Irony

"Aprons: Icons of the American Home" by Joyce Cheney (Running Press, 143 pages, $24.95) With vast affection for motherhood, a collection of aprons curated by Ms. Cheney has toured 15 cities. This catalog, cleanly designed and delightfully illustrated, is a small coffee table gem. There are aprons old, and aprons way out new. Imagination, irony, ceremony, utility, ornamentation, ritual, antiquity and outrageousness abound. Apparently, the actual use of aprons is in decline -- but this book might just reverse the trend.

When David Wilson begins his slide talk at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, the audience is plunged into darkness. That works practically and poetically. After all, it's David Wilson, meaning you're in the dark even when the lights go up. Who is this man, really? Really, what's he up to? You have to ask. You have to ask as soon as you walk into the auditorium and you hear this odd music streaming from two little box speakers at the podium. It sounds like a cross between a violin and an oboe, maybe a viola and a bassoon, an instrument playing with such abundant sadness that it straddles the line between tragedy and comedy.

Joseph Heller, who helped make coherent the innate insanity of the human condition, is dead at 76. A heart attack, suffered at his home in East Hampton, N.Y., Sunday night, ended the career of an intensely professional man. Joseph Heller, the writer, is immortal.By fashioning the title and the concept of the 1961 novel "Catch-22," he became one of a handful of writers to change indelibly the language, and the manner of thinking, of his civilization.He turned the random tyrannies of organization, governments and war into an easily comprehended irony -- a truly great joke.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Perhaps nobody has been more stunned by the reaction to Jedediah Purdy's "For Common Things: Irony, Trust and Commitment in America Today" than the author himself. The 35,000-copy first printing of the slim volume, which calls for a retreat from the irony and cynicism that pervade modern culture, sold out within weeks of its debut last month. Reviews have run the gamut, from calling the book "the kind ... one finds oneself recommending unreservedly" to "arduous" and "self-righteous."

Gucci designer Tom Ford spends a lot of time in California these days. One week a month, he visits to absorb the look and feel of Los Angeles, which he says mirror Gucci's image."

"The Jukebox Queen of Malta," by Nicholas Rinaldi. Simon & Schuster. 368 pages. $25.It's April 1942: Corporal Rocco Raven, 21, a mechanic from Brooklyn, has been sent to Malta from Fort Benning. In a portent of things to come, he's nearly killed when enemy planes strafe the airfield as he lands, his life saved by the strange and elusive Lieutenant (soon to be Captain, Major, then Lieutenant Colonel) Jack Fingerly, from whom he'll take orders for the eight months he spends on the island.Malta, positioned as it is between the North Coast of Africa and the heel of Sicily, has strategic merit -- and history.

It's 1984. Apple founder Steve Jobs ushers in a new world order with the introduction of the Macintosh computer. He announces his creation with a TV commercial that becomes legendary, a Ridley Scott-directed ode to George Orwell's "1984," complete with faceless minions and Big Brother watching from a giant video screen.When a young woman runs up to the screen and smashes it, the message to those in the know is clear: Big Brother (or, more accurately, Big Blue, aka IBM) was being knocked down a peg from its position atop the high-tech world of computers.

THE OTHER SATURDAY my father and I were heading off to Rehoboth Beach, expecting to find nothing but traffic. But it turned out to be one of those rare Memorial Day Saturdays when the backups evaporated and the weather was warm and perfect.There, as we cruised along Maryland Route 404, just outside Denton, we encountered roadside fields of billowing poppies, the red, orange and white blossoms as light as tissue paper.It was just the look I wanted for my own garden -- a patch of seed-sown poppies blooming away on a fine late spring day.Guess what?

PHOENIX -- A man's dreams are as unique as his DNA code. So it's inevitable that some are a little strange. Take David Woodworth, for instance, whose hope it is to open a museum devoted to recreational vehicles."

Nine years after his death, Harry Weinberg still maintains a powerful grip on downtown Baltimore.Over the next two weeks, the City Council is expected to approve a bill condemning 127 downtown properties as part of a renewal project that city leaders say will rival the Inner Harbor. For shop owners set to lose their properties, the cruel irony of the plan is that it is being initiated by the billion-dollar charitable foundation Weinberg left behind.Many have held their businesses long enough to remember 30 years back when "Honolulu Harry" was a dominant force in Baltimore's downtown.