in motion. What does it mean to say that time flows? 

 Events are more like happenings than things, yet we talk as though they have ever-changing locations in the future, present or past. But if some events are future, and moving toward you, and some past, moving away, then where are they? The future and past don't seem to have any physical location. 

 Human beings have been thinking about time for as long as we have records of humans thinking about anything at all. The concept of time inescapably permeates every single thought you have about yourself and the world around you. 

 That's why, as a philosopher, philosophical and scientific developments in our understanding of time have always seemed especially important to me. 

 Ancient philosophers on time 

 Parmenides of Elea [6th to 5th centuries BCE] was an early Greek philosopher who thought about the passage of time. He like other ancient philosophers were very suspicious about the whole idea of time and change. Parmenides wondered, if the future is not yet and the past is not anymore, how could events pass from future to present to past? He reasoned that, if the future is real, then it is real now; and, if what is real now is only what is present, the future is not real. So, if the future is not real, then the occurrence of any present event is a case of something inexplicably coming from nothing. 

 Parmenides wasn't the only skeptic about time. Similar reasoning regarding contradictions inherent in the way we talk about time appears in Aristotle, in the ancient Hindu school known as the Advaita Vedanta and in the work of Augustine of Hippo, also known as St. Augustine, just to name a few. 

 Einstein and relativity 

 The early modern physicist Isaac Newton had presumed an unperceived yet real flow of time. To Newton, time is a dynamic physical phenomenon that exists in the background, a regular, ticking universe-clock in terms of which one can objectively describe all motions and accelerations. 

 Then, Albert Einstein came along. 

 In 1905 and 1915, Einstein proposed his special and general theories of relativity, respectively. These theories validated all those long-running suspicions about the very concept of time and change. 

 Relativity rejects Newton's notion about time as a universal physical phenomenon. 

By Einstein's era, researchers had shown that the speed of light is a constant, regardless of the velocity of the source. 

 To take this fact seriously, he argued, is to take all object velocities to be relative. Nothing is ever really at rest or really in motion; it all depends on your "frame of reference." A frame of reference determines the spatial and temporal coordinates a given observer will assign to objects and events, on the assumption that he or she is at rest relative to everything else. 

 Someone floating in space sees a spaceship going by to the right. But the universe itself is completely neutral on whether the observer is at rest and the ship is moving to the right, or if the ship is at rest with the observer moving to the left. 

 This notion affects our understanding of what clocks actually do. Because the speed of light is a constant, two observers moving relative to each other will assign different times to different events. 

 In a famous example, two equidistant lightning strikes occur simultaneously for an observer at a train station who can see both at once. An observer on the train, moving toward one lightning strike and away from the other, will assign different times to the strikes. This is because one observer is moving away from the light coming from one strike and toward the light coming from the other. 

The other observer is stationary relative to the lightning strikes, so the respective light from each reaches him at the same time. Neither is right or wrong. 

 In a famous example of relativity, observers assign different times to two lightning strikes happening simultaneously. How much time elapses between events, and what time something happens, depends on the observer's frame of reference. 

 Observers moving relative to each other will, at any given moment, disagree on what events are happening now; events that are happening now according to one observer's reckoning at any given moment will lie in the future for another observer, and so on. 

Under relativity, all times are equally real. Everything that has ever happened or ever will happen is happening now for a hypothetical observer. There are no events that are either merely potential or a mere memory. 

There is no single, absolute, universal present, and thus there is no flow of time as events supposedly "become" present. Change just means that the situation is different at different times. At any moment, I remember certain things. At later moments, I remember more. That's all there is to the passage of time. This doctrine, widely accepted today among both physicists and philosophers, is known as "eternalism". 

This brings us to a pivotal question: If there is no such thing as the passage of time, why does everyone seem to think that there is? Time as a psychological projection 

One common option has been to suggest that the passage of time is an "illusion" - exactly as Einstein famously described it at one point. Calling the passage of time "illusory" misleadingly suggests that our belief in the passage of time is a result of misperception, as though it were some sort of optical illusion. 

But I think it's more accurate to think of this belief as resulting from misconception. As I propose in my book "A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time," our sense of the passage of time is an example of psychological projection - a type of cognitive error that involves misconceiving the nature of your own experience. 

The classic example is color. A red rose is not really red, per se. Rather, the rose reflects light at a certain wavelength, and a visual experience of this wavelength may give rise to a feeling of redness. 

My point is that the rose is neither really red nor does it convey the illusion of redness. The red visual experience is just a matter of how we process objectively true facts about the rose.

 It's not a mistake to identify a rose by its redness; the rose enthusiast isn't making a deep claim about the nature of color itself. Similarly, my research suggests that the passage of time is neither real nor an illusion: It's a projection based on how people make sense of the world. I can't really describe the world without the passage of time any more than I can describe my visual experience of the world without referencing the color of objects. 

I can say that my GPS "thinks" I took a wrong turn without really committing myself to my GPS being a conscious, thinking being. My GPS has no mind, and thus no mental map of the world, yet I am not wrong in understanding its output as a valid representation of my location and my destination. 

Similarly, even though physics leaves no room for the dynamic passage of time, time is effectively dynamic to me as far as my experience of the world is concerned. 

The passage of time is inextricably bound up with how humans represent our own experiences. Our picture of the world is inseparable from the conditions under which we, as perceivers and thinkers, experience and understand the world. Any description of reality we come up with will unavoidably be infused with our perspective. The error lies in confusing our perspective on reality with reality itself. 

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / TALLEST SKYSCRAPER COFFEE HOUSE SO FAR

On the 94th floor of the skyscraper in Shanghai’s Lujiazui district sits Mr. Bond Coffee House — a café that turns a simple coffee break into a dramatic skyline experience. Perched nearly 423 metres above street level, this lofty perch offers sweeping vistas of the Pudong financial district and the meandering sweep of the Huangpu River. 

Walking in, the ambience strikes a rare balance: elevated elegance without being overly formal. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrap the room, inviting the skyline inside and giving you a front-row seat to Shanghai’s dynamic architecture as you sip. The furnishings lean modern-chic — muted tones, clean lines — which allows the view itself to remain the star. 

The coffee menu is competent and thoughtfully composed: single-origin beans, pour-overs, and a small range of pastries that pair well. While it doesn’t reinvent the wheel in terms of café fare, what makes the experience standout is the location and the moment. Sit with a latte as dusk falls and watch the city lights flicker on — that’s when Bond Coffee House becomes more than a café, it becomes a kind of skyline theatre. 

One caveat: because of the height and panoramic windows, the lighting inside shifts dramatically (and the reflections can make photography tricky). If you’re chasing that perfect Instagram shot, aim for a late afternoon window seat and perhaps ask staff for the spot with the clearest glass. 

Service is professional though at times a bit paced — understandable when you’re served at 94 floors up. 

In summary: if you find yourself in Shanghai and want a café that acts as vantage point and escape, Bond Coffee House delivers. The coffee is good, but the view is the draw — and it’s one of those experiences where the setting elevates everything. 

Factoid: Bond Coffee in Shanghai is about the same height as Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio and Diamond Head in Honolulu 

MID CENTURY MADNESS / BLOG'S ONLY DAY OFF WITH EXPLANATION

Happy Birthday, Phyllis Marie! 

