"This is the story of a hundred-and-seventeen-year-old piece of cheese." That’s the first line of Robert Sullivan’s recent Talk of the Town piece in the New Yorker. I read the article this morning with coffee, having selected that particular magazine because it was within reach.

The cheese came from Lithuania, its current owner inherited it from her Grandmother in 2009. "She flew down from New York to take possession. When she got to the house, the cheese was not in the box on the shelf in the closet where it usually resided—her aunt Linda had put it in the freezer. ‘I was a little freaked out about it,’ she said. The cheese flew back on a Delta flight to LaGuardia. It breezed through security, probably because it smells only when it is close to your face."

Weirdly, in the time it took to write this very short post, the article became unavailable online. If you want to read the whole thing—and believe me, you do—it’s in the September 13 issue.