Category: People & Human Interest

Today’s Times

NewMexiKen subscribes to The New York Times — yes, beginning again this week to the actual dead-tree version. Anyway, as those of you who don’t subscribe (print or digital) may know, you only get 20 free articles a month. So, borrowing an idea from The Atlantic Wire, I’ll feature articles that I think are worth spending your allowance on.

Here’s two very different stories, which I think describe people and how they react to very real, yet very different kinds of crises. Neither story is particularly long, and both I thought were good reads.

A Town’s Few Holdouts Wait Out the Flood at the Bar

In Misurata, Qaddafi’s Soldiers Receive Respect, if Not Honors

Child Brides

No, real child brides.

Because the wedding was illegal and a secret, except to the invited guests, and because marriage rites in Rajasthan are often conducted late at night, it was well into the afternoon before the three girl brides in this dry farm settlement in the north of India began to prepare themselves for their sacred vows. They squatted side by side on the dirt, a crowd of village women holding sari cloth around them as a makeshift curtain, and poured soapy water from a metal pan over their heads. Two of the brides, the sisters Radha and Gora, were 15 and 13, old enough to understand what was happening. The third, their niece Rajani, was 5. She wore a pink T-shirt with a butterfly design on the shoulder. A grown-up helped her pull it off to bathe.

Read about the child brides from the June National Geographic Magazine.

Six-Word Momoirs

Summing up motherhood in just six words is no easy task. But more than 7,000 Well readers did just that, entering their short memoirs as part of our Six-Word Momoirs contest.

The challenge was to explain your mother, someone else’s mother or motherhood in general in just six words. . . .

The six winners are the last listed, but read the whole column.

Six-Word Momoirs: The Contest Winners!

Made me miss my Mom, and it’s been 37 years.

Paul Simon and a Moment of Pure Sobbing Joy

“Paul Simon has brought joy to so many for so long, but on this night he made Rayna Ford’s dream come true. During a show in Toronto on May 7, Rayna Ford, a fan from Newfoundland, called out for Simon to play ‘Duncan,’ and said something to the effect that she learned to play guitar on the song. In a moment of astonishment and disbelief, Paul Simon invited her on stage, handed her a guitar and asked her to play it for the crowd.”

All Songs Considered Blog : NPR

And here is the video:

Why didn’t I think of that?

NewMexiKen’s grand nephew, The Bandit, is six today. He is quite insightful beyond his years however, as this conversation with his mother about the Tooth Fairy shows — Why didn’t I think of that? | The Quill Sisters.

Joe Posnanski has a “little essay on getting old” that any adult who is older today than they were yesterday should read — Joe Blogs: The Captain and Denial. It has a sports framework but tells universal truths and Joe is always good.

I know personally that I still feel like 35, but my body can’t keep up.

The Atlantic Wire has been running a feature “asking various people who seem well-informed to describe their media diets.” Today it is Jennifer Egan, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her novel A Visit from the Goon Squad. Jennifer Egan: What I Read – The Atlantic Wire.

For more Media Diets: Malcolm Gladwell, Susan Glassner, Joe Weisenthal, Andrea Mitchell, Anna Holmes, Eric Schmidt, Nick Denton, David Brooks, Andrew Breitbart, Gary Shteyngart, Tom McGeveran, Megan McCarthy, Bret Stephens, Joseph Epstein, Dave Weigel, Christopher Hayes, Chris Anderson, Lewis Lapham, Reihan Salam, Peggy Noonan, Joe Randazzo, Jay Rosen, Neetzan Zimmerman, Clay Shirky, and many more here.

Sebastian Junger Remembers Tim Hetherington

You and I were always talking about risk because she was the beautiful woman we were both in love with, right? The one who made us feel the most special, the most alive? We were always trying to have one more dance with her without paying the price. All those quiet, huddled conversations we had in Afghanistan: Where to walk on the patrols, what to do if the outpost gets overrun, what kind of body armor to wear. You were so smart about it, too—so smart about it that I would actually tease you about being scared. Of course you were scared—you were terrified. We both were. We were terrified and we were in love, and in the end, you were the one she chose.

Vanity Fair has Junger’s full tribute to his friend and colleague. They co-directed the excellent film Restrepo, my choice for best documentary of 2010.

