I was deeply saddened to hear of the death of David Carr. Here is the syllabus from the Press Play course he was teaching. If you are not familiar with his work, here are five stories of his well worth reading.
Deca is a journalist cooperative. They produce deeply reported stories with an international focus. On February 26, Sonia Faleiro’s 13 Men will be released. In this title, Faleiro reconstructs a brutal rape in an Indian village.
At the heart of the story is Baby, a 20 -year-old girl returning to her village in West Bengal from Delhi to care for her ailing mother. Upon arrival, the villagers shun her. Her accent is cosmopolitan, her clothes are too revealing, and “she behaves like she has money now,” whisper her fellow Santhals, members of one of India’s most insular and historically persecuted tribes. When Baby falls in love with Khaleque, an outsider and a Muslim, rural gossip explodes into shocking violence, and Baby faces a moment beyond anyone’s worst fears. Brutally gang-raped by 13 villagers as punishment for loving the wrong man, Baby has nowhere to turn. Her neighbors deny that the crime happened, and Santhal activists rush to her attackers’ defense. With her story suddenly on front pages across the world, Baby’s search for justice comes into terrible conflict with the fate of her people.
A group has put together a media guide for survivors. You might find it useful.
Naomi Alderman writes about loving her fat body and developing a fitness app. Such a good read, this one.
On liberal and conservative humor.
Soon after Jon Stewart arrived at The Daily Show in 1999, the world around him began to change. First, George W. Bush moved into the White House. Then came 9/11, and YouTube, and the advent of viral videos. Over the years, Stewart and his cohort mastered the very difficult task of sorting through all the news quickly and turning it around into biting, relevant satire that worked both for television and the Internet.
Now, as Stewart prepares to leave the show, the brand of comedy he helped invent is stronger than ever. Stephen Colbert is getting ready to bring his deadpan smirk to The Late Show. Bill Maher is continuing to provoke pundits and politicians with his blunt punch lines. John Oliver’sLast Week Tonight is about to celebrate the end of a wildly popular first year. Stewart has yet to announce his post-Daily Show plans, but even if he retires, the genre seems more than capable of carrying on without him.
LOL!
On long distance love.
We don’t choose who we fall in love with. And in the first flight of connection, when the mere idea of a cooler head is often an unwelcome concept, logic takes a back seat to passion.
When Athena and I first got together, we floated blithely past any warnings, barely registering the red flags in our path. But the fact that we were both just out of our respective marriages was a relatively minor concern when compared to the largest looming obstacle: distance – more than 3,000 kilometres, as the crow flies.
Aminatta Forna has wise words on writing and identity.
When I was a child I did not want to be a writer. Instead, I wanted to be many things. When I was seven I wanted to be an inventor. A few years later, and several career changes on, my new determination was to become a wildlife biologist. At my British school the opportunities to study wildlife were limited and so I settled for trying to collect butterflies, which I chased with a net and bottle, but which I rarely caught. Then I discovered there existed gatherings where enthusiasts could buy and swap specimens, and this seemed an altogether easier way to acquire a collection. I remember the first time I went to a fair, held in a town hall, rows and rows of glass display cases, the collectors and visitors bent over them. And inside, the butterflies, pinned down with open wings, labelled with both their Latin and common names. Each case held a single species. Cynthia cardui or Painted Lady. Papilio machaon britannicus Seitz or Swallowtail. Nymphalis antiopa or Camberwell Beauty. I only had enough money to buy one specimen, and so I chose a Swallowtail. I loved the trailing shape of the wings, the royal purple border and what looked like an eye on each wing. Over time I added to my collection, but I did not bother with labels, I couldn’t remember the Latin names anyway; I just arranged them any way I liked and I spent hours looking at them.
Stacia Brown also speaks to writing and identity for Fusion.
A wife lives in constant fear that her husband will discover she’s not who she claims to be. A black aspiring architect is mistaken for an ethnicity other than his own and is offered a job he never would’ve accessed had he corrected the error. A pregnant mother prays nightly that her baby’s skin won’t betray a bit of brownness. Such are the predicaments of characters in the early 20th century “passing narratives” I’ve loved since my days as an undergraduate English major.
To “pass,” as African American writers in the early 1900s defined it, was to choose to escape from the violence and discrimination attendant to blackness — a privilege possible only for those whose skin was light enough to pull it off. Peaking in popularity by the 1930s, passing narratives were often melodramatic and cautionary, detailing the myriad dangers of abandoning one’s black identity in order to take cover amid the white communities that systemically oppressed black citizens.
Annie Easley, modern space travel pioneer.
Few people are brilliant enough to be a computer programmer or a mathematician. Even fewer can add “rocket scientist for NASA” to their resume. Annie Easley, however, was all three. During her 34-year career, she worked not only on technologies that led to hybrid vehicles, but also on software that enabled great strides in spaceflight and exploration. And if that wasn’t notable enough, Easley also did all of this as one of the first few African-Americans in her field.
Love Hotels in Japan are where you can get down.
Though there are many ways to have a sexual rendezvous, there are few so varied, convenient, and strange as the love hotels of Japan. From a high school classroom to a Hello Kitty-themed dungeon to the inevitable, and cliched, sexy nurse, the options are endless and often creepy. Misty Keasler captured this surreal underworld in Love Hotels: The Hidden Fantasy Rooms of Japan.
Keasler discovered the establishments while teaching English in Japan. She was captivated by the unusual way they facilitated sex, offering everything you need to make the most of your time—there are vending machines with vibrators, sex swings, and handcuffs affixed to the walls. It’s a strange blend of kitsch and fantasy, and their locations are numerous.
A woman invented Monopoly. Recognize.
Average life expectancies.
What Our Paranoia About Drones Says About Us from Jelani Cobb.
A lazy drift of mist obscured an already gray November morning as I stared skeptically skyward in Morningside Park. It was not, I told myself, technically raining; still, moisture had begun to collect in the folds of my jacket as I surveyed the weather conditions. Driven more by impatience than by prudence, I decided to go ahead with the plan. Carefully following the precise sequence prescribed by the instructions, I switched on my remote controller and then the Wi-Fi transmitter, and finally double-pressed the power button on the back of the DJI Phantom 2 Vision quadcopter I purchased the night before. The copter trilled, then emitted four consecutive beeps. The GPS system began searching for satellites to map its launch coordinates, and a moment later the rotors whirred to life, sending ripples across a nearby puddle. And then the drone was airborne, rising to a hover six feet above me, conducting an aerial choreography to maintain its position despite the wind pushing it toward Manhattan Avenue. The copter streamed an image to my iPhone — me with my cap pulled low against the November drizzle, head tilted to meet the camera’s gaze. A drone selfie. Portrait of a man under self-surveillance.
