The only good thing about hurricanes is seeing Anderson Cooper and Rob Marciano on the TV together.
“The truth is made worse by the reality that no one—really no one—anywhere on the political spectrum has the courage to speak out about the madness of unleashed guns and what they do to American life. That includes the President, whose consoling message managed to avoid the issue of why these killings take place. Of course, we don’t know, and perhaps never will, what exactly “made him” do what he did; but we know how he did it. Those who fight for the right of every madman and every criminal to have as many people-killing weapons as they want share moral responsibility for what happened last night—as they will when it happens again. And it will happen again.”
— No matter what you think of Adam Gopnik, this is truth.
Christine Fellows - Vertebrae
I find this song so gripping for reasons I don’t know if I really want to put my finger on lest I squash them. Instead I’ll just post the lyrics in full for you, and ask you to stay until the last chorus for one of the sweetest crescendos of arrangement I’ve ever experienced.
A photo essay of a family in mourning, perforated ever so slightly to better letthe light seep through. Sunday traffic clears a path. We float inches above the road. Close our eyes and drive so slow, like we never need to get home to clear the doorstep of flowers, throw open the blinds in his empty room, avert our eyes from his fingerprints. Is there something I’m forgetting? Fall to my knees in the hospital parking lot on the way in, arms full of branches. I am deadfall. Deadfall. Last time I came here to visit him I ran sunburned through the halls, my arms full of tiger lilies. I don’t remember this. I was told to go home, clear the doorstep of flowers, throw open the blinds in his empty room, avert my eyes from his fingerprints. Is there something I’m forgetting? (Why, when you know you should go, is it so hard to leave?) Came this far to say goodbye, to set things right. Instead, I fiddle with his blankets, fetching coffee no one will drink. I am not prepared. Through the hust of debts and the roar of engines we’ll struggle to recall: this is how it ended. This is how it ends. Home. Turn the key in the door and puase for what seems like an awfully long time. There’s something I’m both remembering and forgetting. A name on the tip of my tongue.
Her voice is a revelation, and thoroughly comforting.
Enough
with the Venn diagrams already. I get it. You’re very smart. You know what a Venn diagram is. Congratufuckinglations.
“Lie down next to me
and chase me back to sleep now,
we are exhausted.”
—
Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson
(via tylerknott)
(via constructionpaper)
Alice
I was surprisingly moved today by the death of Alice Steinbach, who was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize at the Baltimore Sun, for feature writing, in 1985. She wrote for the Sun from 1981 to 1999, and I joined the paper in 2001, so I never really knew her. I would still see her in the newsroom occasionally, and of course I knew of her legend.
I suppose I’m really just sad for the loss of the world she represented. On the day she won the Pulitzer, in 1985, another Sun reporter, Jon Franklin, also won a Pulitzer, for expository writing. Two in one day! For a mid-size metro paper! But the prizes isn’t really the point, either. It’s the place where it all happened. The building is still there, of course, but that place isn’t.
The Sun’s obit of Alice Steinbach today says she once wrote that there were “three things in life that never let me down. I call them ‘the three C’s’: children, cats and coffee.”
Here she is on the day she and Jon Franklin won, in 1985. Who wouldn’t want to be there with them?
Take what you need
Baseball player Don Carman had grown so tired of mundane post-game interviews by 1990 that he decided to forego them altogether, and instead attached a handwritten list of stock responses to his locker along with a message to reporters: “You saw the game. Take what you need.”
(Source: bankbryan)
“If John Boehner is speaker of the House for the next 20 years, he’ll be lucky to match Nancy Pelosi’s achievements.”
— William Saletan, Slate, November 5, 2010 — ticking off what Pelosi’s Congress accomplished: health care, financial reform, economic stimulus, college lending reform, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and much more. More than a year later, Boehner’s failure — and Pelosi’s triumph — is clear.
“Ask Osama bin Laden … if I engage in appeasement.”
—
President Obama (via nationaljournal)
Gauntlet thrown.
(via joshsternberg)
(via theatlantic)
There is a man walking his orange cat on a leash on the plaza of the United States Supreme Court. Meanwhile, I am still standing in line.