Just gotsta dance

Bodies in motion: Dancing around the world

The dictionary defines it as “to move one’s feet or body, or both, rhythmically in a pattern of steps, especially to the accompaniment of music.” People around the world, however, have their own definitions of dance, as exemplified by these images taken since the first of the year. And such expressions can celebrate a culture, win a competition, make a living, entertain a crowd, and play a role in propelling social change. Get those bodies and feet moving. — Lloyd Young (40 photos total)

The Big Picture

Your over-achieving honor student is ruining it for the rest of us

The Intel Science Talent Search is considered the nation’s most elite and demanding high school research competition, attracting the crème de la milk-fats-encased-in-a-phospholipid-and-protein-membrane of aspiring young scientists. Victors and near-victors in the 69-year-old contest have gone on to win seven Nobel Prizes in physics or chemistry, two Fields Medals in mathematics, a half-dozen National Medals in science and technology, a long string of MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants — and now, an Academy Award for best actress in a leading role.

Above from the beginning of an interesting and amusing piece — Natalie Portman, Oscar Winner, Was Also a Precocious Scientist.

Ms. Portman studied neuroscience and the evolution of the mind at Harvard (B.A. 2003) and is mentioned in passing in The Social Network. Her name is Natalie Hershlag.

Alas, it’s not true

. . . but it was funny when we thought it was.

According to a report from The New Yorker, the initial story was that the looters at the Egyptian Museum last month — “stole nothing of value—’they thought the [gift] shop was the museum, thank God!’ ”

As someone who has done my share of musuem gift shop browsing, I can totally say that the gift shop often has the best stuff.

But it seems the looters really did steal a few museum objects and not all have been recovered.

Are we there yet?

NewMexiKen is taking the day off. Even so, if I see things I think you should read, I’ll list them here.

You can begin with Tanya at Dinner without Crayons.

Karen went Walking On The Moon, a must read. Views like that — and chiles — are why I stay a New Mexican, Karen.

As The King’s Speech moves toward its coronation by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on the 27th, you might want to read The King’s Speech: good movie, very bad history by Christopher Hitchens.

And a best line from Krugman:

“[A]s far as right-wing politicians are concerned: for the most part they know that Obama was born here, that he isn’t a socialist, that there are no death panels, and so on, but feel compelled to pretend to be crazy as a career move.”

Last night after finishing Iris Chang’s important The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, I read Sarah Vowell’s Radio On: A Listener’s Diary. As the subtitle implies, Vowell annotated her radio listening — for a year (1995). It’s dated, and not equal to her more recent work, but it has its moments. Today I am into Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne. I read the free Kindle sample of this book in January and have been eager to read the whole book but wanted a dead tree edition. UPS delivered it last Friday, the day after I ordered it, but to the vacant house across the street. The painter working at the house over the weekend took it inside — go figure — but fortunately the owner dropped by yesterday and had sense enough to walk it across the street.

Best line of the day

“But the most important thing, I think, is that when you’ve found a partner, you should take the time to kiss them often. We should all be kissing more. For the important relationships in our lives, it matters tremendously.”

Kissing scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum quoted in an interview with The Book Bench: Ask an Academic, Valentine’s Edition: The Kiss : The New Yorker.

Hmm line of the day

“Joining a group that meets just once a month produces the same increase in happiness as doubling your income.”

David Brooks in a fascinating article, What the science of human nature can teach us, from the January 17th New Yorker.

Though I thought he started off slowly — where are we going with this? — it’s a fascinating essay about you and me and everybody else.

I urge you to take the time to read and enjoy it. I could have posted another dozen remarkable lines.

Thanks to Rich for the pointer.

Best line of the day

“[M]ost people get worse as they grow older, because they become more like themselves.”

Paul Krugman stating a particular example from Issawi’s Law on the conservation of evil.

That may be the single most insightful line that has ever appeared on this blog (or anywhere for that matter).

It is certainly the scariest line that has appeared here.

Snow Day

Joe Posnanski writes about snow days, as only he can. Delightful.

Which got me to thinking. I may never have had a snow day in school. I went to high school in Tucson. It rarely snows there, and I don’t remember a snow day. I went to kindergarten through eighth grade in Michigan, but I happen to know there had never been a snow day at the school I attended for first, second, third, fifth and part of sixth grade. (I know this because the first snow day in school history was when I was a teacher at the same school.) Maybe there was a snow day the other years, but I sure don’t remember any.