GOOD’s favorite fictional neighborhoods Appears in: Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck. The neighborhood is arguably the main character in this story. Writes Steinbeck: Cannery Row is “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron…
Appears in: Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck. The neighborhood is arguably the main character in this story. Writes Steinbeck: Cannery Row is “a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses.”
For more boulevards of broken dreams, see: the Hoboken, New Jersey of On the Waterfront; The Wrong Side of the Tracks in Springfield of The Simpsons
Appears in: “Good Neighbors,” a chapter in Jonathan Franzen’s forthcoming novel Freedom that was published in The New Yorker. Ramsey Hill’s transition from blighted suburb to enclave of stroller-pushing public-radio listeners is an object lesson in the potential pitfalls of gentrification—and the perfect grounds for one family’s psychological unraveling.
For various dystopic takes on the American suburb, see: Stepford, Connecticut, in The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin; the suburb in Edward Scissorhands inspired by Burbank, California; Brewer, Pennsylvania, in John Updike’s Rabbit series
Appears in:Cinnamon Shops: And Other Stories, by Bruno Schulz. Somewhere between Kafka and Gabriel Garcia Márquez is Bruno Schulz, the author of a magical-realist semi-memoir that sends its child narrator on a midnight journey through the labyrinthine Polish village of Drohobych, where shops literally come to life.
For other impossible architectures, see: any of Italo Calvino’s invisible cities; Jorge Luis Borges’s Library of Babel; the character Caden Cotard’s New York City within a warehouse in the movie Synecdoche, New York
Appears in: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. Sure, one could read the Shire as a Luddite retreat from modernity, but damn, those hills are bucolic. Who wouldn’t want to spend a weekend in Bag End?
For more back-to-the-land adorability, see: Whoville from various Dr. Seuss books; the Ewok Village in Return of the Jedi; the planet Pandora in Avatar
Appears in:Sesame Street. It’s so diverse that people of all races and ages work and play together—and they do so alongside a slew of monsters, a gigantic bird, a woolly mammoth-like creature, and a filthy grouch.
For more educational puppet sets, see: The Neighborhood of Make-Believe from Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood; Fraggle Rock
This article first appeared in GOOD Issue 19: The Neighborhoods Issue. You can read more from the issue here, or find out what it’s all about by reading the issue introduction.
Reddit user Girlfriendhatesmefor’s three-year-old pitbull, Otis, had recently become overprotective of his wife. So he asked the online community if they knew what might be wrong with the dog.
“A week or two ago, my wife got some sort of stomach bug,” the Reddit user wrote under the subreddit /r/dogs. “She was really nauseous and ill for about a week. Otis is very in tune with her emotions (we once got in a fight and she was upset, I swear he was staring daggers at me lol) and during this time didn’t even want to leave her to go on walks. We thought it was adorable!”
His wife soon felt better, butthe dog’s behavior didn’t change.
Girlfriendhatesmefor began to fear that Otis’ behavior may be an early sign of an aggression issue or an indication that the dog was hurt or sick.
So he threw a question out to fellow Reddit users: “Has anyone else’s dog suddenly developed attachment/aggression issues? Any and all advice appreciated, even if it’s that we’re being paranoid!”
The most popular response to his thread was by ZZBC.
Any chance your wife is pregnant?
ZZBC | Reddit
The potential news hit Girlfriendhatesmefor like a ton of bricks. A few days later, Girlfriendhatesmefor posted an update and ZZBC was right!
“The wifey is pregnant!” the father-to-be wrote. “Otis is still being overprotective but it all makes sense now! Thanks for all the advice and kind words! Sorry for the delayed reply, I didn’t check back until just now!”
Redditors responded with similar experiences.
Anecdotal I know but I swear my dog knew I was pregnant before I was. He was super clingy (more than normal) and was always resting his head on my belly.
realityisworse | Reddit
So why do dogs get overprotective when someone is pregnant?
Jeff Werber, PhD, president and chief veterinarian of the Century Veterinary Group in Los Angeles, told Health.com that “dogs can also smell the hormonal changes going on in a woman’s body at that time.” He added the dog may “not understand that this new scent of your skin and breath is caused by a developing baby, but they will know that something is different with you—which might cause them to be more curious or attentive.”
The big lesson here is to listen to your pets and to ask questions when their behavior abruptly changes. They may be trying to tell you something, and the news may be life-changing.
Throughout history, women have stood up and fought to break down barriers imposed on them from stereotypes and societal expectations. The trailblazers in these photos made history and redefined what a woman could be. In doing so, they paved the way for future generations to stand up and continue to fight for equality.
While conspiracy theories are not limited to any topic, there is one type of event that seems particularly likely to spark them: mass shootings, typically defined as attacks in which a shooter kills at least four other people.
When one person kills many others in a single incident, particularly when it seems random, people naturally seek out answers for why the tragedy happened. After all, if a mass shooting is random, anyone can be a target.
