I have been in nonfiction mode lately! An essay I wrote about my old buddy, Newt Johnson, is up on Mr. Beller's Neighborhood. There weren't any obituaries for Newt when he died, so I wanted to write something. Sometimes it can feel strange to write book reviews—why am I writing about someone else's book instead of working on my own?—but it's important to discuss, and bring attention to, worthwhile books. I reviewed Cary Levine's art history book, Pay For Your Pleasures, for The Philadelphia Review of Books.

I also contributed a small piece about the rights of street vendors to Opportunities for a new New York, a report published by the Planners Network NYC chapter. Two of the report's editors, Sam Stein and Oksana Mironova, have each published interesting articles of their own recently.

This article my friend Tracy O'Neil wrote for Grantland about old-school skate boot manufacturing is pretty damn interesting, as well.

By the way, I gave in and joined Twitter. Follow me @bwnadler. Or don't follow me. Follow your heart.

Finally, I want to show you a monument I encountered in a cemetery in Virginia recently. If you know any Hebrew, this is kind of funny. Whether or not you know any Hebrew, this is tragic, and also kind of confusing: