Tag: Photography

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The joy of walking alone / NPR loses Susan Stamberg / The Pentagon press corps revolts / New levels of ICE-y aggression / Refreshing the iPhone / The Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ / The beauty of Euclid’s ‘Elements’

This week: The joy of walking alone / NPR loses Susan Stamberg / The Pentagon press corps revolts / New levels of ICE-y aggression / Refreshing the iPhone / The Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ / The beauty of Euclid’s ‘Elements’

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Iran is out in the cold as the Mideast unites in support of the Gaza ceasefire
By Jon Gambrell | Associated Press | October 2025
“How Tehran’s theocracy responds in the weeks and months ahead, whether that means lashing out or trying to rebuild its hobbled economy at home, will be crucial.”
Also see: This is why the story of Abraham is coming up in the push for Middle East peace

2. NPR ‘founding mother’ Susan Stamberg has died
By David Folkenflik | NPR | October 2025
“Susan Stamberg, an original National Public Radio staffer who went on to become the first U.S. woman to anchor a nightly national news program, died Thursday at the age of 87.”

3. Who will lose out when ACA health insurance subsidies expire?
By Alyssa Fowers | The Washington Post | October 2025
“About 80 percent of the people who benefit from them live in states that Donald Trump won in the 2024 presidential election. Many have no idea that their health insurance costs are on track to go up.”

4. Journalists turn in access badges, exit Pentagon rather than agree to new reporting rules
By David Bauder | Associated Press | October 2025
“News outlets were nearly unanimous in rejecting new rules imposed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would leave journalists vulnerable to expulsion if they sought to report on information — classified or otherwise — that had not been approved by Hegseth for release.”

5. D’Angelo Saw His Future in the Past
By Craig Jenkins | Vulture :: New York Magazine | October 2025
“To understand the late musician’s originality, look to his covers of the greats.”

6. The feds are cutting off public money for all Planned Parenthoods, following a playbook that began in Texas
By Lindsey Byman | The Texas Tribune | October 2025
“Texas’ Planned Parenthood has lost half its clinics, but they continue to see thousands of patients a year.”

7. Warning: Our Stock Market Is Looking Like a Bubble
By Jared Bernstein and Ryan Cummings | The New York Times | October 2025
“You may remember the recession that followed the collapse of dot-com stocks in 2001. Or, worse, the housing crisis of 2008. Both times, a new idea — the internet, mortgage-backed securities and the arcane derivatives they unleashed — convinced investors to plunge so much money into the stock market that it inflated two speculative bubbles whose inevitable bursting created much economic pain. We believe it’s time to call the third bubble of our century: the A.I. bubble.”

8. Recession warning signs to watch: Goodbye lipstick, hello Hamburger Helper
By Rachel Lerman and Elena Lacey | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Everything is a ‘recession indicator’ online. Here’s what you really need to pay attention to.”

9. Why Is ICE So Aggressive Now? A Former ICE Chief Explains.
By Riya Misra | Politico Magazine | October 2025
“ICE used to arrest the ‘worst first.’ Under the new Trump administration, ‘those rules are gone,’ says a former ICE chief.”

10. ‘That Is Not What It Used to Look Like’
By Melissa Dahl | The Cut :: New York Magazine | October 2025
“Women are taking testosterone to treat menopause symptoms. An enlarged clitoris is one potential side effect.”

11. The Hunt for the World’s Oldest Story
By Manvir Singh | The New Yorker | October 2025
“From thunder gods to serpent slayers, scholars are reconstructing myths that vanished millennia ago. How much further can we go — and what might we find?”

12. The Riot Report
American Experience :: PBS | May 2024
“When Black neighborhoods in scores of cities erupted in violence during the summer of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders––informally known as the Kerner Commission––to answer three questions: What happened? Why did it happen? And what could be done to prevent it from happening again?”

13. Skip Apple’s new iPhone – five tips to make your old phone feel new again
By Prakhar Khanna | The Guardian | September 2025
“A few inexpensive upgrades can totally reinvigorate your old iPhone, and you can get even get the iPhone 17’s best feature completely free”

14. The Happiness of Choosing to Walk Alone
By Arthur C. Brooks | The Atlantic | October 2025
“Going along with an untruth for fear of disagreeing with others is a form of self-betrayal that will make you miserable.”

