Sherelyn Siy

An 80-year old friend of mine from Cleveland told me that whenever anyone described her marriage to a Japanese man as being a mixed marriage, she would say: "My husband does the same things that drive me crazy that my father did that drove my mother crazy. As far as I'm concerned, when a woman marries a man, it's a mixed marriage."

Marie Benedict

"Whether Hedy Lamarr's work in spread-spectrum technology was purposefully disregarded or unconsciously forgotten, it appears that embedded in that oversight were misconceptions about her abilities -- about all women, really. Faulty assumptions about women's capabilities, stemming in part from the conscripted roles into which they'd been slotted, has caused many to think more narrowly about the manner in which the past has been shaped. But unless we begin to view historical women through a broader, more inclusive lens -- and rewrite them back into the narrative-- we will continue to view the past more restrictively than it likely was, and we risk carrying those perspectives over into the present."

-from Author's Note, "The Only Woman in the Room"

Alix Strauss / Mark Braly

At 86, Mark Braly may be the world’s oldest water polo player. And according to Mr. Braly, a Texas native who now lives in Davis, Calif., he’s “certainly the worst.” 

“I sometimes make goals, but there is always the suspicion they were the gift of a kind goalie,” Mr. Braly said. “Every player in the region knows my name because they have to shout constant directions.”

What have you learned about yourself through the sport? That I can accept praise and support and not feel diminished by it. That I can do almost anything if I don’t mind not being good at it. Being forced to be good at something has excluded me from doing things all my life. I learned I’m more capable and have a greater stamina than I thought.

"It's Never Too Late to Take Up Water Polo" August 2022
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/style/water-polo-aging-elderly.html

Elle Steitzer

When paramedic and firefighter for Lake Country Fire and Rescue Amber Christian got the call that she'd be rescuing over 50 puppies from a plane crash, the dog-lover knew it had the potential to be one of the worst calls of her career.

On Nov. 15, a plane carrying dozens of shelter dogs from Louisiana to the Humane Animal Welfare Society of Waukesha crashed on to the Western Lakes Golf Club course in the town of Delafield. At the scene, Christian took a deep breath and fell back on her training, she said, and the potentially worst call ended up leading her to meet her newly adopted puppy, Artemis.

The three people on board, and all 53 dogs, survived with minor injuries. Christian wasn't the only one to adopt a puppy ― over the following days, several first responders adopted one of the dogs they rescued.

The second that Lake Country EMT and firefighter Elle Steitzer got to the scene, she knew she wanted to adopt one of the puppies.

"I couldn't have not adopted him," Steitzer said of her puppy, Lucky. "I'm going to be thinking about these little guys for the rest of my life."

While Steitzer is an animal-lover, she said, Lucky is the first dog she's ever owned.

"I didn't know if I was a dog person or a cat person, but now I know I'm a lucky person," she said.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/lake-country/news/2022/11/21/lake-country-first-responders-adopt-puppies-saved-from-plane-crash/69666945007/

 

Richard M. Fierro

 “My little girl, she screamed and I was crying with her,” he said. “Driving home from the hospital I told them, ‘Look, I’ve gone through this before, and down range, when this happens, you just get out on the next patrol. You need to get it out of your mind.’ That is how you cured it. You cured it by doing more. Eventually you get home safe. But here I worry there is no next patrol. It is harder to cure. You are already home.”

Ed. note: Fierro is the veteran who stopped the Club Q gunman in Colorado Springs on November 19, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/us/colorado-springs-shooting-club-q-hero.html?smid=url-share 

Marlowe Granados

To start fretting endlessly over your reputation can restrict your world in a way that is counterproductive. Every one of these people you’re worried about will have done something worse than you by the end of the semester—I guarantee it. Any finger-wagging about harmless behavior is for those who lack imagination, and this also goes for how you regard yourself. In my experience, the only time I can get a little ashamed about my behavior is if I was mean in any unwarranted way. Anything else, well, that’s just me letting my hair down. As Marlene Dietrich says in Shanghai Express, “Don’t you find respectable people terribly . . . dull?”

--https://thebaffler.com/designs-for-living/everybody-says-dont-granados

Sarah Ruhl and Alexis Soloski

Alexis Soloski: The majority of the accused and executed in Salem [for witchcraft in the 17th century] were women. It seems like the most Arthur Miller choice to center one middle-aged white dude instead. 

