Happy birthday to Lewis Allan Reed, who turns 70 today. I hope he doesn't become curmudgeonly in his advancing years.

The biggest opera house in the United States concluded its performance on time last night, at 11:15 p.m. Many of the nearly 4,000 people in attendance at the Met lingered in their seats for a bit, the better to praise the cast, orchestra and conductor—as well as to see if Philip Glass would take a curtain call. A number would have heard that the composer of Satyagraha, an opera about the life (sorta) and philosophical lineage (more consequentially) of Gandhi, was meant to have already spoken, at 10:30 p.m., to the Occupy Lincoln Center group just outside. When Glass did at last appear on stage, he was met with a [...]

"Eating dirt was forbidden. I was old enough to understand that. But I could. not. help. myself. My mother would often find me next to a houseplant, black streaks covering my mouth and hands. “Have you been eating dirt?” she would ask. I would solemnly shake my head. The perfect crime. Except for that telltale black ring around my mouth." —The Last Word On Nothing's Cassandra Willyard opens up about her past as a compulsive geophagist. She does so in relating the new scientific theory that the consumption of dirt (a phenomenon among children and pregnant women around the world) might have more to do with protection against pathogens [...]