15. ‘Lee Miller was the bravest person I ever knew’: The pioneering photographer who captured the horror of World War Two
By Arwa Haider | BBC News | October 2025
“The unflinching, surreal gaze of the US artist and war photographer Lee Miller bore witness to both beauty and brutality. Now she is the subject of a major exhibition at Tate Britain.”

16. How Kevin Costner Lost Hollywood
By Peter Kieffer | The Hollywood Reporter | October 2025
“On-set brawls. Courtroom battles. Epic bombs. Why the world’s most bankable cowboy is suddenly shooting blanks”

17. As Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ weaken with tree loss, scientists warn of worsening droughts
By Steven Grattan | Associated Press | September 2025
“Droughts have withered crops in Peru, fires have scorched the Amazon and hydroelectric dams in Ecuador have struggled to keep the lights on as rivers dry up. Scientists say the cause may lie high above the rainforest, where invisible “flying rivers” carry rain from the Atlantic Ocean across South America.”

18. Walter Cronkite signed off — and trust in the press steadily eroded
By Amaris Castillo | The Poynter 50 | August 2025
“Cronkite’s departure is seen in hindsight as one of the last moments when Americans collectively turned to a single, authoritative news source. Whether that’s true or just a convenient fable, there’s no doubt that trust is much lower now.”

19. Tootsie: One Great Dame
By Michael Sragow | The Criterion Collection | December 2014
“Tootsie isn’t merely about men and women grappling with volatile gender identities. It s about the unpredictable power that acting — taking on new roles — can have in people s lives.”

20. Sun Tzu and The Art of War
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2018
Also see: Euclid’s Elements | The Muses | Plasma | Math in the Early Islamic World

Interested in more like this? Since June 2011, Stillness of Heart‘s “Recommended” series has accumulated a magnificent collection of articles, essays, music, podcasts, historical analyses, cultural reflections, and documentaries. Scroll through the offerings here.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The Gaza war transformed the Middle East / The Special Forces culture / The vivid animated version of Beethoven’s ‘9th Symphony’ / Robot rabbits used to capture pythons in the Everglades / The risks and rewards of cold-water immersion

This week: The Gaza war transformed the Middle East / The Special Forces culture / The vivid animated version of Beethoven’s ‘9th Symphony’ / Robot rabbits used to capture pythons in the Everglades / The risks and rewards of cold-water immersion

Most of these items come from my social media networks. Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism. Learn more about my academic background here and about me here.

1. Gold futures rise above $4,000 per ounce for the first time
By Wyatte Grantham-Philips | Associated Press | October 2025
“Gold sales can rise sharply when anxious investors seek secure investments for their money. Even before the shutdown, the asset — and other metals, like silver — had seen wide gains over the last year, as President Donald Trump ’s barrage of tariffs cause uncertainty around the outlook for the global economy. More recently, the prospect of lower interest rates has also made gold a more attractive investment than interest-bearing investments.”

2. After two years, Israel’s Gaza war has reshaped the Middle East
By Ishaan Tharoor | The Washington Post | October 2025
“Israel’s hard power preeminence in the Middle East seems paramount. But the country’s leaders — and the entire region — still face an array of political challenges.”

3. The American Experiment
By Jeffrey Goldberg | The Atlantic | October 2025
“At 250, the Revolution’s goals remain noble and indispensable.”

4. What is Insurrection Act, could it help Trump deploy troops to US cities?
By Sarah Shamim | Al Jazeera | October 2025
“The threat to invoke the Insurrection Act comes amid protests in Portland and legal challenges against his anti-immigration crackdown.”

5. Cold-water immersion may offer health benefits — and also presents risks
By Stephen Wade | Associated Press | October 2025
“Claims about the benefits of cold-water immersion date back centuries. Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third American president, wrote toward the end of his life about using a cold foot bath daily for 60 years. He also owned a book published in 1706 on the history of cold-water bathing.”

