New York Diary: Photos from the Mermaid Parade Brooklyn’s annual Mermaid Parade is a festival for freaks, drunks, and bemused Russian locals. Rosecrans Baldwin reports from the boardwalk.

A Course Guide to Literary Readings These days, literary readings aren’t as boring as they should be. But what for the budding author or poet, still in school, who doesn’t know how to smash a guitar or bake a cobbler onstage? Philip Graham has suggestions for expanding the curriculum.

James Howard Kunstler A simple statement but a nightmarish one: we can no longer expect to have more energy, only remorselessly less energy. An intense chat with author James Howard Kunstler about the chaos that will rattle our society once the energy disaster takes hold.

Personagem: Talking With Arto Lindsay After almost 30 years of making some of the most adventurous, challenging music in the Western Hemisphere, you’d think a guy could take some time off. Patrick Ambrose talks with ex-DNA leader Arto Lindsay about art and music, living in a recording studio, and the origins of that unique guitar style.