This blog began as a labor of love by a journalist, who had recently retired chasing stories and decided to pen something more satisfying. It began in late 2011. And, since then PillartoPost.org (despite its unglamorous title) has published daily (except one day a year). That one day is today, when the entire staff takes the day off in honor of this blog's biggest critic, distributor of love and bean counter. Lavish month long vacations: jaw dropping bonuses and free parking in the PillartoPost.org skyrise's garage would not be possible without her purview. 

We are not worthy. 

First passport to Europe

MERRY THANKSGIVING, HAPPY CHRISTMAS MERGER

Few eyes batted for long when Bergdorf-Goodman merged with Macy's back in 1972 so why should Santa Claus, Inc. worry about its merger with Tom Turkey Enterprises in 2025? 

DESIGN / HENRI RIVIERE'S EIFFEL BLOCK PRINTS, 1888-1902

The First Winter

FROM RIVIERE'S 36 VIEWS OF THE FAMED TOWER 

GUEST BLOG / By Daisy Saintsbury writing in The Public Domain Review--In late January 1887, construction work began on Gustave Eiffel’s eponymous tower — a process that was completed at record speed, just in time for the 1889 Exposition Universelle. 

At 330 metres, the tower would be the world’s tallest manmade structure to date, a beacon of France’s industrial prowess, but no sooner had the foundations been laid than the controversy began. 

Critics feared a “useless”, “monstruous” eyesore that would overshadow Notre Dame, the Pantheon, and other cherished monuments on the Parisian skyline. As the tower emerged, one iron girder after the next, the verdicts came in: a “hole-riddled suppository” (Joris-Karl Huysmans), a “truly tragic streetlamp” (Léon Bloy). 

Others were more positive, seeing in this unprecedented feat of engineering the same symbol of modernity that would be immortalised, decades later, in Guillaume Apollinaire’s calligrams or Marc Chagall’s and Robert Delauney’s paintings. But what did the artists of the time make of the so-called Iron Lady, and how did they set about capturing in their art something of what the tower seemed to embody about the modern world? 

Japanese woodblock printing may not be the obvious answer, but it was perhaps an inevitable one, given the wave of Japonisme that subsumed France in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The craze for all things Japanese began in the 1850s when, after a long period of self-imposed isolation, the country opened up to international trade, triggering an influx of goods — fans, screens, kimonos, ukiyo-e woodblock prints — onto the European market. 

Artists such as Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, and Vincent Van Gogh drew inspiration from the then-unfamiliar aesthetics of Japanese prints, their novel compositions and perspectives, their colour blocks, heavy black outlines, and use of empty space. 

Henri Rivière (1864–1951), a Paris-born artist who spent his time between the French capital and the coast of Brittany, shared this enthusiasm, but was unique among his peers in that he was the first to attempt to replicate not just the visual vocabulary of the Japanese masters, but also their printing methods. 

In 1888, as the Eiffel Tower began to take shape on the banks of the Seine, Rivière started working on an idea for a series of colour woodcuts based on Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (1830–32). There being no manuals on Japanese printing techniques at the time, he had to proceed by guesswork and trial and error. 

He experimented with pigments diluted in water rather than the oily, opaque inks used in Europe, and devised makeshift tools, such as a disk-shaped “barren” used to transfer the woodcuts onto paper by hand. In the process, he blurred a traditional distinction maintained in France between the artist, who supplied the original image for printing, and the artisan or technician, who engraved the artist’s original onto wood and then transformed it into a series of prints. 

 The Painter on the Tower 

During this period of experimentation, Rivière created two colour woodcuts Le chantier de la Tour Eiffel (The Eiffel Tower’s construction site) and La Tour Eiffel du viaduc d’Auteuil (The Eiffel Tower from the Auteuil viaduct), before determining that the process was too time consuming and restrictive in the small number of prints that could be produced. 

Later, he decided to pursue his thirty-six views of the Eiffel Tower as lithographs, but these early experiments appear to have left their mark. Some of the most arresting images in Les trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel are those that depict labourers, technicians, and craftsmen — the many hands that made the rapid-fire construction project possible. 

Le Bateau en Seine

In place of the fishermen and rice harvesters that appear in Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, Rivière presents the workers of an industrial age — figures hauling freight, loading up steamboats, or harnessed to iron beams. Instead of the bright blues and greens Hokusai used to represent the natural world, Rivière adopts a more muted palette of browns and greys reflective of the metalwork and masonry of the modern urban environment. 

Most striking of all is how Rivière uses the cropped compositions characteristic of Japanese woodblock prints to capture the fragmentary way in which the contemporary viewer encounters the Eiffel Tower, and the city more broadly. The tower, in all its unprecedented scale, is more often than not glimpsed between buildings or rising above roof tops, appearing in truncated form rather than as a cohesive whole. 

So, too, Paris, whose population grew from around 540,000 to 2.7 million over the course of the nineteenth century, finds an apt expression in a cluster of chimney pots that sprawl off into the distance and disappear out of frame, as if gesturing toward the city’s boundless size. 

Ironworkers

Interesting in this respect are the images depicting close-ups of the tower’s girders: En haut de la Tour (At the top of the tower), Dans la Tour (On the tower), Ouvrier plombier dans la Tour (Ironworker on the tower), and Le peintre dans la Tour (The painter on the tower). These four images were based on photographs the artist took during a press tour of the tower while it was still under construction. The resulting lithographs look simultaneously backward and forward — backward to the compositional techniques of the ukiyo-e tradition and forward to the burgeoning realm of photography, with its own distinct format: the snapshot. 

The Coalman Unloading at the Quai from a Barge

AMERICANA / FRISCO CAB KILLS CASTRO CAT

Calamity Causing Way Mo’ Concern than Expected

KitKat & Community Are Crushed 

In a recent dispatch, The New York Times. sent star reporter Heather Knight to cover a tragic accident in San Francisco’s Mission District where a driverless taxi struck and killed a beloved neighborhood bodega cat. 

The incident has sent ripples far beyond the storefront — one store owner is catatonic with grief, the local community is shaking its head, and the broader questions about autonomous-vehicle safety are suddenly pressing. 

According to Knight’s reporting, the scene unfolded on a Monday night outside Randa’s Market, where the feline resident known as “KitKat” had for years held unofficial title as bodega mascot and rodent-control specialist. 

The driverless taxi, operated by Waymo, was making a passenger stop when the cat wandered beneath it. What followed turned a routine ride into a neighborhood calamity. 

Initial witness reports quoted in Knight’s article say the bodega cat sat near the sidewalk in front of the cab, which then pulled away and struck the animal. 

The store owner’s grief is palpable: the man who loved and fed KitKat is described as standing frozen in shock, speechless, unable to process the sudden loss of the four-legged fixture of his store. The article notes he remains in a state described by neighbors as “catatonic with grief.” 

Knight then moves the story for blocks on end, describing how the cat’s death became a kind of rolling lament from the Castro to the Mission and into the Lower Haight. Residents who never met the bodega owner nevertheless paused to tell her they felt as if a neighborhood elder had been taken away. At one corner, Knight reports, a woman clutching a canvas grocery tote fought back tears while describing how KitKat used to sit in the sun on the wooden pallet outside Randa’s Market, blinking slowly at passersby like a furry maître d’ granting them permission to enter the store. 

Farther down the block, she interviewed a barista who said the cat would sometimes follow regulars halfway home before trotting confidently back to its post. “He had commute patterns,” the barista joked, before his face fell. 

