Jamaica had become an institution of the type that has vexed city policymakers and educators: one charged with serving a majority-minority student body, most of whose members qualified as poor, and whose record was defined by chronic underachievement and academic failure. Even so, word of the school’s closure angered students and their families, the community, and alumni. I was among them—I graduated with the class of ’87—and for me, as for many former students, the school was a figment of recollection, frozen in its academic glory. George Vecsey, the former Times sports columnist and a member of the class of ’56, accused Joel Klein, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s schools chancellor, of “cooking the books,” to make schools slated for closure appear worse than they were, and compared the Department of Education’s closure policies to the nihilism of Pol Pot. Vecsey later apologized for having slighted the suffering of Cambodia, but he held to his contention that Klein ruled by dictatorial fiat. He wrote, in a blog, “The city destroyed a piece of history because of its own failure.”
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Towards better stock photos of black people:
“I couldn’t really find the images that invoked the messaging behind the brand visually,” Wiggins told me. “There are other resources out there that have images of black people…but just the attitude and the emotion I was looking for behind the pictures, I couldn’t find.”
Within days of his initial post, photographers had chimed in, eager to be part of the kind of platform Wiggins was proposing: a stock photography site dedicated to providing nuanced, varied images of black people. Catalyzed by the positive response, BlackStockImages took shape rapidly, its pace matching the urgency of its mission.
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If you are lucky enough to be in Kingston, Ontario this summer, you HAVE to go see this show, because it is SO much fun, and also, my cousin Anna is a writer/star/visionary in the production.
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Mr. Nikki Chung has a brilliant retrospective on Ingrid Bergman (he SPOKE to her KIDS):
“Once, I remember I went on stage with her when the theater was empty and I asked her how she could do what she did,” says Ingrid. “I said I couldn’t do that, go on stage and have all those eyes on you. I’m very shy, and she was very shy, too, she was painfully shy. And she told me, ‘Because I am someone else when I go on stage, I’m another person.’ She was so shy, and she was insecure about things she didn’t know, or things that were not her job. She was completely natural. She just intuitively did it. She was very good at understanding people, and that’s another form of intelligence. She’d talk to someone and in two seconds, she’d have it, she’d understand them. It’s like another form of language and expression.”
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My friend Carrie’s new puppy is practically a TEENAGER now:
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Vulture has the best parts of the new Joan Didion bio (which is on my desk, uncracked, so thanks, service journalism!)
Didion didn’t take failure very well.
According to Parmentel, she once had a nonfiction article on “grand old hotels” rejected by American Heritage. “She cried and cried and cried. I couldn’t believe how hard she was taking it. She said this made her feel like when she hadn’t been admitted to Stanford. I felt so bad for her that I sent the piece to somebody I’d met at Esquire and said, ‘For Christ’s sake, publish this thing — it’s breaking her heart.’ And they did.”John Dunne once caught the clap.
Possibly at the Graben Hotel in Vienna, while on assignment for Time.
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Tags: feminism, link roundup, the internet
Am I the only one who hasn’t gotten into the Cult of Didion? Maybe she’s like Star Wars or Chuck Palahniuk, in that you have to encounter her at a certain time in your life for her to really bang your gong, but I read Slouching Towards Bethlehem last summer and was like “…meh.” Should I try again with something else?
I’m with you on all of the above, while acknowledging that she may be “better” at her craft than some of the writers who fill that niche for me. I suspect that some of it may be that I first read her in high school, and well, there’s nothing like an uninspired English class to put one off a particular author.
Ain’t that the truth, though.
I also have never gotten into Didion. I’ve read parts of Slouching and I read the book about her daughter’s death. I think she’s too elite for me–I just can’t identify in some way. And I just got angry at her when I read the book about her daughter. I will try Slouching again–I own an old paperback copy, so I can go back to it some day.
I only just discovered her, and what I’ve read I’ve loved… but yeah, that’s based on just the White Album, so I don’t know if I’ll like the rest as much too.
I never even bothered to read anything by her because she was so goddamn self-involved and sanctimonious that the thought of reading anything she ever wrote set my teeth on edge.
The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Evening are different experiences from her other work–the losses she writes about in those memoirs are so visceral. I found them very different from Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
I agree – I read The Year of Magical Thinking first and thought that meant I Liked All Things Didion. It was such a beautiful book about grief and death, I loved it. Then I tried reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem and another of her books (don’t recall) and found them so… different. It’s not the Didion voice I grew to love in TYOMT.
