The Family Boccigalupe reads The New Yorker

This is what we call ourselves when we all do something together. When I was in high school, "all" usually meant no more than me, my younger brother, my younger sister, my parents, three grandparents, a cousin and her boyfriend. And "Journeys" (that cover bodes ill) usually involved a disreputable looking 12 passanger van.

I've been visiting The Family Boccigalupe and this what they think:

My cousin read and recommended a long article about raising oysters on Long Island - I think I found reference to it as written by Bill Buford for the April 6, 2006 issue, and headed "Notes of a Gastronome." How did I miss this? If I interpret her story correctly, she parleyed this oyster information into bar chat with a local restauranteur, who was easily impressed by her strange expertise.

My little sister found the Brandann Bremmer story very disturbing.

During the course of a 13 hour car ride, my mother told me all about an old essay on Maya Lin and monumentality, from 2002, that had really struck her.

And my dad informed me that he first read The New Yorker with his best friend in 6th grade, when they formed a club called the "hip-tellectuals" and went to see plays they read about in that general interest periodical. Sheesh.

The image is a still from a home movie of the Fricks, enjoying genteel family pursits. My mother visited Clayton, the Frick house museum in Pittsburgh and asked some tough questions about the family's original electricity supply. The Fricks who collected the Veronese that Schjeldahl writes about this month.

Categories: newyorker