Knight writes that even the humor felt hollow, as if the city had lost one of its tiny threads of normalcy in an already frayed fabric. Knight captures scenes of clusters of people standing in small silence, the way mourners do without realizing it, each person privately sorting out why the death of a cat cut so deeply. 

She notes that it is not, in truth, about the cat alone. The unexpected fatality has awakened the very real worry that autonomous vehicles, now threading through packed residential corridors, may not be fully prepared for the unpredictable life that spills across San Francisco’s narrow streets. 

After all, children dart between parked cars, dogs slip leashes, seniors shuffle nearer to traffic than sensors assume. If a machine can’t register a cat, residents ask, what — or who — might be next? 

Knight quotes a longtime Mission resident who said the city keeps approving these vehicles “as if we’re a testing ground, not a community.” The woman added that she doesn’t blame the taxi entirely — “it’s not a person” — but she does blame the companies for pushing fleets into neighborhoods without the consent of those who must live with them. “Driverless cars might be the future,” she told Knight, “but I didn’t ask to be the future’s crash test dummy.” 

In her reporting, Knight also explores the emotional center of the story: the bodega owner, described by friends as a gentle man whose life revolves around his shop and the stray that became his companion. Since the accident, he has barely spoken. Neighbors told Knight he stands behind the counter staring at the empty crate where KitKat used to nap. 

One customer said the man attempted to ring up a sandwich order three times before realizing he had already done so. The grief, Knight writes, has hollowed him. 

Knight reconstructs the accident with her usual precision. The Waymo taxi had just dropped a passenger on 16th Street and began to pull away when KitKat wandered into the road. Surveillance footage reviewed by Knight shows the cat approaching the vehicle moments before it accelerated. 

The cab’s sensors, according to the company’s statement, “did not recognize a living obstruction of meaningful size.” Those words, Knight observes, have become a rallying cry online, where critics argue that “meaningful size” reveals the blind ethics of the technology — and the blind spot in the city’s regulatory framework. To illustrate the tension, Knight walks readers through the steps city officials have taken — and haven’t taken — to manage the proliferation of autonomous taxis. 

She cites public hearings where San Franciscans lined up to speak against the expansion of AV fleets, only to see state regulators approve new routes, new hours, and new privileges. Residents told her they felt spoken over by “data points and optimism.” KitKat’s death, they say, is exactly the sort of preventable tragedy they feared. 

Knight’s reporting shows how, after the accident, candles and flowers appeared instantly. Someone taped a photo of the cat to the lamppost with a note reading, “Our Little Guardian.” Another left a tiny bowl of dry food. Knight describes a child kneeling to place a feather toy beside the memorial, asking her mother whether the robots “feel sorry.” The mother, Knight writes, did not answer. 

Continuing her walk, Knight stops into nearby shops where owners tell her they worry the city is losing its soul one small grief at a time. The tech that promised a safer future now feels unpredictable, even careless. For many, KitKat represented a kind of neighborhood glue — one of those minor civic treasures that define a community more honestly than any official landmark. 

Yet Knight acknowledges the collision of perspectives. She interviews a young tech worker who argued that autonomous vehicles will reduce long-term fatalities and that the companies were being unfairly vilified for an accident that could just as easily have been caused by a human driver. Knight includes the comment without editorializing but notes the silence this opinion received from shoppers within earshot. 

By the article’s final third, Knight widens the lens again, framing the story, a War and Peace version of a second day epic, as a test of public trust. The death of the cat has become not just a neighborhood tragedy but an emblem of the growing mismatch between the people who live in San Francisco and the technologies introduced into their streets without their full consent. 

She writes that the city has long been a proving ground for innovation, but rarely has the community felt so vulnerable to the consequences. Knight ends her dispatch on a somber note. 

Returning to Randa’s Market late in the evening, she observes the owner quietly wipe down the counter while a small cluster of neighbors lights another candle outside. The man does not look up. He is surrounded by customers, yet alone. 

Outside, the flickering candles cast soft light on the growing memorial, dancing against the passing headlights of cars — some human-driven, some not. Knight’s final observation: for a city used to losing icons, the smallest icons are sometimes the ones mourned most. 

Credits: Illustration, Headlines and captions by PillartoPost.org Catastrophe Desk 

THINK PIECE / THE CONFESSIONAL AT THE CROSSROADS

The chicken has already crossed the road.

The modern confessional stands at an uncomfortable crossroads.  In truth, this is not solely a Catholic issue.

For centuries it was a private chamber where souls unburdened themselves and clergy offered absolution, comfort, or quiet guidance. But the weight of what people now carry into that small space has changed. 

Trauma, addiction, online radicalization, fractured families, mental-health crises — the confessional is absorbing a volume and intensity of modern problems no medieval theologian ever imagined.   

This raises the larger question: is the confessional coping with dramatic societal issues in a constructive manner?   

Priests, Brothers, and Sisters undergo spiritual, pastoral, and theological formation. They are trained to listen, to protect the seal, and to discern moral direction. But few receive anything close to the clinical instruction psychologists or social workers receive. 

And yet more and more penitents arrive not with “sins” in the traditional sense but with severe emotional injuries, trauma responses, or cries for help that border on crisis intervention. 

Clergy should not find themselves improvising — doing their best with the moral tools at hand but encountering human burdens that require therapeutic or even medical expertise.   

Which leads to the follow-up question: are clergy adequately trained to dispense the kind of counsel people increasingly expect?   

Some dioceses have quietly introduced mental-health workshops or crisis-response training. Others rely on the individual skill of each priest — fortunate when the priest is naturally gifted, problematic when not. And of course, the confessional is not the place for diagnosis, therapy, or step-by-step treatment plans. 

Still, the people who enter expect help, and that expectation is only growing.   Finally, is this uniquely a Catholic problem? Or is it wider among all clergy?   

In truth, this is not solely a Catholic issue. Protestant ministers, rabbis, imams, Buddhist monks, and non-denominational pastors all confront the same shift. The public is turning to spiritual leaders with problems once reserved for professionals. 

Clergy are being asked to stand at the fault line where morality and mental health collide. Some rise to it gracefully. 

Others feel overwhelmed. Most do their best and hope their best is enough. whether modern faith communities need to rethink formation, introduce mandatory mental-health training, or create stronger partnerships with licensed counselors. You could look at the tension between the sacred seal of the confessional and the practical need to refer someone for help. 

And you could ask the most uncomfortable question of all: when people come to church with modern wounds, are we giving them spiritual balm or outdated remedies? 

SUNDAY REVIEW / THE DARLING, A SHORT STORY BY ANTON CHEKHOV

THE DARLING 

By Anton Chekhov. First published January 1899.

OLENKA, the daughter of the retired collegiate assessor, Plemyanniakov, was sitting in her back porch, lost in thought. It was hot, the flies were persistent and teasing, and it was pleasant to reflect that it would soon be evening. Dark rainclouds were gathering from the east, and bringing from time to time a breath of moisture in the air. 

 Kukin, who was the manager of an open-air theatre called the Tivoli, and who lived in the lodge, was standing in the middle of the garden looking at the sky. 

 "Again!" he observed despairingly. "It's going to rain again! Rain every day, as though to spite me. I might as well hang myself! It's ruin! Fearful losses every day." 

 He flung up his hands, and went on, addressing Olenka: 

 "There! that's the life we lead, Olga Semyonovna. It's enough to make one cry. One works and does one's utmost, one wears oneself out, getting no sleep at night, and racks one's brain what to do for the best. And then what happens? To begin with, one's public is ignorant, boorish. I give them the very best operetta, a dainty masque, first rate music-hall artists. But do you suppose that's what they want! They don't understand anything of that sort. They want a clown; what they ask for is vulgarity. And then look at the weather! Almost every evening it rains. It started on the tenth of May, and it's kept it up all May and June. It's simply awful! The public doesn't come, but I've to pay the rent just the same, and pay the artists." 

 The next evening the clouds would gather again, and Kukin would say with an hysterical laugh: 

 "Well, rain away, then! Flood the garden, drown me! Damn my luck in this world and the next! Let the artists have me up! Send me to prison!--to Siberia!--the scaffold! Ha, ha, ha!" 

 And next day the same thing. 

 Olenka listened to Kukin with silent gravity, and sometimes tears came into her eyes. In the end his misfortunes touched her; she grew to love him. He was a small thin man, with a yellow face, and curls combed forward on his forehead. He spoke in a thin tenor; as he talked his mouth worked on one side, and there was always an expression of despair on his face; yet he aroused a deep and genuine affection in her. She was always fond of some one, and could not exist without loving. In earlier days she had loved her papa, who now sat in a darkened room, breathing with difficulty; she had loved her aunt who used to come every other year from Bryansk; and before that, when she was at school, she had loved her French master. She was a gentle, soft-hearted, compassionate girl, with mild, tender eyes and very good health. At the sight of her full rosy cheeks, her soft white neck with a little dark mole on it, and the kind, naïve smile, which came into her face when she listened to anything pleasant, men thought, "Yes, not half bad," and smiled too, while lady visitors could not refrain from seizing her hand in the middle of a conversation, exclaiming in a gush of delight, "You darling!" 

 The house in which she had lived from her birth upwards, and which was left her in her father's will, was at the extreme end of the town, not far from the Tivoli. In the evenings and at night she could head the band playing, and the crackling and banging of fireworks, and it seemed to her that it was Kukin struggling with his destiny, storming the entrenchments of his chief foe, the indifferent public; there was a sweet thrill at her heart, she had no desire to sleep, and when he returned home at day-break, she tapped softly at her bedroom window, and showing him only her face and one shoulder through the curtain, she gave him a friendly smile. . . . 

He proposed to her, and they were married. And when he had a closer view of her neck and her plump, fine shoulders, he threw up his hands, and said: 

 "You darling!" He was happy, but as it rained on the day and night of his wedding, his face still retained an expression of despair. 

 They got on very well together. She used to sit in his office, to look after things in the Tivoli, to put down the accounts and pay the wages. And her rosy cheeks, her sweet, naïve, radiant smile, were to be seen now at the office window, now in the refreshment bar or behind the scenes of the theatre. And already she used to say to her acquaintances that the theatre was the chief and most important thing in life and that it was only through the drama that one could derive true enjoyment and become cultivated and humane. 

 "But do you suppose the public understands that?" she used to say. "What they want is a clown. Yesterday we gave 'Faust Inside Out,' and almost all the boxes were empty; but if Vanitchka and I had been producing some vulgar thing, I assure you the theatre would have been packed. Tomorrow Vanitchka and I are doing 'Orpheus in Hell.' Do come." 

 And what Kukin said about the theatre and the actors she repeated. Like him she despised the public for their ignorance and their indifference to art; she took part in the rehearsals, she corrected the actors, she kept an eye on the behaviour of the musicians, and when there was an unfavourable notice in the local paper, she shed tears, and then went to the editor's office to set things right. 

 The actors were fond of her and used to call her "Vanitchka and I," and "the darling"; she was sorry for them and used to lend them small sums of money, and if they deceived her, she used to shed a few tears in private, but did not complain to her husband. 

 They got on well in the winter too. They took the theatre in the town for the whole winter, and let it for short terms to a Little Russian company, or to a conjurer, or to a local dramatic society. Olenka grew stouter, and was always beaming with satisfaction, while Kukin grew thinner and yellower, and continually complained of their terrible losses, although he had not done badly all the winter. He used to cough at night, and she used to give him hot raspberry tea or lime-flower water, to rub him with eau-de-Cologne and to wrap him in her warm shawls. 

 "You're such a sweet pet!" she used to say with perfect sincerity, stroking his hair. "You're such a pretty dear!" 

 Towards Lent he went to Moscow to collect a new troupe, and without him she could not sleep, but sat all night at her window, looking at the stars, and she compared herself with the hens, who are awake all night and uneasy when the cock is not in the hen-house. Kukin was detained in Moscow, and wrote that he would be back at Easter, adding some instructions about the Tivoli. But on the Sunday before Easter, late in the evening, came a sudden ominous knock at the gate; some one was hammering on the gate as though on a barrel-- boom, boom, boom! The drowsy cook went flopping with her bare feet through the puddles, as she ran to open the gate. 

 "Please open," said some one outside in a thick bass. "There is a telegram for you." 

 Olenka had received telegrams from her husband before, but this time for some reason she felt numb with terror. With shaking hands she opened the telegram and read as follows: 

 "IVAN PETROVITCH DIED SUDDENLY TO-DAY. AWAITING IMMATE INSTRUCTIONS FUFUNERAL TUESDAY." That was how it was written in the telegram--"fufuneral," and the utterly incomprehensible word "immate." It was signed by the stage manager of the operatic company. 

 "My darling!" sobbed Olenka. "Vanka, my precious, my darling! Why did I ever meet you! Why did I know you and love you! Your poor heart-broken Olenka is alone without you!" 

 Kukin's funeral took place on Tuesday in Moscow, Olenka returned home on Wednesday, and as soon as she got indoors, she threw herself on her bed and sobbed so loudly that it could be heard next door, and in the street. 

 "Poor darling!" the neighbours said, as they crossed themselves. "Olga Semyonovna, poor darling! How she does take on!" 

 Three months later Olenka was coming home from mass, melancholy and in deep mourning. It happened that one of her neighbours, Vassily Andreitch Pustovalov, returning home from church, walked back beside her. He was the manager at Babakayev's, the timber merchant's. He wore a straw hat, a white waistcoat, and a gold watch-chain, and looked more a country gentleman than a man in trade. 

 "Everything happens as it is ordained, Olga Semyonovna," he said gravely, with a sympathetic note in his voice; "and if any of our dear ones die, it must be because it is the will of God, so we ought have fortitude and bear it submissively." 

 After seeing Olenka to her gate, he said good-bye and went on. All day afterwards she heard his sedately dignified voice, and whenever she shut her eyes she saw his dark beard. She liked him very much. And apparently she had made an impression on him too, for not long afterwards an elderly lady, with whom she was only slightly acquainted, came to drink coffee with her, and as soon as she was seated at table began to talk about Pustovalov, saying that he was an excellent man whom one could thoroughly depend upon, and that any girl would be glad to marry him. Three days later Pustovalov came himself. He did not stay long, only about ten minutes, and he did not say much, but when he left, Olenka loved him--loved him so much that she lay awake all night in a perfect fever, and in the morning she sent for the elderly lady. The match was quickly arranged, and then came the wedding. 

 Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together when they were married. 

 Usually he sat in the office till dinner-time, then he went out on business, while Olenka took his place, and sat in the office till evening, making up accounts and booking orders. 

 "Timber gets dearer every year; the price rises twenty per cent," she would say to her customers and friends. "Only fancy we used to sell local timber, and now Vassitchka always has to go for wood to the Mogilev district. And the freight!" she would add, covering her cheeks with her hands in horror. "The freight!" 

 It seemed to her that she had been in the timber trade for ages and ages, and that the most important and necessary thing in life was timber; and there was something intimate and touching to her in the very sound of words such as "baulk," "post," "beam," "pole," "scantling," "batten," "lath," "plank," etc. 

 At night when she was asleep she dreamed of perfect mountains of planks and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting timber somewhere far away. She dreamed that a whole regiment of six-inch beams forty feet high, standing on end, was marching upon the timber-yard; that logs, beams, and boards knocked together with the resounding crash of dry wood, kept falling and getting up again, piling themselves on each other. Olenka cried out in her sleep, and Pustovalov said to her tenderly: "Olenka, what's the matter, darling? Cross yourself!" 

 Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot, or that business was slack, she thought the same. Her husband did not care for entertainments, and on holidays he stayed at home. She did likewise. 

 "You are always at home or in the office," her friends said to her. "You should go to the theatre, darling, or to the circus." 

 "Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres," she would answer sedately. "We have no time for nonsense. What's the use of these theatres?" 

 On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go to the evening service; on holidays to early mass, and they walked side by side with softened faces as they came home from church. There was a pleasant fragrance about them both, and her silk dress rustled agreeably. At home they drank tea, with fancy bread and jams of various kinds, and afterwards they ate pie. Every day at twelve o'clock there was a savoury smell of beet-root soup and of mutton or duck in their yard, and on fast-days of fish, and no one could pass the gate without feeling hungry. In the office the samovar was always boiling, and customers were regaled with tea and cracknels. Once a week the couple went to the baths and returned side by side, both red in the face. 

 "Yes, we have nothing to complain of, thank God," Olenka used to say to her acquaintances. "I wish every one were as well off as Vassitchka and I." 

 When Pustovalov went away to buy wood in the Mogilev district, she missed him dreadfully, lay awake and cried. A young veterinary surgeon in the army, called Smirnin, to whom they had let their lodge, used sometimes to come in in the evening. He used to talk to her and play cards with her, and this entertained her in her husband's absence. She was particularly interested in what he told her of his home life. He was married and had a little boy, but was separated from his wife because she had been unfaithful to him, and now he hated her and used to send her forty roubles a month for the maintenance of their son. And hearing of all this, Olenka sighed and shook her head. She was sorry for him. 

 "Well, God keep you," she used to say to him at parting, as she lighted him down the stairs with a candle. "Thank you for coming to cheer me up, and may the Mother of God give you health." 

 And she always expressed herself with the same sedateness and dignity, the same reasonableness, in imitation of her husband. As the veterinary surgeon was disappearing behind the door below, she would say: 

 "You know, Vladimir Platonitch, you'd better make it up with your wife. You should forgive her for the sake of your son. You may be sure the little fellow understands." 

 And when Pustovalov came back, she told him in a low voice about the veterinary surgeon and his unhappy home life, and both sighed and shook their heads and talked about the boy, who, no doubt, missed his father, and by some strange connection of ideas, they went up to the holy ikons, bowed to the ground before them and prayed that God would give them children. 

 And so the Pustovalovs lived for six years quietly and peaceably in love and complete harmony. 

 But behold! one winter day after drinking hot tea in the office, Vassily Andreitch went out into the yard without his cap on to see about sending off some timber, caught cold and was taken ill. He had the best doctors, but he grew worse and died after four months' illness. And Olenka was a widow once more. 

 "I've nobody, now you've left me, my darling," she sobbed, after her husband's funeral. "How can I live without you, in wretchedness and misery! Pity me, good people, all alone in the world!" 

 She went about dressed in black with long "weepers," and gave up wearing hat and gloves for good. She hardly ever went out, except to church, or to her husband's grave, and led the life of a nun. It was not till six months later that she took off the weepers and opened the shutters of the windows. She was sometimes seen in the mornings, going with her cook to market for provisions, but what went on in her house and how she lived now could only be surmised. People guessed, from seeing her drinking tea in her garden with the veterinary surgeon, who read the newspaper aloud to her, and from the fact that, meeting a lady she knew at the post-office, she said to her: 

 "There is no proper veterinary inspection in our town, and that's the cause of all sorts of epidemics. One is always hearing of people's getting infection from the milk supply, or catching diseases from horses and cows. The health of domestic animals ought to be as well cared for as the health of human beings." 

 She repeated the veterinary surgeon's words, and was of the same opinion as he about everything. It was evident that she could not live a year without some attachment, and had found new happiness in the lodge. In any one else this would have been censured, but no one could think ill of Olenka; everything she did was so natural. Neither she nor the veterinary surgeon said anything to other people of the change in their relations, and tried, indeed, to conceal it, but without success, for Olenka could not keep a secret. When he had visitors, men serving in his regiment, and she poured out tea or served the supper, she would begin talking of the cattle plague, of the foot and mouth disease, and of the municipal slaughterhouses. He was dreadfully embarrassed, and when the guests had gone, he would seize her by the hand and hiss angrily: 

 "I've asked you before not to talk about what you don't understand. When we veterinary surgeons are talking among ourselves, please don't put your word in. It's really annoying." 

 And she would look at him with astonishment and dismay, and ask him in alarm: "But, Voloditchka, what _am_ I to talk about?" 

 And with tears in her eyes she would embrace him, begging him not to be angry, and they were both happy. 

 But this happiness did not last long. The veterinary surgeon departed, departed for ever with his regiment, when it was transferred to a distant place--to Siberia, it may be. And Olenka was left alone. 

 Now she was absolutely alone. Her father had long been dead, and his armchair lay in the attic, covered with dust and lame of one leg. She got thinner and plainer, and when people met her in the street they did not look at her as they used to, and did not smile to her; evidently her best years were over and left behind, and now a new sort of life had begun for her, which did not bear thinking about. In the evening Olenka sat in the porch, and heard the band playing and the fireworks popping in the Tivoli, but now the sound stirred no response. She looked into her yard without interest, thought of nothing, wished for nothing, and afterwards, when night came on she went to bed and dreamed of her empty yard. She ate and drank as it were unwillingly. 

 And what was worst of all, she had no opinions of any sort. She saw the objects about her and understood what she saw, but could not form any opinion about them, and did not know what to talk about. And how awful it is not to have any opinions! One sees a bottle, for instance, or the rain, or a peasant driving in his cart, but what the bottle is for, or the rain, or the peasant, and what is the meaning of it, one can't say, and could not even for a thousand roubles. When she had Kukin, or Pustovalov, or the veterinary surgeon, Olenka could explain everything, and give her opinion about anything you like, but now there was the same emptiness in her brain and in her heart as there was in her yard outside. And it was as harsh and as bitter as wormwood in the mouth. 