I have always enjoyed and admired her writing and thought I would not like her a whole lot if we met in person. But she probably wouldn’t like me either, so!
I sometimes think about her comments on privilege in Blue Nights and kind of chuckle to myself.
SAME
She’s like the Tarantino of writers* – a highly skilled and singular voice that directly inspired a thousand unfortunate voices, and a few dozen good ones. Bad writing is bad but bad Going For Didion is excruciating.
*if we’re being generous toward Quentin
I feel the same way, and I thought I was alone until I read this in an interview with the lovely Angela Carter (sorry for the long quote):
“Although I am a card-carrying and committed feminist, what I would like to see happen to Joan Didion’s female characters is that a particularly hairy and repulsive chapter of Hells Angels descend upon their therapy group with a squeal of brakes and sweep these anorexic nutters behind them despite their squeaks of protest. Like a version, dare I say it, of the rape of the Sabine women. And bear them off to hard labour in the grease pits. Or else ten years compulsory re-education in the coffee plantations of Nicaragua might do the trick, make those girls feel there are worse things in life than running out of valium… Actually, I think Joan Didion is an alien from another planet.”
The only thing of hers that I’d ever read was “Many Mansions”, her dissection of the new California governor’s mansion that the Reagans had built and how it compared to the old one. It was a good take on how generally bland and classless the Reagans were, but it also helps explain why I didn’t read anything else of hers: anyone who can write an in-depth comparison of governors’ mansions is basically living in a world that I have never lived in and never will.
Friends this is not, strictly speaking a link, but I have a question. On Friday, my wife and I went to the hospital and — without so much as a background check, which I think is a little irresponsible — they let us go home with one of these babies. It has so far been an unmitigated disaster. The baby in question does not know any kung fu, it does not seem to have any interest in the class struggle, and it has, frankly, done little more than eat and complain since arrival, which I think is particularly ungrateful considering the efforts we’ve made to accommodate it.
My QUESTION is, does anyone know, are you allowed to, like, switch them? Is there a program where I could trade this baby in for a more interesting one?
Please advise.
Not sure about switching, but there is a reputable curriculum for bringing them up to speed on the class struggle.
(Mazel tov!!!!!)
This one is pretty good too, in terms of care-and-feeding.
They normally don’t show their kung fu skills until at least 6 months.
That’s absurd! My three-month-old is already doing flying kicks. You must not be breastfeeding.
Thank you for performing the sacred ritual of allowing us all more thumbs to give to this comment.
I once told my nephew, then 5 months old, “You’re so cute! I love you!” and he responded by kicking me repeatedly in the mouth. I decided to hold him against my chest with his head under my chin, so that his feet would be farther from my face, and then he reared up and headbutted me in the mouth.
Then again, he was a preemie, so maybe he’s just ahead of the curve in general.
My nephew has an uncanny ability to hit me directly in the windpipe when he is trying to squirm out of my arms.
There must be a website where people sign up to trade in their annoying new humans for puppies or kittens and such. Suggest a thorough googling. If nothing comes up, then congratulations on your acquisition of a tiny person, best wishes for its increasing delightfulness! 🙂
Did they remember to install the vocabulary package? I hate when they forget to install the vocabulary software before collection, it takes over a year to do it yourself!
(Woooot! Baby!)
This baby is buffering! In three to five months, you will receive a Smile upgrade, a Sleep module, and a Cooing ringtone. (You will have to wait a bit longer for the Kung Fu download, though, and it takes FOREVER to install. But from what I’ve read, you can start with Swimming 1.0 in about a year!)
(ALSO BABY YAY BABY!!)
Unfortunately, all of your notification tone options are: fuss, whine, cry, and “screaming just cuz.”
These are still my notification tones.
Do I remember correctly that your offspring is no longer an infant? Wait, I do remember fussing, whining, crying, and screaming from my students when I was teaching high school. Oh, who am I kidding? I still do all that myself, once in a while. Carry on.
Oh, I meant those are MY tones, that I use 🙂
The kid is fine. And yeah, she’s a senior in high school. 🙂
Congratulations to you, your wife, and that dumb, boring baby 🙂
SHOCK. HORROR. you skipped the friday open thread for THAT????
I mean, once you’ve completed the Marxist curriculum, you might also try:
this
this
this
and also
this.
(what, the tagging was off on them, I couldn’t find one tag that had all of them!)
I would suggest trying to get through all of those prior to making a return or exchange, not every toastlette shows their complete potential in the first week.