6. America’s Vigilantes
By Matthieu Aikins | The New York Times Magazine | October 2025
“A four-part investigation of the culture of impunity in the U.S. Special Forces.”
Part 1: A Green Beret’s Confession | Part 2: Nine Bodies on a U.S. Base
Part 3: A Culture of Secrecy | Part 4: Lawlessness Comes Home

7. Doing almost anything is better with friends, research finds
By Richard Sima | The Washington Post | October 2025
“You might be leaving some happiness on the table by doing your everyday activities all by yourself.”

8. Octopuses prefer to use different arms for different tasks, scientists find
By Nicola Davis | The Guardian | September 2025
“Creatures favour front arms for most tasks, study suggests, despite fact all eight arms are capable of all actions.”

9. How Not to Get a Progressive Party off the Ground
By Arash Azizi | The Atlantic | October 2025
“The British left needs a strategy that can win elections instead of throwing them to the right.”

10. Stupidology
By William Davies | n+1 | Fall 2025
“The outsourcing of judgment.”

11. Going Beyond War’s Cliches
By Alisa Sopova | Nieman Lab | September 2025
“A collaborative project records Ukrainians’ day-to-day lives since the Russian invasion.”

12. See Beethoven’s entire ‘9th Symphony’ visualized in colorful animations
Open Culture | October 2025
“In a sense, ‘Ode to Joy’ is a natural choice for a musical representation of Europe, not just for its explicit themes, but also for the obvious ambition of the symphony that includes it to capture an entire civilization in musical form.”

13. JFK Wanted You to Watch This Movie Before He Was Assassinated
By Gordon F. Sander | Politico Magazine | February 2025
“The president had a hand in the making of a Cold War blockbuster.”

14. With ‘drug boat’ strikes, Trump leans into war on terror tactic against cartels
By Ryan Lucas | NPR | September 2025
“The administration has provided few details on the scope of its anti-cartel campaign, but it has adopted — at least in part — the blueprint of military strikes from the global war on terrorism that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.”

15. Robot rabbits the latest tool in Florida battle to control invasive Burmese pythons in Everglades
By Curt Anderson and Cody Jackson | Associated Press | August 2025
“They look, move and even smell like the kind of furry Everglades marsh rabbit a Burmese python would love to eat. But these bunnies are robots meant to lure the giant invasive snakes out of their hiding spots.”

16. The Art of the Impersonal Essay
By Zadie Smith | The New Yorker | September 2025
“In my experience, every kind of writing requires some kind of self-soothing Jedi mind trick, and, when it comes to essay composition, the rectangle is mine.”

17. When Mexico’s richest man threw ‘The New York Times’ a lifeline
By Rick Edmonds | The Poynter 50 | April 2025
“Before the bundles, the podcasts and the 10 million digital subscribers, there was a $250 million loan with a sky-high interest rate.”

18. The Book That Taught Nonna to Cook Is Coming to America
By Kim Severson | The New York Times | September 2025
“An English translation of Ada Boni’s The Talisman of Happiness, an indispensable guide for Italian home cooks since the 1920s, is finally on its way.”

19. The Fisher King: In the Kingdom of the Imperfect
By Bilge Ebiri | The Criterion Collection | June 2015
“Trauma and kindness. These are the two elements that govern The Fisher King, and they re represented by the two mythical figures that haunt the film.”

20. Augustine’s Confessions
By Melvyn Bragg | In Our Time :: BBC 4 | 2016-2018
Also see: Justinian’s Legal Code | Four Quartets | Purgatory | The Battle of Salamis

Illustrating the heart in a million different ways

Some friends have told me how much they love the photos I include with most of my posts.

Some friends have told me how much they love the photos that accompany most of my posts. Their compliments honor me.

I don’t consider myself a photographer, just someone who loves interesting patterns — the more abstract and colorful and contrasted the better. I tend to find beauty in everything I see.

My simple Tumblr blog collects and displays the best of the art I’ve used on Stillness of Heart, along with a variety of other odd photos, gifs, and videos.

Follow me on Tumblr, and enjoy.