Sarah Ruhl: It's incredible. And it's not just Arthur Miller. In Salem, the place where all the executions took place is called Proctor's Ledge. But I thought about Rebecca Nurse. Why is no one writing about the oldest woman? Why is she not the center?

AS: When did you begin to write this play?

SR: I started after tRump was elected and people were still chanting, "Lock her up," which really upset me. I felt their hatred for this woman. It felt very personal, very visceral. It felt like Salem to me. 

--Sarah Ruhl is a playwright and the author of the new play Becky Nurse of Salem. Rebecca Nurse was hanged for witchcraft in 1692 at the age of 71. Interview by Alexis Soloski in "Of Course They Believe in Magic," New York Times, November 13, 2022.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
–from his 1842 notebook

Marlowe Granados

Some people need small reminders that what they're doing is not only annoying but bad etiquette. For some reason, if you say someone lacks decorum it makes them straighten up their back more than if you accuse them of any kind of systemic impropriety. I guess people don't want to seem undignified. If he asks you a math question, just say, "I'm not in the mood to entertain today" and go off to do a task. There is a certain skill that forms after a number of these inconveniences that I will call "withering unaccountability." There is nothing more terrifying than a woman who can go from sunny to cutting at the drop of a hat—and with nothing to pin on her! Get to know your anger from all angles. A little rage can be enlivening.

https://thebaffler.com/designs-for-living/the-involuntary-misandrist-granados

Eileene Harrison Beer

The Scandinavian sees no valid reason for mediocrity in design or workmanship, regardless of whether an object is costly or inexpensive. He believes that food for his body should be served on tableware handsome enough to be food for his soul.

Scandinavian Design: Objects of a Life Style (1975)

Michael Kimmelman / Bill Harmon

Years ago I met Bill Harmon, who traveled over 400 miles a week to pour concrete for some of the scupture's curbs. Harmon told me how Heizer would angrily rip up a 78-by-240-foot slab because it was off by a sixteenth of an inch.

I asked Harmon why he put up with it. His answer seemed like a definition of art.

“Mike is demanding,” he told me, “but I’ve worked in concrete all my life, and I’ve never had the time or money to do something to the best of my ability. Everything is hurry up. It’s about making money. That’s the American way.” On the other hand, Harmon said, Heizer asked him “to produce something that has more to do with accuracy than I’ve ever been allowed even to imagine. This here is my chance to do the best I can.”

- Michael Kimmelman, NYT "It Was a Mystery In The Desert For 50 Years" about Michael Heizer's 'City'

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/08/19/arts/design/michael-heizer-city.html

John Lennon

I love commercial music. I like Olivia Newton-John singing "Magic," and Donna Summer singing whatever the hell it is she'll be singing. I like the ELO singing "All Over the World." I can dissect it and criticize it with any critic in the business.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/olivia-newton-john-rob-sheffield-1394426/

Piet Oudolf

A garden is never ready. 

--"Piet Oudolf, Garden Designer." T: The New York Times Style Magazine, April 24, 2022, p. 74.

Delia Ephron and Peter Rutter

Rutter, silver haired but schoolboy youthful in a button-down shirt and a sweater, has the quiet intensity of all good therapists. He spoke of his beloved’s ordeal in Jungian terms.

A stem cell transplant is a profound identity shift, he said. “The miracle, and the trauma, in crossing over from death to life is of equal stature to a heart transplant. The simplest way to explain it is Delia was restored to herself, but she had to go through the gates of death to do it. It deepens anybody who has been close to that.”

Ephron shrugged. “You end up in the situation, and you just do what you do.”

Rutter said gently, “Actually Delia, that is the essence of being heroic. You persist even if it seems impossible.”

--Green, Penelope. "Delia Ephron Writes Her Way Through Cancer to a Happy Ending." New York Times. April 9, 2022.

Lauren Groff

A voice in her says that she will never again see the city that burns so darkly at her back. She is glad of the release of it. Aging is a constant loss; all the things considered essential in youth prove with time that they are not. Skins are shed, and left at the roadside for the new young to pick up and carry on.

--Gross, Lauren. Matrix (New York: Riverhead Books, 2021), p. 177

Diane Ott Whealy

Q: With all the plants and animals on your farm, I bet you make great compost.
A: We have the most diversified compost pile in the country, I think, because we have manure from chickens and White Park cattle. We have heirloom tomatoes, peppers, and squash in every color imaginable thrown onto the pile, and volunteer sunflowers and kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate blooming on the edges. It's really beautiful.

Q: You have a beautiful compost pile?
A: We do.

Q: Do people tell you that?
A: No. Nobody has.

interviewer: Steve Aitken, in Fine Gardening Magazine, Feb 2010
subject: Diane Ott Whealy, co-founder of Seed Savers Exchange

Roxane Gay

[T]his is a defense of thin skin. It is a defense of boundaries and being human and enforcing one's limits. It is a repudiation of the incessant valorizing of taking a joke, having a sense of humor. It is a rejection of the expectation that we laugh off everything people want to say and do to us.

I think a lot about how we are constantly asked to make our skin ever thicker. Toughen yourself, we're told, whoever we are, whatever we've been through or are going through. Stop being so brittle and sensitive. Lighten up.

I'm not talking about constructive criticism or accountability but, rather, the intense scrutiny and unnecessary commentary people have to deal with when they challenge others' expectations one way or another.

Who is served by all this thick skin? Those who want to behave with impunity. If the targets of derision only had thicker skin, their aggressors could say or do as they please. If we all had the thickest of skins, no one would have to take responsibility for cruelties, big or small.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/culture/will-smith-oscars-roxane-gay.html?referringSource=articleShare

Mhairi McFarlane

The combination of alcohol and incredible, soul-flattening misery has given me a malign superstrength. Every other expression of anger in my life, I realize, always came restrained with concerns about how it made me look, or how it affected the other person, or if I could get fired. Consequences, basically. 'I don't care' is often said but rarely fully meant. But I don't. I have nothing left to protect or worry about. From where I'm standing, I've already lost everything. I'm the origins story of a dangerous comic-book villain.

- Mhairi (vah-ree) McFarlane, Just Last Night

Sharon Owens

Dangerous Coats

Someone clever once said
Women were not allowed pockets
In case they carried leaflets
To spread sedition
Which means unrest
To you & me
A grandiose word
For commonsense
Fairness
Kindness
Equality
So ladies, start sewing
Dangerous coats
Made of pockets & sedition

Matt Haig

Librarians have knowledge. They guide you to the right books. The right worlds. They find the best places. Like soul-enhanced search engines.

-The Midnight Library

Shira Ovide

An estimated 150 million Americans are members of Amazon Prime's shopping club, making it one of the most popular paid technology services in the United States. Most Americans are members, and many can't imagine giving up the ability to order stuff on a whim and have it delivered quickly for no added cost.

Shipping still costs Amazon a fortune, but Prime members mostly shop online exclusively at Amazon. An analysis last year by Morgan Stanley estimated that households that are Prime members typically spent more than $3,000 a year with Amazon. Those that didn't belong to Prime spent half as much on Amazon.

Prime is one of the ways that Amazon has bent America to its will.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/technology/amazon-prime-price.html?searchResultPosition=1

Peter S. Goodman

Why was the wealthiest, most powerful country on earth dependent on the charity of a profit-making software company to outfit medical personnel with basic protection in the face of a pandemic?

Individuals like Mr. Benioff [CEO of Salesforce] had benefited from public goods financed by taxpayers — the schools that educated their employees; the internet; roads, bridges and other infrastructure enabling commerce. Then they deployed lobbyists, accountants and lawyers to master legal forms of tax evasion that starved the system of resources. He and his fellow billionaires could crow about giving back in part because of how comprehensively they had taken.

Billionaires have snapped up real estate, shares of stock and other companies at distressed prices. They have applied their lobbying muscle to turn gargantuan, taxpayer-financed bailout packages like the CARES Act and a perk engineered for real estate developers into corporate welfare schemes for the wealthiest people on earth.

Laurence D. Fink, the world’s largest asset manager, has broadcast his own dedication to stakeholder capitalism and social justice while squeezing poor countries to pay impossible debts in the midst of the pandemic.

Jeff Bezos has amassed enough wealth from his e-commerce empire to blast himself into space, as the employees left behind on earth spent the first months of the outbreak laboring in Amazon warehouses without adequate protective gear.

Between March 2020 and the middle of October 2021, America’s billionaires saw their collective wealth soar by 70 percent, exceeding $5 trillion, according to an analysis of Forbes data by Americans for Tax Fairness and the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies. That mountain of money was controlled by a mere 745 people.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/business/davos-man-marc-benioff-book.html?searchResultPosition=1