The State of the Union happened.
Look. Either you get art or you don’t.
Across the pond, something called Page 3 is about to be slightly less sexist. Yay?
David Swerdlick, of The Root, spent the day with Dr. Ben Carson who is poised to run for president. If he were elected, we would have two black presidents in a row. Can you imagine how much shit racists would lose? Don’t vote for Carson, to be clear, as he is conservative (not a bad thing) and doesn’t have women’s best interests at heart (a very bad thing). Still…
If you want a better idea about what Ben Carson sees as the driving force behind his presidential campaign-in-waiting, perhaps look no further than Carson’s own explanation for his rise in popularity on the conservative political circuit: “It’s not so much me as it is the courage to say what needs to be said.”
Have you been targeted by online harassment? If so, there’s help out there.
A bad ass woman owns one of the biggest bail bond agencies in New York. I want to stride into rooms. Is there a place where we can learn to do that?
Wearing high-heeled boots and flanked by two bodyguards, Michelle Esquenazi strode into the classroom and took a seat in front of 30 or so sleepy teenagers. It was a cloudless morning in November, and the owner and president of Empire Bail Bonds was invited to speak at Wellington C. Mepham, a public high school in Bellmore, Long Island. Her subject was supposed to be the criminal justice system, but she seemed more interested in scaring the kids straight.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adhichie has a new short story up at Matter.
Just FYI, your reading is being tracked. NBD I guess.
Lately, I’ve been reading Vanity Fair, and among the profound pleasures it provides is the mysterious, almost indescribable sensation of being alone with Becky Sharp and her coterie of unfortunate rivals and hapless admirers. Solitude is and has always been an essential component of reading; many children become readers in part to enjoy the privacy it offers. And in an age in which our email messages can be perused by the NSA and our Facebook posts are scanned for clues to our habits and our desires, what joy and a relief it is, to escape into a book and know that no one is watching. But now it turns out that someone or something may have been reading over my shoulder, that I haven’t been quite so alone as I’d imagined, that Becky and I and her circle may have had some silent, unsuspected, uninvited company.
Literature is responsible for a great many things including these words.
I’m a sucker for a good romantic line. Here are some from great books. What are your favorite romantic lines? Woo me.
