The National: NEW SONG "The Runaway" →
sixeyes.blogspot.com
And, no surprise, it’s brilliant.
May 2009
Play
“I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable. I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves.”
—David Foster Wallace, in an interview with Larry McCaffery for The Review of Contemporary Fiction (vol. 13, 1993) (via davidfosterwallace)
The Results Are In: Americans Are Now More Closely Aligned With Progressive Ideas Than at Any Time in Memory →
alternet.org
This week, a new report released by the Campaign for America’s Future and the media watchdog group MediaMatters attempts to finally bury the idea that the U.S. leans rightward. It takes a comprehensive look at the political landscape in which we live and a look forward at America’s shifting demographic profile — all of which reveal a citizenry that is anything but center-right and will only continue to trend in a more progressive direction, leaving modern conservatism increasingly isolated in its ideas.
Attention Internet World:
All the original episodes of Land of the Lost are now available for free at Hulu. Because life is like that some times.
(This was a show that, more than any other, I associated with watching at my grandma’s house when I was a kid. I will watch them in the days to come, with no small amount of bittersweet nostalgia, in her memory - even though I think she always thought the show was pretty freaking weird and that I was a strange kid for being so obsessed with it. Which, to be fair: true and true.)
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That whole ‘circle of life’ thing really takes on a whole new level of meaning and relevance when your grandmother passes away a month before a child of yours is to be born.
I get that this is how it works. I do not have to like it. I am selfish, I wanted them both in the world at the same time.
Listen
Blame it on the Tetons - Josh Ritter
(Modest Mouse cover)
Everyone’s a building burning
With no one to put the fire out
Standing at the window looking out
Waiting for time to burn us down
Everyone’s an ocean drowning
With no one really to show how…
NPR: The Oxford Project →
npr.org
Imagine photographing every member of your community. How long would it take? Days? Weeks? Years? It wouldn’t be easy. Which is why Peter Feldstein is one of the few people — if not the sole person — to have done it. In 1984, he set up a small studio in his town of Oxford, Iowa (population 676), and, with a fat red marker, made a sign that said “Free Pictures.” He taped it to a storefront on Augusta Avenue, Oxford’s main street, and waited.
Twenty years later, Feldstein did it again. While many of Oxford’s residents had moved or passed away, a great number were still there. And this time they did more than just pose for a photograph; they shared their life stories with writer Stephen G. Bloom. The photographs and stories have been compiled in a book called The Oxford Project, recent winner of ALA’s Alex Award and recipient of the Gold Medal in the Independent Publisher’s Outstanding Books of the Year for Most Original Concept.
“What can one do? Go home, love your children, try not to bicker, eat well, walk in the rain, feel the sun on your face and laugh loud and often, as much as possible, and especially at yourself. Because the only antidote to death is not poetry, or drama, or miracle drugs, or a roomful of technical expertise and good intentions. The antidote to death is life.”
—Theresa Brown
“A baby sleeps in all our bones, so scared to be alone…”
—Sam Beam, “Passing Afternoon”
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet:
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply I may forget.”
- Christina Rossetti
My grandma died today, suddenly. She had a massive stroke this morning around 8:30am, went into a coma, and had her breathing tube removed a little before 5pm this evening, passing away about five minutes later with a few of us gathered around her hospital bed. I was fortunate enough to be with her all day - the only grandchild (of 9) that lived closed enough to get there - and though she never awoke, I at least had the chance to hug her, and thank her, and say goodbye. Which is never enough.
She was an incredible grandma to us growing up, the kind that kept cookies in an actual cookie jar on the counter and a penny gumball machine in the kitchen. She wrote poetry for most of her life and, around 60 or so, decided she wanted to take a creative writing class to learn how to write short stories. One of them was about me, and it made me feel like the most special person in the whole entire world.
I can’t even begin to describe how bad my heart hurts right now.
Rest in Peace, Grandma Marie (1924-2009)