Is there a provisional name for the trainee? Braakish? Baaby? I’m sure I could be more creative after some caffeine.
(congrats!)
We’ve been referring to him as a Braakling in most circles, I guess it’s good to keep his regular name off the internet for now.
OH. also. that means you missed my shame and embarrassment on friday, and i think you’d find it amusing. check out the comments here. for The Valley is small, and I am apparently unobservant.
Hah, she was probably on the team the same time I was there, I might have met her. SMALL WORLD INDEED.
I assure you that they become much more interesting as they get older. You will have to wait a few years before starting martial arts training, though. (Mine started at 4yo). (Congratulations)
SteelyKid’s taekwondo studio has a class that will allow 3 year olds in, but the Pip isn’t quite ready yet.
Best wishes, braak and family!
Congratulations braak and wifebraak!!!! And baby, I guess. May I suggest that next time you feel in the mood for a baby, you order it from Amazon. That way you can return it if necessary and it’ll be guaranteed to have a scarily good work ethic.
Unrelatedly, your username always makes me think of the ebullient cry of a rooster sounding its barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.
Mine were headbutting me and kicking like ninjas very early. Maybe you didn’t play enough Mozart in utero?
Don’t despair about the class struggle issue; this can be resolved by reading a little of the Manifesto everyday at nap time
How do you expect the baby to converse intelligently on the class struggle if you don’t indoctrinate it properly first? Everyone knows it takes at least six months to properly indoctrinate your future Social Justice Warrior, and that’s only if you get started immediately.
(mazel tov!!!!!!)
Have you tried threatening it with a one-star rating on Infnt? It might shape up, but if not, that’s fair warning to any other household that might consider taking it in.
Cheers, y’all!
Personally I’ve found the Apple version, iNfant, more user-friendly.
Oh my gosh “Yelp reviews for infants I have known” five stars
I am feeling a yearning for a mewling newborn, would consider a temporary trade for my aged specimen (vintage 2014), in possession of rudimentary kung fu skills, excellent company at protests (loves to dance to protest chants). Pluses: she is really stinking cute. Minuses: she can walk and it is holy hell keeping up with her.
You may not have gotten the kung fu model. Beware the 6 month mark, it may start displaying parkour or Houdini skills.
With any luck, the kung fun abilities will come sooner than you think: My 6-month-old has mastered the Vulcan nerve pinch. Unfortunately, “eat and complain” more or less sums up the activities of my 2-year-old, so you may have to try multiple models before you find one with your preferred suite of features.
(Congrats!)
Yes but was the baby born with the ability to sing the “Braak Show” theme song from the MST3K movie? I mean, the answer is yes, right?
Ugh this baby can’t sing ANYTHING. He can’t even keep a consistent pitch!
If it’s a boy, he’ll be peeing in your face before you know it. No kung fu, but pee fu, so that’s something.
Ahhhhh, congrats on your acquisition of an infant! Good luck with everything ahead!
I tried to talk my parents into participating in such a service after they brought home the baby brother model, hoping we could trade it in for a puppy. While they didn’t go for this upgrade, I can report that he became more interesting at some point, and is now quite an excellent human being.
Very happy for you, braak! I hope your baby continues to be boring at intervals: every night until after dawn. Wishing your wife ease and peace in her recovery.
I have been looking all over for the Mad TV Ricki Lake parody where the woman complains about her son, Drakkar, who just lies around the house eating, pooping, and screaming at her, and they bring out Drakkar who is a baby, but alas have nothing to offer but congratulations.
Here is a link. It is a cheerful and silly link that has made me happy today.
Here it is for you.
I am giggling so much! Thanks for sharing!
“This is fine.”
It is really very silly headline-writing though. Obviously it would be more accurate to say, “Shiba Inu gets into scrape, is too dumb to know that something’s not okay”.
Because, well, shebes.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run”, and so I am celebrating. The link is to the original 1975 New York Times review of the album, which laments “how this new record is going to sound out in the heartland, where people may have never heard of Bruce Springsteen, or, worse, may think of him as some over-hyped Easterner.”
The ad for the Warren Beatty/Jack Nicholson movie in the corner is a fun surprise. It really screams “you will find these actors insufferable in this bad movie!”
Today marks the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run”
It’s also the 20th anniversary of Windows 95, I think? Jeeeeeezus.
The computer I took to college had Windows 3.1. (cries)
I took a Mac SE to college.
