Kirsten Vangsness

Hmm, do you like Swiss chard?

Does anyone?

True, there's probably a Swiss chard committee at work right now around some kitchen table in Greenpoint plotting to do for Swiss chard what they did for kale.

So we can look forward to Swiss chard chips and smoothies and salad.

They will taste bitter and terrible because Swiss chard tastes bitter and terrible.

But they will be full of fiber and antioxidants and the promise of living to 100.

In your opinion, the last welcome addition to lettuce choices was arugula.

Why couldn't they have stopped with arugula?

Arugula was enough.

And even if you planted Swiss chard and it grew to normal size and you cooked it to death so it tasted less awful, you'd still have to clean it with a million paper towels and there'd still be that grain of dirt in it waiting to ambush your molars.

No.

Better to put the garden to bed for the winter.

Possibly forever.

flying.

When Allie Lester was six years old, her cousin Mac taught her to fly.

Once they were airborne, the act seemed as natural as humming, the distance between sky and earth an infinite chasm.

Clouds were now just a stretch of the hand away.

The microscopic world below struck her as laughable, too tiny to matter.

Afterward, back on the ground, her ears still tingling from cold, Allie studied Mac with disbelief.

"'How long have you known how?'