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

This week: Reviews of ‘True Detective’ and ‘OITNB’ / Tracking the Islamic State in the U.S. / Happy birthday to George H.W. Bush / Women try to understand ‘Goodfellas’ / New b/w photos of Paris

IMG_2126

This week: Reviews of ‘True Detective’ and ‘OITNB’ / Tracking the Islamic State in the U.S. / Happy birthday to George H.W. Bush / Women try to understand ‘Goodfellas’ / New b/w photos of Paris

Most of these great items come from my social media networks. Follow me on Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Facebook for more fascinating videos, photos, articles, essays, and criticism.

1. ‘True Detective’ Season 2: TV Review
By Tim Goodman | The Hollywood Reporter | June 11
“Let’s just say it’s no season 1.”

2. ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Is Somehow Funnier and Sadder Than It’s Ever Been
By Richard Lawsom | Vanity Fair | June 11
“This season, bawdy pubic-hair gags bump up against jokes about economics and spiritualism, the grime of prison life allowing for visceral, intimate revulsion, but also serving as a kind of blank canvas for larger metaphor.”

3. ‘George H.W. Bush’
American Experience :: PBS | 2008
“The life and career of our 41st president, from his service in World War II and his early career in Texas to his days in the Oval Office, first as vice president to Ronald Reagan, then as the leader who presided over the first Gulf War. Drawing upon Bush’s personal diaries and interviews with his closest advisors and most prominent critics, the film also explores Bush’s role as the patriarch of a political family whose influence is unequaled in modern American life.”

4. Climate Hope City: how Minecraft can tell the story of climate change
By Keith Stuart | The Guardian | June 12
“As part of our Keep it in the Ground campaign, the Guardian has commissioned a Minecraft map exhibiting a city filled with real-world climate initiative”

5. Two Women Try Their Hardest To Understand ‘Goodfellas’
By Lauren Duca and Eric Whitney | The Huffington Post | June 11
“I immediately threw my Godfather Blu-ray box set in the trash of overflowing tissues; I clearly just watched those to fuel the anti-violence protest rallies I go to after Wednesday book club. What do we do? Do you want to bring over a couple pints and consult Carrie Bradshaw for advice? My whole world is changing.”

6. Serge Ramelli captures Paris in black and white
Architectural Digest | June 2015
“Serge Ramelli’s striking black-and-white photography of Paris is the subject of a forthcoming book from teNeues. Through Ramelli’s lens, the City of Light and its notable landmarks are rendered dark and moody.”

7. Visiting Presidential Libraries
By Nina Kendall | On the Road with the Histocrats | February 2015
“Are you looking to connect more with history? Are you planning a trip with friends or family who isn’t as excited about history as you? Consider adding a Presidential Library visit to your calendar.”

8. Busted
By Grace Na | Slate | June 11
“Why the women on Orange Is the New Black are serving time, one by one.”

9. Map: Is Islamic State in a neighborhood near you?
By Adam Goldman | WorldViews :: The Washington Post | June 11
“U.S. authorities have charged more than three dozen men and women around the country in connection with the Islamic State. Men outnumber women in those cases by a margin of nearly 5 to 1. The average age of the individuals — some have merely been charged, others have been convicted — is 26. One is a minor.”

10. D-Day Wasn’t the First Time Eisenhower Felt as if He Had Lost a Son
By Michael Beschloss | HistorySource :: The New York Times | Jun 2014
“Almost a half-century later, Eisenhower called this ‘the greatest disappointment and disaster in my life, the one I have never been able to forget completely.’ “

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Containing Iran / Romney administration’s first 100 days / Why Clinton’s speeches sparkle / The moment a tank shell strikes

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Afghans use culture guides to cut ‘insider’ attacks
By Amie Ferris-Rolman | Reuters | Sept. 6
“Afghan Defense Ministry officials, trying to stop the alarming increase in ‘insider’ attacks, have given their troops tips on foreign culture, telling them not to be offended by a hearty pat on the back or an American soldier asking after your wife’s health.”