Know what I’ll be listening to nonstop all day.
Oh lordy, stock images. I had to populate a website for work with all stock images (normally the client gives us their image library), and its a website aimed at secondary school children, its a programme to encourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds into traditionally closed professions like Law etc.
Anyway, trying to find stock images of diverse school aged students? Nearly impossible. College students seem ok, and business people can be a mixed bag, but gender balanced, diverse group photos of teenagers? Nope.
The stock image piece reminds me of the detailed post they put up on Smart Bitches when they added a Lady of Color to the Ladies already on the site and how hard it was to find any stock images, let alone one that fit the 50s aesthetic of the other Ladies.
NGL, I got confused when I saw that Mr. Nikki’s piece was called “You Must Remember This” and thought it was going to be about the podcast. HOW CAN TWO THINGS IN THIS WORLD HAVE THE SAME TITLE, IT WILL JUST CONFUSE ME.
I misread Nicole’s comment about Mr. Nikki’s piece as being that Ingrid Bergman had spoken to HIS kids, and couldn’t work out in what timeline that would have been possible.
Mr. Nikki is clearly a TIME TRAVELER and is keeping the secret from us and using it to have dead celebrities talk to his kids. Next up is Cary Grant.
Is Nikki married to RONBLEDORE????
same. I was trying to work out if there was some other Ingrid Bergman.
Courtney Milan did a good post on that too, when she was making the cover for Talk Sweetly to Me- she said she generally uses women in wedding dress stock photos as a base for her covers, then adds color etc., and finding diverse women in stock wedding photos was an epic slog. I’m glad to see this conversation is moving beyond Romancelandia!
Dirtbag teenage puppy?
The little black spots just below the nose: Puppy Dirt-stache!
So basically this: http://www.boom-studios.com/teen-dog-01-cover-a.h…
I look forward to the puppy cover of that 90’s classic, “Teenage Dirtbag.” 100x cuter than the original, obvs.
I came across this article today http://motherboard.vice.com/read/meet-the-gynepun…
I think it is an interesting response to lack of access to adequate health care and draws attention to overlooked issues but I’m a bit wary of wholeheartedly supporting unlicensed practice of medicine.
WOW.
Yes to wariness, but I am blown away by the awesome. In my idealized world (when I am in charge of everything!) this would lead checking out your cervix being a normal thing, instead of something you learn about in Women’s Studies classes…and “normalizing” of female genitalia in cultural perspectives–just because most female reproductive bits don’t hang outside the body doesn’t mean they are Scary and Weird.
I can dream, right?
I definitely liked that bit of what they do and looking at how what they create can bridge the gap where the services are unavailable or exclusionary where I get a bit concerned is when they spoke of “exploring plant based vaginal medicines.”
I think everyone involved had the best of intentions. If this were packaged differently — for example, get to know your body! or something, instead of as a replacement for, in some cases, literally live-saving medical care, I’d be way more into it.
As it is — I really hate this bizarre trend that the solution to marginalized groups not having adequate access to medical care is “fixing” the problem with this half-baked pseudo care by amateurs with no oversight* or ethics boards or anything to ensure healthcare providers are trained, or to ensure people are not being abused. A world in which wealthy white cis women get real doctors, and the rest of us get homebrew speculums wielded by someone with all the relevant pages of Our Bodies, Ourselves dogeared, is genuinely distressing to me. If that makes me way less punk rock, well, I can live with that.
*which is not to say that current ethics boards and oversight and licensing and etc are perfect, by any means, but still
Completely agree! I did health work in the global south and am generally suspicious of measures that are aiming to replace health systems with “1 neat trick” unless that neat trick is massive funding of a country’s health infrastructure and training of in country medical professionals.
A film archive friend noticed this and far be it from us to correct an editor of the Toast, but is Nicole 100% sure that it’s Nikki’s husband Dan Callahan, and not the film critic Dan Callahan who wrote the Ingrid Bergman piece? I don’t think they’re the same person. http://www.rogerebert.com/contributors/dan-callah…
there can only be one
Fair enough! We thought he might be the one who writes for Sight & Sound sometimes. How nice there are two such Dan Callahans in the world, who write about actresses!
(my husband is actually a scientist who might not have ever watched a classic movie had he not married me)
True story: I actually friended the wrong Dan Callahan on FB thinking he was yours. But now I keep doing it bc I want him to notice.
a) I love you
b) I’m sure he’s noticed
Ok phew! I suddenly got terrified we had uncovered your husband’s secret life in New York with his film writer boyfriend.
