1. Later that afternoon, at a vaccination center in a gymnasium in the Bronx, Helen Mack—seventy-six, hand-sewn mask (four-ply), Ruvkun bookee, nervous but sufficiently prayed for—didn’t look when the needle went in. “It’s over?” she said. “I didn’t even feel it! Thank the Lord! It’s over!” [Zach Helfand, “Vaccine Yenta”]
2. A fireball danced on the Jumbotron, and a man holding a big cardboard cutout of Baby Yoda bellowed with something like joy. [Adam Iscoe, “The Smell Test”]
3. Her conveyance is Vanguard, a careworn white van, its headlights searching out a new future, everything bungee-corded down. [Dana Goodyear, “Viewfinder”]
4. At Hamido, the evening was mild, and the curve was still more or less flat; happy to be around people other than our families, we sat at a large table on the sidewalk, in the open air, sharing platters of bran-grilled orate, grilled octopus, fried sardines, baba ghanoush, and beers of our own bringing. Was all of this reckless? Probably. But we are nothing if not weak. [Nick Paumgarten, “It’s No Picnic”]
5. Microtonal tunings, electronic processing, and rough string attacks engender ferocious climaxes. [Alex Ross, “Wind Songs”]
6. Rapid clips from Black history and daily life, ranging from violent scenes of the civil-rights movement to children dancing, possess specific, incantatory powers. Their quantity overloads comprehension—so many summoned memories and reconnected associations, cascading. The experience is like a psychoanalytic unpacking, at warp speed, of a national unconscious regarding race. [Peter Schjeldahl, “Mastering Sorrow”]
And the winner is … Alex Ross’s “Microtonal tunings, electronic processing, and rough string attacks engender ferocious climaxes.” I have a weakness for zero-article constructions. Ross’s is a beauty.
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