2. Five countries the U.S. is screwing over
By Alex Keane | Salon | Sept. 7
“From the drug war to the war on terror, the United States is wreaking havoc around the globe”

3. The Pentagon Doesn’t Have the Right Stuff
By Robert Haddick | Foreign Policy | Sept. 6
“The Navy can’t ‘contain’ Iran — even if we wanted it to.”

4. Why Bill Clinton’s Speeches Succeed
By James Fallows | The Atlantic | Sept. 6
“Because he treats listeners as if they are smart.”

5. 100 Days
Need To Know :: PBS | Sept. 7
“Need to Know spoke with three experts on what the first 100 days of a Romney administration or an Obama second term might look like.”

6. The Proper Way To Share Your Junk
By J.R. Reed | Sex and the Single Dad :: The Good Men Project | Sept. 7
“As technology advances so does our ability to move the proverbial line further and further away. The unsolicited penis picture crosses that line but fear not because I have some tips to keep you classy-ish with your photography.”

7. Rives: Reinventing the encyclopedia game
TED | April 2012
“Rives takes us on a charming tour through random (and less random) bits of human knowledge: from Chimborazo, the farthest point from the center of the Earth, to Ham the Astrochimp, the first chimpanzee in outer space.”

8. You Are Here: How Astronomical Surveys Are Pinpointing Our Place in the Cosmos
By John Matson | Scientific American | Sept. 6
“Upcoming telescope projects on Earth and in space will map out billions of stars and galaxies all around us”

9. Is Philosophy Literature?
By Jim Holt | The Stone :: The New York Times | June 30
“Is philosophy literature? Do people read philosophy for pleasure? Of course it is, and of course they do.”

10. Incredible Photograph Captures Exact Moment of Tank Shell Hitting Against Syrian Rebels
By Jesus Diaz | Gizmodo | Sept. 7
“This image sequence of a Syrian army tank firing against a group of rebels in a street of Aleppo is beyond stunning. It’s pure insanity.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

The ‘napalm girl’ photo / Exercise and get smarter / A looming galactic collision / Texas traffic / Living to 100

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism.

1. Cheever’s Art of the Devastating Phrase
By Brad Leithauser | Page-Turner :: The New Yorker | May 31
“The more you read Cheever, the more you feel his best work is often less about plot than about language — about poetry in the broadest sense.”

2. AP ‘napalm girl’ photo from Vietnam War turns 40
By Margie Mason | Associated Press | May 31
“‘I really wanted to escape from that little girl,’ says Kim Phuc, now 49. ‘But it seems to me that the picture didn’t let me go.’ ”

3. Exercise Makes You Smarter, Thanks To A Common Gene
The Huffington Post | May 31
“It turns out that exercise does a lot more than get the blood pumping: in about 60 percent of the population, it may be responsible for the expression of a gene that floods your cells with … a protein that is thought to help with mental acuity, learning and memory.”

4. Mexico’s Drug Corruption Arrests: Why Soldiers Make Bad Narco Agents
By Tim Padgett | Global Spin :: Time | May 31
“While putting soldiers on the streets might have provided some short-term relief, the fact remains that in the long run soldiers make lousy anti-drug agents … and the longer they’re kept in that role, the more problems you’re going to have.”

5. NASA Predicts Our Galaxy Will Collide With Another In 4 Billion Years
By Carl Franzen | Talking Points Memo | May 31
“Andromeda, which is located 2.5 million light-years away, is moving rapidly towards the Milky Way at a rate of 250,000 milers-per-hour, a clip that will only increase as the galaxies approach.”

6. Are you feeling sleepy? Here’s why …
By William Leith | The Daily Telegraph | May 31
“The pace of modern life forces us to ignore one of the most powerful parts of our brain — the body clock. But at what cost?”

7. Yes, Texas Traffic Really is That Bad
By Jason Cohen | Texas Monthly | May 31
“INRIX, which released its numbers last week, also found that Austin was the eighth most congested city in America.”

8. Is the vice presidency worth having?
By Chris Cillizza | The Fix :: The Washington Post | May 31
“[Here] are our most up-to-date rankings of the vice presidential field … . This month we decided to cut to the chase and give a single line about the good and the bad of each potential pick.”