 Little by little the town grew in all directions. The road became a street, and where the Tivoli and the timber-yard had been, there were new turnings and houses. How rapidly time passes! Olenka's house grew dingy, the roof got rusty, the shed sank on one side, and the whole yard was overgrown with docks and stinging-nettles. Olenka herself had grown plain and elderly; in summer she sat in the porch, and her soul, as before, was empty and dreary and full of bitterness. In winter she sat at her window and looked at the snow. When she caught the scent of spring, or heard the chime of the church bells, a sudden rush of memories from the past came over her, there was a tender ache in her heart, and her eyes brimmed over with tears; but this was only for a minute, and then came emptiness again and the sense of the futility of life. The black kitten, Briska, rubbed against her and purred softly, but Olenka was not touched by these feline caresses. That was not what she needed. She wanted a love that would absorb her whole being, her whole soul and reason--that would give her ideas and an object in life, and would warm her old blood. And she would shake the kitten off her skirt and say with vexation: 

 "Get along; I don't want you!" 

 And so it was, day after day and year after year, and no joy, and no opinions. Whatever Mavra, the cook, said she accepted. 

 One hot July day, towards evening, just as the cattle were being driven away, and the whole yard was full of dust, some one suddenly knocked at the gate. Olenka went to open it herself and was dumbfounded when she looked out: she saw Smirnin, the veterinary surgeon, grey-headed, and dressed as a civilian. She suddenly remembered everything. She could not help crying and letting her head fall on his breast without uttering a word, and in the violence of her feeling she did not notice how they both walked into the house and sat down to tea. 

 "My dear Vladimir Platonitch! What fate has brought you?" she muttered, trembling with joy. 

 "I want to settle here for good, Olga Semyonovna," he told her. "I have resigned my post, and have come to settle down and try my luck on my own account. Besides, it's time for my boy to go to school. He's a big boy. I am reconciled with my wife, you know." 

 "Where is she?' asked Olenka. "She's at the hotel with the boy, and I'm looking for lodgings." 

 "Good gracious, my dear soul! Lodgings? Why not have my house? Why shouldn't that suit you? Why, my goodness, I wouldn't take any rent!" cried Olenka in a flutter, beginning to cry again. "You live here, and the lodge will do nicely for me. Oh dear! how glad I am!" 

 Next day the roof was painted and the walls were whitewashed, and Olenka, with her arms akimbo walked about the yard giving directions. Her face was beaming with her old smile, and she was brisk and alert as though she had waked from a long sleep. The veterinary's wife arrived--a thin, plain lady, with short hair and a peevish expression. With her was her little Sasha, a boy of ten, small for his age, blue-eyed, chubby, with dimples in his cheeks. And scarcely had the boy walked into the yard when he ran after the cat, and at once there was the sound of his gay, joyous laugh. 

 "Is that your puss, auntie?" he asked Olenka. "When she has little ones, do give us a kitten. Mamma is awfully afraid of mice." 

 Olenka talked to him, and gave him tea. Her heart warmed and there was a sweet ache in her bosom, as though the boy had been her own child. And when he sat at the table in the evening, going over his lessons, she looked at him with deep tenderness and pity as she murmured to herself: 

 "You pretty pet! . . . my precious! . . . Such a fair little thing, and so clever." 

 "'An island is a piece of land which is entirely surrounded by water,'" he read aloud. 

 "An island is a piece of land," she repeated, and this was the first opinion to which she gave utterance with positive conviction after so many years of silence and dearth of ideas. 

 Now she had opinions of her own, and at supper she talked to Sasha's parents, saying how difficult the lessons were at the high schools, but that yet the high school was better than a commercial one, since with a high-school education all careers were open to one, such as being a doctor or an engineer. 

 Sasha began going to the high school. His mother departed to Harkov to her sister's and did not return; his father used to go off every day to inspect cattle, and would often be away from home for three days together, and it seemed to Olenka as though Sasha was entirely abandoned, that he was not wanted at home, that he was being starved, and she carried him off to her lodge and gave him a little room there. 

 And for six months Sasha had lived in the lodge with her. Every morning Olenka came into his bedroom and found him fast asleep, sleeping noiselessly with his hand under his cheek. She was sorry to wake him. 

 "Sashenka," she would say mournfully, "get up, darling. It's time for school." He would get up, dress and say his prayers, and then sit down to breakfast, drink three glasses of tea, and eat two large cracknels and a half a buttered roll. All this time he was hardly awake and a little ill-humoured in consequence. 

 "You don't quite know your fable, Sashenka," Olenka would say, looking at him as though he were about to set off on a long journey. "What a lot of trouble I have with you! You must work and do your best, darling, and obey your teachers." 

 "Oh, do leave me alone!" Sasha would say. 

 Then he would go down the street to school, a little figure, wearing a big cap and carrying a satchel on his shoulder. Olenka would follow him noiselessly.

 "Sashenka!" she would call after him, and she would pop into his hand a date or a caramel. When he reached the street where the school was, he would feel ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman, he would turn round and say: 

 "You'd better go home, auntie. I can go the rest of the way alone." 

 She would stand still and look after him fixedly till he had disappeared at the school-gate. 

 Ah, how she loved him! Of her former attachments not one had been so deep; never had her soul surrendered to any feeling so spontaneously, so disinterestedly, and so joyously as now that her maternal instincts were aroused. For this little boy with the dimple in his cheek and the big school cap, she would have given her whole life, she would have given it with joy and tears of tenderness. Why? Who can tell why? 

 When she had seen the last of Sasha, she returned home, contented and serene, brimming over with love; her face, which had grown younger during the last six months, smiled and beamed; people meeting her looked at her with pleasure.

 "Good-morning, Olga Semyonovna, darling. How are you, darling?" 

 "The lessons at the high school are very difficult now," she would relate at the market. "It's too much; in the first class yesterday they gave him a fable to learn by heart, and a Latin translation and a problem. You know it's too much for a little chap." 

 And she would begin talking about the teachers, the lessons, and the school books, saying just what Sasha said. 

 At three o'clock they had dinner together: in the evening they learned their lessons together and cried. When she put him to bed, she would stay a long time making the Cross over him and murmuring a prayer; then she would go to bed and dream of that far-away misty future when Sasha would finish his studies and become a doctor or an engineer, would have a big house of his own with horses and a carriage, would get married and have children. . . . She would fall asleep still thinking of the same thing, and tears would run down her cheeks from her closed eyes, while the black cat lay purring beside her: "Mrr, mrr, mrr." 

 Suddenly there would come a loud knock at the gate. Olenka would wake up breathless with alarm, her heart throbbing. Half a minute later would come another knock. 

 "It must be a telegram from Harkov," she would think, beginning to tremble from head to foot. "Sasha's mother is sending for him from Harkov. . . . Oh, mercy on us!" 

 She was in despair. Her head, her hands, and her feet would turn chill, and she would feel that she was the most unhappy woman in the world. But another minute would pass, voices would be heard: it would turn out to be the veterinary surgeon coming home from the club. 

 "Well, thank God!" she would think. 

 And gradually the load in her heart would pass off, and she would feel at ease. She would go back to bed thinking of Sasha, who lay sound asleep in the next room, sometimes crying out in his sleep: 

 "I'll give it you! Get away! Shut up!" 

COFFEE BEANS & BEINGS / OOPS, ANCIENT PHRYGIAN TOMB TURNED INTO COFFEE HOUSE—ILLEGALLY

 

CAFFEINE RAIDERS--Diners at the cafe, seated on a carpet laid out in the tomb.