“secret”?
Classes at my school start tomorrow and Ive just been stress reading A. S. Byatt and coloring and writing song parodies.
It’s a tough life being an introvert and having gone through a weekend full of team building exercises.
Freshman orientation is literally the worst for introverts. So glad I never have to do it again. Congrats on making it through and great job taking time to recharge!
I went to an enormous college where all that stuff was optional, and skipped it all. No regrets!
Yep, freshman orientation is the literal worst. However, if you’re at a small school like I was, you will have a lot of fun looking back on it in a few years and being all, “lol, I did trust falls with THAT guy? WEIRD.”
Good luck tomorrow! I think my first semester of college was probably my #1 Weirdest Time, but college really does kick ass. (Just… do leave your room, like, sometimes. Trust me.)
Fresher orientation sucks donkey butts and I hid from most of it. As did most of my friends – we all managed to hide in different places, and became friends after orientation week, not because of it! I was a 2007 fresher and we are all still friends, even those of us who have gallivanted overseas.
So of course that first Joan Didion excerpt that Nicole quoted is infuriating, but I clicked the link to see who “I” was, and the paragraph directly above it explains that it’s an ex-lover whom she later depicted badly in novels and he thought about suing her for defamation. So I’d take that anecdote about her crying like a baby with a very, very large grain of salt.
OT, but I do the bulletins at my church, and I found my ex!boss’ wedding bulletin from a few years ago while I was looking up some formatting choices. It was kind of surreal, especially since that marriage ended within 4 years, and his now-ex wife still attends the church (every week, which ex!boss had stopped doing some time before his downward spiral and subsequent arrest). I don’t have any conclusion to this, other than to be a bit weirded out, and I wanted to share that with people. So yeah.
Feels creepy, hunh?
The choir sang Tommy Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” a couple of Sundays ago (and moved several people to tears, fuck yes). That was the choir anthem at ex!boss’ wedding. GET AWAY FROM THE THINGS I LOVE, ASSHOLE.
What?! That’s not a wedding song, that’s a funeral song! I would be totally weirded out if I heard that at a wedding.
As I said, the marriage ended within a few short years. Really, it should have been the first sign.
Re: the Time.com dating article – for a fascinating glimpse into the frontlines of the Shidduch Crisis, check out the “Ask a Shachan” (matchmaker) column from a Baltimore Orthodox Jewish magazine: http://www.wherewhatwhen.com/categories/view/dati…
OT: I just applied and got hired for my first community college teaching gig, which could start as early as Thursday, and now I’m kind of freaked out! Advice, grammar jokes, kittehs and puppies all welcome!
Yay! What will you be teaching?
One section of developmental writing and one section of English 101! I did find out I don’t have to start until Monday, so I will at least get to look at the basic syllabi and texts for more than one night! I’ve done a lot of one-on-one writing coaching but have never actually taught a class before. (My weird MA in the Humanities rushed us through in a year, so no teaching requirements, and during my MFA I was struggling with health problems and never ended up being assigned teaching duties.)
You just gotta stay one lesson ahead of them. Seriously. I’ve been adjuncting English at a cc for more than a decade and would love to help you out. I knew almost nothing when I started.
Hi all. I know this is seriously seriously OT, but it’s relatively time-sensitive so I’d rather not wait until Friday.
I know we have some runners and other athletes in the Toastariat. If you are one of them, or, heck, even if you aren’t, I’d absolutely love if you could help me out by filling out a ten-question anonymous survey (it takes about five minutes) that will help me make a better event next year. It would be so, so appreciated: the more information I have to draw on, the better I can plan and market.
Thank you so much!
Done! I wasn’t around for Open Thread last week but I skimmed through it later and saw your post that I assume this is related to. I’m sorry your boss is being such a butt! Hope we can help a little.
*kiss kiss*
I thought that said that John Donne once caught the clap and I was like, Well, I’m sure he did, but what does this have to do with Joan Didion?
Everyone did back then. It was all the rage, like melancholic songs about fountains.
Me too (I'm 30 and withering away alone for ever)!
I have been looking all over for the Mad TV Ricki Lake parody where the woman complains about her son, Drakkar, who just lies around the house eating, pooping, and screaming at her, and they bring out Drakkar who is a baby, but alas have nothing to offer but congratulations.
I personally can't stand reading that kind of thing, man or woman.
I mean, to each their own, but it's just SO not my thing.
Or lesbianism