Hey Chicago, I've asked this before but couldn't get an answer. Does anybody know what the grates at the southern bottom of Northerly Island are for?

this is pretty funny, from SONG OF SOLOMON

I stayed up late (for me) to finish Pynchon's VINELAND, which started out as one of the jokiest novels I'd ever read and ends implausibly movingly

Maybe the best lede to a book review ever written. De Quincey reviewing Vol. I of Gillman's 'Life of Coleridge,' in Blackwood's, 1845. Gillman had died before completing Vol. II and destroyed the papers associated with it. Coleridge felt that Gillman had dealt "almost maliciously" with his friend.

until it ends there is no end

I cleaned my desk for the benefit of my prized glass tomato