Category: People & Human Interest

Timothy Egan updates yesterday’s column on Amanda Knox, which I linked to yesterday.

One more newspaper prom article. Except this one begins:

Pulsing purple and green strobe lights swirl across satin gowns and bare arms. Pink’s defiant “So What?” rages on a dance floor packed with smiling, spinning teenagers.

Just outside the prom, Miles Person considers — just for a second — the time he has left to live. His doctors say four months, that there is nothing left to fight the brain tumors that began at age 17.

Children’s Hospital: A prom to live for – The Denver Post

Timothy Egan tells of a young American woman accused of murder in Italy.

Be sure to read the first comment.

A Hobby of Mine

Especially for dog lovers.

What do you think this 23-year-old who makes $22,000 a year and lives with his parents does for a living?

The Chicago Tribune tells you.

(P.S. He’s an airline pilot.)

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.”

An excerpt from Pico Iyer on “The Joy of Less”

Provocative essay. Go read it.

Tim Kreider’s “Reprieve” is worth your time, too.

Thanks to Veronica for pointing to the Iyer piece.

“Half A Tank is a summer-long quest to find images and stories of people whose lives have been altered by a flattened economy. Starting from home in the D.C. suburbs, Theresa Vargas and Michael Williamson are traveling around the country to experience how people are coping, struggling, even flourishing as we all reconsider how we live.”

Good stuff. Begin with the first post — Half a Tank: Along Recession Road. At the bottom of each post, before the comments, is a link to the next.

An entertaining Los Angeles Times article on the shortest commencement speeches ever.

They’re never short enough; these may be the exception.

HERMOSILLO, Sonora — One tiny coffin and one devastated family is enough to bring a city to its knees.

Thirty-eight such scenes are playing out here this weekend as Hermosillo mourns dozens of toddlers who died when a fast-moving blaze swept through their day-care center Friday.

The Arizona Daily Star has the story.

The day-care building had only one exit.

Hilarious.

Thanks to the blogger formerly known as Functional Ambivalent for the link.

That day a friend was telling her about a student named Barry she ought to photograph “because he’s so cute.” Moments later, the man himself walked in. He agreed to the shoot.

There was nothing out of the ordinary about the session, Jack says, although it impressed her that Obama had taken the initiative to bring the big, banded hat, a leather, bomber-style jacket with a fur collar and cigarettes as grist for her lens. “He obviously thought about how he wanted to have his picture taken.” Obama shared at least one characteristic with the other students who sat for her portraits: “I think the thing that everybody was trying to portray the most was how cool they were.”

Jack appreciated Obama when she ran into him that summer in a Honolulu nightclub — he a local, she a visiting summer student. “He was sitting there with a woman on each lap. They were babes, and I’m not a babe.” But the president-to-be extricated himself, came over to Jack’s table and chatted. That he’d show such courtesy while otherwise engaged “told me Obama was a cool dude,” Jack says.

Article about the photo exhibit from the Los Angeles Times.

Cool dude — and two laps.

This Memorial Day I would like to share with you a personal project of mine that uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have created a map for Google Earth that will connect you with each of their stories—you can see photos, learn about how they died, visit memorial websites with comments from friends and families, and explore the places they called home and where they died.

Map the Fallen

Read Matt Taibbi’s answer.

I’ll just give you a one-line teaser: “If this little kid isn’t hooked on black baggy clothes and cutting by age 11 I’ll be shocked.”

A swell Memorial Day story about Donna Reed, the pinup who kept a box full of the letters sent her during World War II.

Seriously read this tragic local news story only if you want or need a very big cry.

At SinPantalones we read about shopping for its own sake. Is this behavior common?

Near the end of a third-quarter timeout, the camera caught Val Kilmer and three of his chins on the JumboTron, punctuating the moment by playing “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins. You know, a “Top Gun” homage. He took a second or two to get the joke, then unleashed one of those “Very funny, you got me, just know that I’m on a lot of meds right now” smiles. And this would have been enjoyable on its own, but they cut to someone else in the stands. …

That’s right. …

Tom Cruise!

He caught on a little quicker and did the Tom Cruise Over-Laugh. And this would have been great on its own, but the Lakers pushed it to another level: They went split-screen with Kilmer and Cruise with “Danger Zone” still blasting. As far as I was concerned, this was the most emotional reunion in Lakers history.

Bill Simmons has more.

And there is some great Kobe and LeBron analysis down the page.

This is a photo of my dear friend Fran with my cousin Terry in front.

Fran was celebrating her 90th birthday last week. I love the look of pure joy on her face.

Here’s the longer view of that same photo that gives you more of the story.

And one of the Biker Babe.

Or click the image above to see all four photos.

I liked Timothy Egan’s essay about Justice Souter.

34 weeks pregnant and dooce is particularly funny today. A short excerpt:

“I’m also way more emotional than I have been in previous weeks, on the verge of tears all day long, and even now as I write this I’m trying not to cry. About what? Do you even have to ask that question? Yesterday it was because my tortilla chip broken into several pieces as I was dipping it into salsa.”

NewMexiKen first published this four years ago today and again in 2007.

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From an article in The Albuquerque Tribune:

Those who didn’t care much for Pete Nanos still seethed over the comment he made about some lab employees being “cowboys and butt-heads” during an all-hands meeting of Los Alamos National Laboratory employees last year.

Not a good choice of words for a staff meeting, but I’ve got to admit that every place NewMexiKen ever worked had its share of “cowboys and buttheads.”

“While Obama and Biden waited in line, the lunch crowd stood and gawked, some took pix with cell phones. The two guys in line ahead of them studied their menus, oblivious to who was behind them.”

Pool reporter Linda Feldmann has the story.

I’ve always thought it cool when the president, whoever he might be, hangs with the regular folks.

Muddy sent the link to this video along.

13,500 Sing “Hey Jude” in Trafalgar Square

It’s kinda stupid, but infectious as it goes along. Go ahead, sing along. It won’t hurt you.

As I said, we’re all in this together.