Claire McNeill
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Lately: 3

6/25/2013

 
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Peter Bezrukov
New developments: I’ve got a sunburn on approximately 40 percent of my body thanks to falling asleep at Clearwater Beach (but swimming in the Gulf at sunset canceled it out). We came in first in trivia this time, I lost in mini golf and I fed some baby gators. And I’m a reporter now. This is the last editorial I wrote.

Here are some things I’ve been reading and thinking about.

“I have been an asshole to Katie Dippold. Katie Dippold has been an asshole to me. But the very basic foundation of our sometimes complicated friendship involved being confused scared kids who saw something in each other and were kind and brave enough to let the other one know they should at least try to follow their instincts to see if it might just work out.”

If you read one thing: a U.S. soldier’s devastating suicide note. (And here, if you scroll to the bottom, is a thoughtful response from a fellow vet.)

“Like writing, or being in love, or painting a room: there is no clear path between not knowing how and knowing, no obvious task that will get you there, other than the doing of the thing until it becomes a part of you, until you are big enough to hold the knowing. Until you learn to see yourself as someone who can.”

Anyone else notice this about Esquire’s prose?

“Writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities, as essential as the knowledge of mathematics and statistics in the sciences. But writing well isn’t merely a utilitarian skill. It is about developing a rational grace and energy in your conversation with the world around you.”

Could you exist with one, instead of five, social networks? (Personally, I don’t love the insinuation that the internet as being superfluous, mainly because it seems to’ve become more an extra layer of our lives rather than a mindless escape, but I think everyone could agree a conscious approach to consumption is good.)

From the archives: the Pulitzer-winning “Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?” Absolutely devastating and so compassionately written.

I finally got around to Wright Thompson’s journey into the racist Italian soccer underworld.

Loved this poem: Gate A-4, by Naomi Shihab Nye.

“I basically destroyed my favorite books with the pure logorrheic force of my excitement, spraying them so densely with scribbled insight that the markings almost ceased to have meaning.” The joys of marginalia.

The bookstore strikes back!

Holy this cover of No Diggity by Chet Faker. And these two songs are the ones I’ve been listening to most this week.

Jessica Stanley’s READ.LOOK.THINK. is hands down the smartest and best collection of weekly links on the internet, featuring all things psychology, writing, feminism, media, food, travel and more. Last week’s batch is a stellar example of why it’s my favorite place to find good reads.

AV Club’s Ton VanDerWerff has the best Mad Men analyses. This one’s for the season six finale.

“It seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art’s heart’s purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It’s got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself than can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.” — DFW

Kierkegaard: “Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs to dizziness.”

Lately: 2

6/18/2013

 
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Vincent van Gogh | Plain Near Auvers | 1890
This week: a trivia win, more tacos, the totally laughable Man of Steel, two new beaches. Began reading The Secret History, finished up Last Night by James Salter. It’s also my last week on edit board. Next Monday I’m a reporter again.

Here are some things I’ve been reading and thinking about.

My favorite thing this week was Drew Magary’s hilariously absurd journey on the loud-and-proud redneck party dubbed Kid Rock’s Chillin’ The Most Cruise, which is as booze-soaked and insane as you’d expect. Two things: I want to go on that cruise. And when people ask me what I want to do, it’s this. Tell incredible stories like this.

That said, the single greatest thing I have read this year is John Jeremiah Sullivan’s retelling of his family’s trip to Disney World, featuring a kid named Lil’ Dog, covert weed-smoking, a fascinating history of the Disney Empire and incalculably funny sentences. 

Karma repair kit.

The U.S. redrawn as 50 states with equal population. I want this as a wall map in my house (which they’re working on!).

“Qualities you need to get through medical school and residency: Discipline. Patience. Perseverance. A willingness to forgo sleep. A penchant for sadomasochism. Ability to weather crises of faith and self-confidence. Accept exhaustion as fact of life. Addiction to caffeine a definite plus. Unfailing optimism that the end is in sight. Qualities you need to be a novelist: Ditto.”

An everythingist: “the sort of person who is greedy for the benefit of all new experiences, but unwilling to put the work in to fully commit to any of them… It is the deadly combination of perfectionism plus narcissism plus utter laziness.”

Huxley vs. Orwell in a comic.

One of my favorite poems.

The most endearing thing about Norway, which I have just learned, is the country’s unabashed love for boring TV: 30-hour interviews, 18-hour live streams of salmon swimming, endless hours watching wood burn. Amazing, really.

Short Term 12 looks really good. I’ve watched the trailer a few times now.

For fellow Cheryl Strayed fans and also anyone one else: here’s some amazing advice about life, writing, jealousy and humility. “I really do believe that keeping faith with the work itself has a wonderful way of keeping one’s ego in check.”

“#Menswear loves girls in menswear, rarely women; certainly never large women displaying any sign of strength.” Ayesha Siddiqi on ‘Waifs and Wifeys,‘ or the troubling aestheticization of bone-thin girls in the men’s fashion world. She’s also brilliant on Twitter at @pushinghoops.

Lately: 1

6/11/2013

 
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Matthew Brandt
This is the first edition of Lately. Hi.

Summer in St. Petersburg is thick and heavy and the air practically shimmers with the water vapor it holds.

My entire last week could probably be distilled into a slideshow featuring black bean quesadillas, column rewrites, swimming in the Gulf, stacks of books and late-night popsicles in bed.

Here are some things I’ve been reading and thinking about.

“If a baby is born after the 22nd week of pregnancy but before the 25th, not even the smartest doctors in the world can say what will happen to it… About one in 750 babies arrives in that awful window of time, suspended between what is medically possible and what is morally right. One of them was born on April 12, 2011, at Bayfront Medical Center. My daughter.” 

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

A wonderful commencement speech: “He showed me that to read means to become vulnerable to the text, that, with humility and honesty, you have to lay bare not just your ideas but also your deepest convictions, your longings, and your fears.”

I reread my favorite essay of all time the other day and it’s still incredible. Cheryl Strayed, ‘The Love of My Life.’

Want is ten thousand blue feathers falling
all around me, and me unable to stomach
that I might catch five but never ten thousand.

Is everyone out to steal my umbrella? And what should I presume when it’s taken?

“Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat… The flow of water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our habits.” Jonathan Safran Foer reminds us to control the balance of technology in our lives, to be neither unquestioningly pro-tech nor foolishly against it. And he reminds us that our work in life is to be attentive to the needs of others.

After Newtown Shooting, Parents Enter Into the Lonely Quiet.

A perfect comic about feminist media criticism problems, and a good opinion on how to fix that unnecessary battle.

“I started healing my relationship with my body through a kind of side door, while trying to accomplish something else entirely: learning mindfulness.” A great intro to focused thought. Also, Rookie is great. Highly recommend for all (not just teen girls, though I wish it has been around when I was 14).

For Mad Men fans, critical analysis through the lens of fashion, focusing on the incredibly illustrative choices of genius costume designer Janie Bryant.

“Quest is elemental to the human experience. All road narratives are to some extent built on quest. If you’re a woman, though, this fundamental possibility of quest is denied.” On the lack of female road narratives and why it matters, from the fantastic Vanessa Veselka who brought us The Truck Stop Killer.

    Lately:

    My collection of the best things to read & think about in the last month or so, but usually less often than that

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