David Klein

They warned me this would happen: I would leave New York for Chapel Hill, and I would have to give up certain people, places and things. Of course, there’s no replacing the people, or The City’s thrum, pulse and vibe, which I mostly didn’t miss. I even got used to knowing that a decent pizza […]

The man who delivers my newspaper each morning takes a perverse pride in locating the nexus where the unpaved road ends and our driveway begins; this allows him to lay the paper right there and say in good conscience that he did not just leave it in the street. It’s actually a good thing, though, […]

I was feeling satisfied at having completed a series of quotidian duties when I was hit with a dose of pure parental dread: My youngest son’s camp had called while I was out. Something had happened, but they wouldn’t say what. My brother, who had answered the phone, reported that the caller said he could […]

Al Wilson isn’t as well remembered as some of music’s other Wilsons, but his 1968 R&B hit “The Snake” seems the ideal soundtrack for these pollen-laden weeks. In “The Snake,” a benevolent woman spots a half-frozen, limbless and scaled creature along a lakeside path. “Take me in, tender woman,” he entreats. She brings him home […]

When James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem announced that his Madison Square Garden concert on April 2 would be the band’s final performance, it set off a wave of scrambling. The show sold out in something like eight minutes. Acknowledging the weighty circumstances, Murphy requested that audience members wear black, white or a combination thereof. The […]

I had just breakfasted on the only dependably authentic bagel in Chapel Hill (boiled per the age-old recipe, not some tepid dough-ring pretender), so I’ll admit I was in a sort of reverie. The dueling sensations of digestion and the glide down Weaver Dairy combined for a subtly exquisite moment in my rain-beaded cocoon. Righteous […]