9. The secret to living over 100 is optimism, genetic background
GlobalPost | May 30
“A new study on aging studied participants over 95 of Ashkenazi Jewish descent.”

10. The 1 Percent’s Problem
By Joseph E. Stiglitz | Vanity Fair | May 31
“Why won’t America’s 1 percent — such as the six Walmart heirs, whose wealth equals that of the entire bottom 30 percent — be a bit more … selfish? As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price.”

******************

TUNES

Tonight I’m spending some time with the blues, specifically with the Texas Blues Café. Check out the line-up and then listen here.

1. Blake Havard — Love
2. Mark Guitar Miller — Tired
3. Rob Mcmahan — Trouble
4. Summer and the Sinners — Breakin’ Up
5. Kid Rock — Country Boy Can Survive
6. The Midnight Flyers — Down Low
7. Tommy Z — Can’t Hide My Feelings
8. Los Lonely Boys — Man to Beat
9. Bleu Edmondson — Dallas
10. Dana Fuchs — Lonely for a Life Time
11. Chris Aaron Band — Grain Of Salt
12. Voodoo Blu — Blues is my Business

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

How to pack / Voyager 1 / 9/11 myths / Iowa’s ad wars / Thatcher’s 1981 crisis

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. Guapura 101: How to pack for a long trip
By Sara Ines Calderon | NewsTaco | Dec. 26
“Many of us are either currently on a vacation, or will be taking one soon, and so I thought it would be a good opportunity to share a tip that I learned a few years ago that has made packing much easier.”

2. Iowa ad war: late starting but nasty
By Beth Fouhy | Associated Press | Dec. 29
“At least $12.5 million and counting has blanketed the airwaves ahead of next Tuesday’s Republican presidential caucuses, with hard-hitting commercials awash in ghoulish images and startling claims. Most are coming from a proliferation of new independent groups aligned with the candidates.”

3. Newly released files detail Thatcher’s 1981 crisis
By David Stringer | Associated Press | Dec. 29
“Official records for 1981 released by the National Archives depict a prime minister grappling with violent dissent, rising tensions in Northern Ireland and sharp criticism from her own allies. The papers were being made public just five days before the London premiere of ‘The Iron Lady,’ the film about Thatcher’s career starring Meryl Streep.”

4. Voyager 1 Speeds Toward The Brink Of Interstellar Space
By Bill Chappell | The Two-Way :: NPR | Dec. 28
“The craft is currently in what NASA calls, not undramatically, ‘the boundary between the solar wind from the Sun and the interstellar wind from death-explosions of other stars,’ an area that astrophysicists also call, less dramatically, a stagnation layer.”

5. Baby Bird Alert
By C. Claiborne Ray | Q&A :: The New York Times | July 2009
“When you find a baby bird on the ground, what should you do to rescue it?”

6. How to Stop a Multinational
By Rodrigo Vazquez | Activate :: Al Jazeera | October 2011
“Three Argentinians put themselves in harm’s way as they try to stop a gold mining company destroying their environment.”

7. DWI Versus DW-High
By Brian Palmer | Explainer :: Slate | Nov. 30
“Is it more dangerous to drive drunk or stoned?”

8. Five myths about 9/11
By Brian Michael Jenkins | Five Myths :: The Washington Post | Sept. 2
“We all remember where we were on Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda launched its horrific attacks on the United States. In the decade since, no number of commissions, books, films and reports has been able to end the misconceptions about what 9/11 meant, America’s response to it and the nature of the ongoing threat.”

9. Civil War women: Olivia Clemens
Civil War Women Blog | Nov. 14
“Olivia Langdon Clemens was the wife of the famous American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, and was a major influence on his writing.”

10. Italian Bombing of Libya – 1911
Witness :: BBC News | May 10
“A young Italian flyer describes in a letter home how he mounted the world’s first ever aerial bombing run during an attack on Ottoman forces in Libya, in 1911.”