By Janus Pell, PillartoPost.org Coffee Desk  

In Afyonkarahisar, Turkey, a high plateau city that has seen more empires than rainfall, a recent discovery has managed to bewilder archaeologists, amuse locals, and infuriate the Ministry of Culture all at once. 

A small café—popular, lively, and thoroughly modern—was found to be operating inside what turned out to be a 3,000-year-old Phrygian tomb.  

No one, least of all the tomb’s original occupant, could have imagined that eternal rest would one day be interrupted by the hiss of an espresso machine.  

The café, known to regulars as “The Hearth,” had long been admired for its cool stone interior and its uncanny acoustics. The owner attributed the space’s natural climate control to “old Anatolian engineering.” 

Customers assumed it was one more rustic touch in a region where antiquity is as common as limestone. It wasn’t until a visiting archaeologist spotted a carved Phrygian rosette behind a rack of flavored syrups that the deception began to unravel.  

Authorities arrived, gently moving aside patrons sipping macchiatos, and began dismantling drywall sections that had conveniently hidden key architectural clues. 

Under the plaster: authentic Phrygian funerary carvings, a sealed chamber behind a false wall, and the unmistakable geometry of a rock-cut burial vault. The café had been operating not in a historic building but inside a protected archaeological site. 

The Ministry was not amused. Restorers now face the delicate task of reversing the café’s “improvements,” which include electrical conduits drilled into 8th-century BCE stone and a ventilation shaft cut perilously close to a funerary relief. 

Charges are pending. 

The espresso machine has been unplugged.  

NOT SO SACRED GROUNDS.  Here is the 3,000-year-old Phrygian tomb in Afyonkarahiser that was illegally converted int a Turkish cafe-restaurant prompting legal action by local authorities.

Locals, however, have taken the news with characteristic Turkish deadpan. One patron shrugged to reporters: “The coffee was good. Maybe the Phrygians wouldn’t mind.” 

Another quipped that King Midas himself might approve, provided the tips were generous.  

Scholars see it differently. The tomb’s occupant—whose identity has yet to be determined—was laid to rest during the height of the Phrygian kingdom, a culture known for intricate craftsmanship and fiercely protected burial sites. That their sacred space had been converted, without permission, into a café-restaurant says less about ancient tradition and more about modern entrepreneurial nerve.  Excavation and preservation efforts are underway. 

The café tables have been removed. The tomb’s threshold has been sealed once more, this time by professionals.  

But in Afyonkarahisar, where every hillside holds a story, the episode has already entered local lore. 

Eternal rest, it seems, is never guaranteed—especially when your tomb has the perfect ambience for a tasty cappuccino. 

FRIDAY FUNNIES / WHITE HOUSE PARDONS THE TURKEY

 

BOOKSHELF / CANTINA PSALMS ON SALE

 

AMERICANA / THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Delivered by President Abraham Lincoln, November 19, 1863 

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. 

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. 

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. 

It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. 

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us

— that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion

—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain

—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom

— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

SPACE CADETS / HOW CLOSE IS THE ALIEN COMET TO THE SAN DIEGO ZOO?

Clueless to the numerical gobblygook but we're assured it's a real photograph of 3i/ATLAS as it zips through our solar system.

Here’s the San Diego/North Park–specific snapshot for Mon Nov 3, 2025 (North Park News wire services): 

• Distance from Earth and the San Diego Zoo: ~2.25 AU or 208 million km. TheSkyLive 

• Where in the sky: In Virgo, very low in the ESE pre-dawn sky. Current coordinates are roughly RA 13h 19m, Dec −06° 09′. It’s just coming out of the Sun’s glare and sliding into the morning sky. TheSkyLive+1 

• When to look (San Diego): About ~2 hours before sunrise, i.e., roughly 4:30–5:30 AM local time this week. Expect it to sit low above the ESE horizon at only a few degrees altitude, improving slowly through November. Sky & Telescope+1 

• Brightness / gear: Around magnitude ~10–11 right now — you’ll need at least a small telescope (camera assists help a lot). TheSkyLive 

• Safety: On a hyperbolic, outbound path; no threat to Earth. Closest Earth distance will be ~1.8 AU in December. NASA Science 

Artist’s concept, not an actual capture of 3I/ATLAS.

MEDIA MONDAY / NEURODIVERGENT MINDS ARE FLOURISHING ON TV DETECTIVE SHOWS. WHY?

The British-Belgian series “Patience,” meanwhile, is the first detective show to feature an explicitly autistic character played by a neurodivergent actress, Ella Maisy Purvis

The rise of the autistic detective – why neurodivergent minds are at the heart of modern mysteries 

GUEST BLOG /By Soohyun Cho, Michigan State University VIA the Conversation.com 

There never seems to be a shortage of good crime shows on TV, and network television is teeming with detectives who think – and act – differently. 

This fall, new seasons of “Elsbeth,” “High Potential,” “Patience” and “Watson” have aired, and they all feature leads who share similar characteristics: They’re outsiders, they’re socially awkward, they can be emotionally distant, and their minds operate in unconventional ways. 

In fact, they all possess traits that align with what many people now associate with neurodivergence – what scholar Nick Walker defines as “a mind that functions in ways that diverge significantly from the dominant societal standards of ‘normal.’” 

As a scholar of popular culture, I’ve long been fascinated by this recurring character type – detectives who might, today, be diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder. While researching my forthcoming book, “The Autistic Detective,” I’ve come to realize that most detectives in popular culture – yes, even Sherlock Holmes – exhibited neurodivergent characteristics, long before the term existed. 

The thin line between genius and madness 

In the late 19th century, when Sherlock Holmes was created, there was widespread scientific interest in the workings of the mind, particularly the thin line between genius and madness. 

British psychologist James Sully described “men of genius” as exhibiting “intellectual or moral peculiarities which are distinctly symptomatic of mental disease,” naming Edgar Allan Poe as an example of the “tragic fatefulness of geniuses.” Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, meanwhile, proposed that madness, genius and criminality were all closely intertwined. 

Such a fascination with exceptional minds – and the idea that madness and genius are two sides of the same coin – fed into the heart of detective fiction. And although later scholars have criticized the linking of neurodivergence to pathology, violence or genius, the trope remains common in popular culture, where it’s often used to signal the exceptional mind of a detective figure. 

Carrie Preston as Elsbeth

Now, however, many fans are able to connect these characteristics to specific diagnostic labels. According to CDC data from April 2025, autism diagnoses in U.S. children have risen sharply over the past two decades – from about 1 in 150 in 1998 to roughly 1 in 31 today. This reflects not only a broadened definition of the autism spectrum but also signals greater public awareness and acceptance of neurodivergence. 

That growing understanding has led to renewed interest in Holmes. From online fan forums to The New York Times, people have debated whether Holmes might be autistic, wondered whether another label would be more appropriate, or highlighted the futility of trying to diagnose a fictional character. 

Super intelligence and social dysfunction 

That said, it’s hard not to see some neurodivergent traits in Sherlock Holmes and other fictional detectives. 

Tunnel vision, pattern recognition and attention to detail are all traits that could be exhibited by autistic people. 

Holmes was fixated on minute details: One story highlighted how he authored a study on the ashes of 140 different varieties of pipe, cigar and cigarette tobacco. He had an unmatched talent for noticing overlooked details and piecing together disparate clues. And he was obsessed with forensic science. 

