Pleasing bit of description in Larissa MacFarquhar's Feb. 12 profile of Pat and Paul Churchland, two Canadian philosophy professors who are, at the article's open, wandering at the California seaside:
"It's a little before six in the morning and quite cold on the beach. It's low tide, and the sand is wet and hard-packed and stony."It's almost Hemingwayesque—terse and physical—but he'd have left out the "a little before" and the "quite." I'd prefer it that way, I think, but it still holds up. "Pack" is such a great word.
(Painting: Duane Murrin's "Low Tide.")
(Alf, please skip.)
