Bryant Urstadt is a writer living in New York. He's written for Harper's, Outside, New York, and others. He often writes about energy, finance, and the environment, but that would be pretty boring to do all the time, now wouldn't it? Email: [email protected]
by Bryant Urstadt This is a story about what happened when an artist met a Ponzi scheme. The name of the artist is Billie Mintz, and he is a filmmaker in Toronto. His money disappeared on a January Monday in 2008. Mintz had just sat down to check his email. Monday was normally the day…
“I’d like piano lessons,” said my daughter, and, yes, of course, I said, that would be terrific. She was only six. How could she know that she was giving me permission to relapse into yet another time-wasting obsession, with the possibility of acquiring yet another library on a subject? Now, under cover of being a…
This is the time of the questions. I know this is true of me, and since I am taking the position, increasingly borne out by events, that my situation, talents, and prospects are pretty unexceptional, I assume it is true of others as well. I ask myself most of the following questions at least once…
George Orwell challenged us to understand what happens directly in front of our noses, and in the case of the big meltdown, it only makes sense to step out the front door, particularly if one lives in New York’s Upper East Side. After all, if any clues to the spiritual, moral, or cultural problems of…
by Bryant Urstadt Here’s Harold L. Humes again, back from the dead this time, rising from the boiling mists of time like The Swamp Thing, dripping muddy secrets and forgotten brilliance and true madness. Nothing new about that, in a way. He was always showing up with his own invite, overstaying a welcome he had…