Weekend Reading
When a cat loves a cat…
It’s been awhile since I’ve done a link roundup. Here’s some internet reading to occupy you in between enjoying this incredible summer weather:
Literary
In a Miss Manners-eque post, the Grammarly blog (like them on Facebook, they’re hysterical) covers five tips to writing the perfect thank you note. Although I write all the time, this is something I struggle with – how to make it sound personal and gracious without being too sappy. A timely post as wedding season is in full swing.
A Connecticut high school teacher was fired for reading an Allen Ginsburg poem to his 12th grade AP class. The poem was “Please Master,” which describes a homosexual encounter. PLEASE, give me a break. Do any parents really think that their 17- or 18-year old almost-adult children are in the dark about the language and topics discussed in the poem? When I was a mere year older, in a college English class, we discussed Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters and watched some of the mini-series. The show included a very graphic sex scene between two women, which we all watched TOGETHER. The WHOLE class. When will we stop infantilizing high schoolers, leaving them ill-prepared for the reality of the world?
In this Vice article, To Hell with All That: Why I’ll Never Move to New York or Los Angeles, Andrew Winistorfer explores the misconception that young, creative “millennials” (I hate that word) will only be happy in New York and Los Angeles. He states the obvious point that you can find happiness anywhere, and that it’s ok to ignore the cultural noise. The NY/LA debate has been around for ages (have you seen the last few seasons of Mad Men?) and it’s making a comeback: I saw two books juxtaposed in The Strand this week – one about leaving New York and one about staying. They take their title from Joan Didion’s famous essay in Slouching Towards Bethlehem: “Goodbye to All That,” the grandmother of discourse on why to leave NY.
Travel
Nomadic Matt, a long-time travel blogger and a great resource when planning a trip, made two highly informative posts on the practicalities of travel: how to pack a travel first aid kit and tech-related travel questions answered.
The headline is totally clickbait: Work, Travel, Get Paid, but the concept is interesting. A startup charges travelers $2,000 per month and provide them with lodging, shared workspace, and travel tickets. You just have to have a job where you can work remotely. Although $2,000 seems like a lot, it’s a reasonable cost of living sum for a large city. The company moves you to various locations around the world on a monthly basis. So you don’t get paid to travel, but you can travel while you work.
Fun
Just uplifting: a teen carries his younger brother 57 miles to raise awareness for cerebral palsy. Tear!
A good laugh with a feminist twist: Measures We’re Taking to Offset the Patriarchal Footprint of Our Wedding in McSweeny’s. Includes such gems as: “The male speeches at the reception will be allotted 78% of the time allotted to the female speeches” and “The bride will not wear white to signify her virginity; she will wear cream to signify her penchant for multiple orgasms.”
Seinfeld fans in New York: you can visit a recreation of Jerry’s apartment! The installation, by Hulu to celebrate acquiring the rights to the show, will include interactive elements. June 24-28 on West 14th street.
Besides my cats being adorbs, here are some things I was up to this week:
Guggenheim Museum as part of the Museum Mile festivities.
An exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
Folks came out in force for the Museum Mile festival. New Yorkers love free stuff.
Enjoy your weekend folks!
