Also in The New Yorker, Jesse Dorris visited a recently opened memorial to the 20 children and six adults who were fatally shot at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., about a decade ago: “It is only fitting that a visitor to the Sandy Hook memorial walks in circles; we are all trapped in a loop of carnage, campaign donations, thoughts and prayers.” (Debbie Davidson, San Francisco)
In The Times, Michael Wilson reflected on the occurrence of three mass shootings just before Thanksgiving: “Yesterday’s parents, children and friends became Thursday’s empty chairs.” (James Turner, Hampton, Va.)
Daniel Lewis wrote an obituary for the composer and diarist Ned Rorem that examined the particular nature of Rorem’s tell-all tendencies: “Name-dropping is one thing. With the gossipy Mr. Rorem, it could reach the level of carpet-bombing.” (Carol Dane, Oakland, Calif., and Robert Allen, Richmond, Va.)
Jon Mooallem spent some time with the director and screenwriter Noah Baumbach, who “is 53 and speaks in long, looping stops and starts and carefully considered multipoint turns, like a man trying to parallel park his consciousness into an impossible spot.” (Bill Webb, Eminence, Ky., and Luc Leblanc, Montreal, among others)
Ruth Whippman described her long-ago piano lessons: “I can still conjure up the chemical overload of my teacher’s after-shave — synthetic floral with a base note of trickle-down economics. Overpowering, but not quite able to drown out the background scent of my mother’s expectations.” (Nan Valrance, Bluffton, S.C., and Margaret Wohler, Alexandria, Va.)
Mike Tanier mulled the Los Angeles Rams’ dismal drop-off from their championship season last year: “The Rams aren’t just enduring a Super Bowl hangover. They have woken up next to a total stranger in a Nevada honeymoon suite with an empty wallet and no sign of their car keys.” (Arthur Ostrove, White Plains, N.Y.)
Andrew Das described a Brazil player’s winning goal against Switzerland: “It was off his foot so fast, and was so well-placed, that the Swiss goalkeeper could only watch it pass like a man admiring a bullet train from the platform.” (Ann Lowman Yang, Carrboro, N.C.)