Sand is hard to resist. Adults associate its pliant, fluffy texture with the white beaches of a tropical vacation. Kids immediately jump in to play with sand wherever they find it. The sandbox, both in its physical form and as a metaphorical space for working through ideas, unites people of all ages in experimental experience. Like water and air, sand is at once transient and eternal.
Read MoreIt’s difficult to imagine a group of Gilded Age women reading a magazine, or listening to music on a phonograph, while reclining on a rug. Their foundation garments wouldn’t have permitted it. The wool wouldn’t have been comfortable to laze on, even if it had been acceptably ladylike to do so. But this is exactly the posture in which we find women in the 1950s, at least in innumerable editorials and print ads. They lie sideways, wearing pants or leotards, doing their thing, almost as though there were a new, secret room in the house hovering just below the horizon line of the coffee table.
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