He could also come off as cold. As Holmes declared in “The Sign of the Four,” “Emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning.” 

In Edgar Allan Poe’s 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which is widely considered the first detective fiction story, the protagonist, C. Auguste Dupin, also hyperfocuses on small details, reasons through “pure logic” and is socially reclusive – all qualities displayed by Holmes. 

Even Dr. Watson, Holmes’ sidekick, noticed the resemblance. “You remind me of Edgar Allen Poe’s Dupin,” he tells Holmes in “A Study in Scarlet.” “I had no idea that such individuals did exist outside of stories.” 

When Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle famously killed off the detective at Reichenbach Falls in his 1893 story “The Final Problem,” there was so much public outrage that the author was eventually forced to bring him back from the dead. 

These 19th-century Sherlock enthusiasts were predecessors to today’s media fandoms. Their level of devotion, unlike anything previously seen for a fictional character, was a testament to the power of Doyle’s formula: an extraordinary investigator with savantlike cognitive abilities who upholds logic over emotion, thrives in solitude and yet still depends on his companion – in Holmes’ case, Dr. Watson, who serves as an emotional counterbalance. 

In the 21st century, that formula has been revived in wildly popular TV shows such as “Bones,” “Criminal Minds” and “Sherlock.” 

In 2016, “Sherlock” co-creator Steven Moffat told the BBC, “Doyle began the idea that super-intelligence comes at the price of some kind of social dysfunction, something that we’ve grasped as a narrative possibility ever since.” 

In other words, the more eccentric – or socially dysfunctional – a detective is, the more ingenious the hero seems. 

A new era for the detective 

Detective fiction might have started as a way to explore the deviant, non-normative minds of detectives and the criminals they pursued. But it has since become a space for neurodivergent self-representation. 

Today, scholars, fans, reviewers and scientists openly discuss diagnostic labels for fictional characters. This surge in interest coincides with a rise in research on portrayals of autism in the media and a growing number of autistic voices examining how those portrayals shape public understanding. 

Disability scholars have long warned of disabled characters being used as mere plot devices and have criticized the lack of diversity in representations of detectives who appear to be autistic on screen. 

Yet many of the new shows push back against some of the stereotypes of autistic people as cold, lonely and incapable of affection. Instead, they have friends. They have romantic partners. They’re empathetic. 

Two time Academy Award nominee Cynthia Erivo as Holly Gibney.

The series “Elsbeth” and “High Potential” center on quirky, intelligent female investigative leads who appear to be on the autism spectrum. In HBO’s 2020 miniseries “The Outsider,” detective Holly Gibney appears as one of the first Black, autistic female detectives on television. 

While most of these characters aren’t explicitly identified as autistic in their shows, “Extraordinary Attorney Woo” features a female attorney whose diagnosis is openly discussed by the show’s characters. 

 The British-Belgian series “Patience,” meanwhile, is the first detective show to feature an explicitly autistic character played by a neurodivergent actress, Ella Maisy Purvis. “It was really important to me that she wasn’t this kind of robotic, asexual drone,” Purvis told the Big Issue in 2025. 

“Patience is highly empathetic. She cares so much about her job and the people around her. It’s just expressed in a different way.” These varied portrayals coincide with the rise of online fan communities where neurodivergent fans share what these stories mean to them. 

If the archetypal detective once tried to “make sense” of neurodivergent minds, today’s neurodivergent fans and creators are now having a hand in shaping them. Perhaps most importantly, they no longer have to wonder whether they’re being represented on screen. 

AMERICANA / LOST OUR CENTS — NOW WHAT?

Lincoln Cent [1909 to 2025].

The U.S. penny is dead. But the economic, cultural, and market fallout is only beginning. 

The United States Mint has pressed its final penny. No ceremony. No farewell tour. Just a quiet shutdown of the dies that produced the country’s most ubiquitous coin for more than two centuries. 

The decision ends a monetary era, but it also creates a rare moment of national disruption — part economic inconvenience, part cultural jolt, part market opportunity. The penny may have been economically irrational, but ending it introduces a new set of problems that no spreadsheet fully accounts for. 

This is the dilemma facing America today. 

The Government Solved a Cost Problem and Exposed a Behavioral One 

For years, the penny cost more to manufacture than its face value. Lawmakers finally acted, eliminating a federal money-loser. 

But now comes the friction. 

Billions of pennies remain in circulation, yet no new ones will replace them. Businesses must implement rounding policies. States must decide whether to regulate consistency. Consumers — especially cash-dependent Americans — must recalibrate their daily transactions in real time. 

The government saved money. 

But it also forced a psychological rewrite of how Americans think about value, precision, and fairness at the cash register. 

The Market Shock: A 230-Year Coin Series Is Frozen Overnight 

Numismatics is driven by a force Wall Street understands well: finite supply meets sudden finality. The moment the last penny left the press, the entire Lincoln series — 1909 through 2025 — became a fixed asset class. This is no longer history in motion. This is history locked. And that immediately rewires the market: 

• Key dates spike. 1909-S VDB, 1914-D, 1922 “No D,” 1955 double die — all are moving upward. 

• High-grade common cents are revalued. MS-67 and MS-68 examples once ignored now command real inspection. 

• The 2025 penny becomes an instant modern flagship. Not rare, but historically final — and that creates competition. 

• Copper hoarding intensifies. Pre-1982 cents become a commodity play, not a curiosity. In securities terms, the penny just shifted from “active issuance” to “closed fund” — and investors are repositioning. 

Biggest Winner: Nostalgia. 

Biggest Loser: Liquidity. 

Americans react emotionally to small symbols. They are already hoarding pennies — not for profit, but for sentiment. This removes millions of cents from circulation every week, artificially tightening supply and accelerating the transition to a de facto penny-free economy faster than regulators anticipated. 

This hoarding behavior also generates two systemic issues: 

1. Liquidity distortion — Pennies still count as legal tender, but they are disappearing into coffee cans, jars, glove compartments, and desk drawers faster than they can circulate. 

2. Uneven transition costs — Lower-income Americans, who rely more heavily on cash, bear the brunt of rounding practices before retailers and states harmonize standards. In other words: The penny’s economic inefficiency is gone — but its logistical inefficiency remains. 

Numismatics Must Now Replace Its Gateway Drug 

For over a century, the Lincoln cent has been the entry point for American coin collecting — affordable, accessible, democratic. 

Its disappearance raises a real question for the industry: What replaces the coin that introduced four generations to the hobby? Quarters? Too complicated. Nickels? Too few key dates. Dollars? Too expensive. Digital money? No emotional connection. 

The industry must now build a new on-ramp for young collectors. Losing the penny is not just a minting event — it is a structural shift in the culture of American numismatics. 

The Broader Economic Symbolism 

Ultimately, killing the penny is a policy decision rooted in efficiency. But it also broadcasts a deeper message: America is willing to discard legacy symbols when the math no longer supports them. That is both modern and melancholy. A sign of fiscal responsibility — and a sign of what we lose when cost curves dictate cultural artifacts. 

Future historians will view November 2025 as the moment the U.S. finally aligned its smallest unit of currency with economic reality. 

But sociologists will read it differently: as the moment America learned that even the tiniest symbol carries weight. The penny was never worth much. Now that it’s gone, we’re discovering just how valuable it actually was.