Recommended reading / viewing / listening

Cold War myths / Classics’ future / Talking to yourself / Boozy writing / Gossipy grandma

Most of these great items come from my Twitter feed or Facebook news feed. Follow me on Twitter and on Facebook for more fascinating videos, articles, essays and criticism. Read past recommendations from this series here.

1. In 2012 race, both sides seek middle-class voters
By Erica Werner | Associated Press | Dec. 24
“Fighting to win over unhappy American voters, President Barack Obama and his Republican challengers are seizing on one of the most potent issues this election season: the struggling middle class and the widening gap between rich and poor.”

2. The Forgotten Cold War: 20 Years Later, Myths About U.S. Victory Persist
By Leslie H. Gelb | The Daily Beast | Dec. 23
“This month is the 20th anniversary of its end, but few remember how it dominated our lives. What does stick in people’s heads, writes Leslie H. Gelb, is wrong — that Reagan won the war with big military spending and toughness.”

3. Do the Classics Have a Future?
By Mary Beard | The New York Review of Books | January 2012
“[H]ow do we make the ancient world make sense to us? How do we translate it?”

4. For Joplin, a Love Letter in Ruins
By A.G. Sulzberger | The New York Times | Dec. 25
“The reason this house has so far survived the wrecking ball can be found scribbled on its walls, on its floorboards, in its closets and along virtually every other remaining surface. They are personal messages, thousands of them, handwritten by the volunteers who flooded the community to help sift through and cart out the debris.”

5. Thinking Out Loud
By C. Claiborne Ray | Q&A :: The New York Times | September 2009
“Why do ‘normal’ people talk to themselves?”

6. Barcode Scanning Apps
By J.D. Biersdorfer | Gadgetwise :: The New York Times | Nov. 16
“Once scanned, most apps present a list of places and prices the scanned item can be found, which makes comparison-shopping even easier on the go.”

7. The Dreamers
By Amie Williams | Activate :: Al Jazeera | September 2011
“Roughly two million young people in the US are unaware that they are classified as illegal immigrants.”

8. Does Alcohol Improve Your Writing?
By Brian Palmer | Explainer :: Slate | Dec. 16
“Putting Hitch’s theory to the test.”

9. I can’t get along with my grandma, who loves to gossip, criticize
Troubleshooter :: The Yomiuri Shimbun | Dec. 16
“When we all sit down for dinner, she loves to gossip and speak ill of people, talking about how much money they have or their level of education.”

10. Isherwood in Berlin
Witness :: BBC News | March 18
“The English author Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin throughout the 1930s. His vision of the city has been linked with the German capital ever since.”

Behind The Wall

Tabletop Games

Rebecca Aguilar

#CallingAllJournalists Initiative | Reporter | Media Watchdog | Mentor | Latinas in Journalism

Anna Fonte's Paper Planes

Words, images & collages tossed from a window.

Postcards from Barton Springs

Gayle Brennan Spencer - sending random thoughts to and from South Austin

The Flask Half Full

Irreverent travelogues, good drinks, and the cultural stories they tell.

Government Book Talk

Talking about some of the best publications from the Federal Government, past and present.

Fighting Irish Wire

Cadillac Society

Cadillac News, Forums, Rumors, Reviews

Ob360media

Real News That Matters

Talking Pictures Audio Description

Pintar Discover

Space Navy

Mealtime Joy

bringing joy to family meals

Øl, Mad og Folk

Bloggen Øl, Mad og Folk

a joyous kitchen

fun, delicious food for everyone

A Perfect Feast

Modern Comfort Food

donnablackwrites

Art is a gift we give ourselves

Fridgelore

low waste living drawn from food lore through the ages

BeckiesKitchen.com

MUSINGS : CRITICISM : HISTORY : NEWS

North River Notes

Observations on the Hudson River as it passes through New York City. The section of the Hudson which passes through New York is historically known as the North River, called this by the Dutch to distinguish it from the Delaware River, which they knew as the South River. This stretch of the Hudson is still often referred to as the North River by local mariners today. All photos copyright Daniel Katzive unless otherwise attributed. For more frequent updates, please follow northriverblog on Facebook or Instagram.