April 2013
31 posts
“We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for...”
– Thomas Merton
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The older generations are coming around to therapy →
When it comes to therapy and mental illness, there is a tendency in our culture to idealize the Greatest and Silent Generations—those roughly in their 60s-90s—for the way they handle their problems. They sucked it up, they didn’t complain, they didn’t need to go to therapy or a support group.
This is often contrasted with the situation today, where it is said that people...
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People who make rare appearances on Facebook
Do you ever see a posting from someone who almost never posts on Facebook and you wonder, why on earth did this person choose this to post about? It will be for instance something silly about their pet, or cheering on their sports team, or an “I love my best friend”-type post. Something so utterly uncontroversial as to make it really truly mystifying that this person has restrained...
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Today in Amazon reviews: 'Soviet Filters"
Amazon reviews are way too much fun. Here’s mine on Chemex Filters:
If you own a Chemex, you really don’t have a choice with filters. It’s these guys or nothing. So fine, I’ll go with your filters, Chemex, but I’ll continue to point out that as long as there is only one choice of Chemex filter, we all live in a one-filter state.
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I love writing Amazon reviews
It’s actually really fun. Here’s a recent one I wrote about Mad Men, Season 6:
Season 6 is shaping up well. It really got going once Pete Campbell emerged. For some reason he’s such a joy to watch. So far there’s a lot of setup, but I imagine pretty soon we’ll be seeing some of the big events happen.
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The man in the cowboy hat and counseling
In the story of the man in the cowboy hat who ran toward the explosion in Boston while others ran away, I couldn’t help but notice this fact [emphasis mine]:
When his 20-year-old son was killed in Iraq in 2004, Arrendondo was inconsolable. In his agony and rage, he set a van on fire and received help through counseling. Seven years later, his other son committed suicide.
It is pretty...
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Mom or scientist?
When a successful woman is portrayed first as a mother and wife and not as she was professionally, it is often criticized, as it is in this article in reference to the obituary of rocket scientist Yvonne Brill.
She was a brilliant rocket scientist who followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. “The world’s best mom,” her son Matthew said.
...
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Building the walk to the park into our lifestyles
Researchers have long theorized that green spaces are calming, requiring less of our so-called directed mental attention than busy, urban streets do. Instead, natural settings invoke “soft fascination,” a beguiling term for quiet contemplation, during which directed attention is barely called upon and the brain can reset those overstretched resources and reduce mental fatigue. But this theory,...
How can something be so much more fun retroactively than it was actively?
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“By modernity, I mean the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent which make up...”
– Charles Baudelaire in Painter of Modern Life (1863)
Saw this quote yesterday at the Degas Cirque exhibit at the Morgan Library
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What I hate about editing
I don’t hate the editing process. It is actually one of my favorite parts of writing. One reason I like it is that it means the writing is now largely done, and I’ve reacquired some sense of stability. Writing is freedom in a way, and freedom, as M. Scott Peck says in the book I’m currently reading, the Road Less Traveled, is scary. So I tend to like surrendering some freedom in...
“American parents were the only ones to consistently mention their...”
– How Parents Around the World Describe Their Children, in Charts
The best writing
In my effort to write something, I’ve been thinking hard recently about what I read and why I read it, and I’ve decided it must say something truthful, and it must be eloquent. And I realize these two things are very hard to integrate, being eloquent about the truth. I think it must be one of the most difficult things to do, and that’s why I regard Ralph Ellison and F. Scott...
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“I said it must be Sunday
Cause everybody’s telling the truth
And then...”
– Phoebe Snow, “It Must be Sunday”
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Is this a THING??? I think this is a THING...
You guys have all heard it. It’s an expression used in 2013 throughout the land. It’s everyone’s favorite way to comment on something that is currently in the public consciousness. Well here are ten people, places, and objects, that you could properly insert into the sentence: “I think [insert here] is a thing now!” And then you can take stock of the fact that you are...
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Realistic v. anti-realistic debate
James Wood of the New Yorker starts off a review of a book called the Flamethrowers with this pretentious effort at being counter-intuitive and dismissive:
Put aside, for the moment, the long postwar argument between the rival claims of realistic and anti-realistic fiction—the seasoned triumphs of the traditional American novel on one side, and the necessary innovations of postmodern fiction on...
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“I have no objection to a nice bra, still less to being invited to remove one....”
– Jonathan Franzen, “Books in Bed” (1997) in How to be Alone
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Breakthrough infectious disease study out of... →
“Researchers find a cure for Bieber fever”
Big kudos to Minnesota for this.
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March 2013
44 posts
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“Writing is a form of personal freedom. It frees us from the mass identity we see...”
– Don DeLillo quoted by Jonathan Franzen in “Why Bother?” from How to Be Alone
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““A friend of mine keeps telling me that reading and writing are ultimately...”
– Shirley Brice Heath quoted in Jonathan Franzen’s essay “Why Bother” from his book How to be Alone
“This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think...”
– Jack Kerouac, On the Road
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“The real problem is that the average man or woman’s entire life is...”
– Jonathan Franzen in “Why Bother?” from his book How to be Alone
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The Onion speaks the truth about our neglected... →
Even as far as Onion articles go, I haven’t in a long time seen one tweeted as far and as wide as this one: “Find The Thing You’re Most Passionate About, Then Do It On Nights And Weekends For The Rest Of Your Life”
The bottom line is that life is short, and you owe it to yourself to spend the majority of it giving yourself wholly and completely to something you absolutely hate, and 20 minutes...
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The Weather Channel and the 10-year Anniversary of...
When I think of the 10-year anniversary of the Iraq War, I think of the Weather Channel. On March 20 of 2003, I was in Boston, visiting my brother at his college while on my own spring break. For reasons I won’t go into, I was staying at a budget hotel near in Kenmore Square, which meant I could watch lots of uninterrupted TV.
Initially I kept the television tuned in on the war coverage to stay...
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Overheard: art museum diss
One of the panels at the “Picasso and Chicago” exhibit at the Art Institute mentioned that American author and staple of the Paris literary scene Gertrude Stein was a huge fan of Pablo Picasso and bought some of his paintings.
As I was walking by the drawing below, I overheard a little old lady say: “You can understand Gertrude Stein buying this because she looked like...
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Train seat resentment
One of the perhaps meaner thoughts I have when I’m on the train is about the people who are sitting when I’m standing. In my head, I believe I deserve to sit more than they deserve to. I know that this is totally irrational and self-serving of me, but I can’t help thinking it sometimes.
Here’s where I’m coming from, though I’m not defending it. When I’m...
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“They heard me singing and told me to stop,
Quit these pretentious things and...”
– “Sprawl II,” by Arcade Fire 