Life

Hold on to your peppermint mochaccinos – the Rockettes are not from New York City

In some ways, it feels like I stepped off the plane at JFK from London mere days ago – wide-eyed, naive and still convinced that “winter” would be charming and cozy rather than a six-month endurance test in avoiding frostbite. Yet here I am, somehow entering my sixth year of participating in the annual pageant that is the New York holiday season: that weeks-long spectacle beginning with the first delicate whiff of PSL-something and ending in the far-too-slowly receding hangover on an insultingly arctic New Year’s Day. The first year, Covid-tinted and therefore emotionally reminiscent of a half-deflated Macy’s parade balloon, was not what one might call festive. But things

rockettes
inca Llullaillaco

Inside the Inca ritual of child sacrifice

The children of Llullaillaco don’t look too different from the living children I’ve seen around Salta. They’ve got the same diamond-shaped faces, pecan-colored skin and straight, pitch-dark hair. Of course, the children of Llullaillaco are smaller, as people five centuries ago were wont to be – and dead. I’m talking about three Incan child-sacrifice mummies, estimated ages five, six and 15. As of about 25 years ago, they’re permanent residents of Salta, Argentina, the capital of a province of the same name in the country’s northwest. As the crow flies, the city isn’t that much closer to Buenos Aires than to Lima. Due west of Salta, in the Andes, is