February 2012
34 posts
Occupied Economy →
A brief history of the first corporate century
By Carl Safina (via Adbusters)
Photo: CHRISTOPH GIELEN
This morning I was pulling poison ivy. It looked like I was up against the withering prospect of pulling more than a hundred individual plants. But I found that if I dug my gloved finger to the root and gently tugged, I could trace it through other roots and stems in my neglected garden,...
“We’re freaks, that’s all. Those two bastards got us nice and early and made us...”
– J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey (via whiskeyandgoatsmilk)
Inside Neko Case's Vermont Farmhouse →
By Katy McColl (via Country Living)
Leave the McMansions to run-of-the-mill rock stars. Indie musician Neko Case put her inimitable stamp on a historic Vermont farm, with quirky salvage, bold new finds, and more than a few heirloom seeds.
By The Piano
Rarely do the terms “rock star” and “homebody” describe the same person. Then again, Neko Case is far from your...
The Believer Interview - Joan Didion →
One Thursday at noon in December 2011, I spoke to Joan Didion over the phone. She was in a hotel in Washington. The woman at the front desk asked, “Who do you want? Bibion? B as in boy?” I replied, “No, d as in dog,” feeling weird and a little hostile. “D as in dog, i, d as in dog, i, o, n.” I did not like having to put dog in Joan Didion’s name. And I did not want to speak to Joan Bibion.
...
Post-Crash Fascism
PHOTO: STEVEN MEISEL / VOGUE ITALIA
by Christian Parenti (via Adbusters)
Climate change is happening faster than initially predicted, and its impacts are already upon us in the form of more extreme weather events, desertification, ocean acidification, melting glaciers and incrementally rising sea levels.
The scientists who construct the computer models that analyze climate data believe that...
Canadian songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen in 2012.
Photograph by Joel Saget/Getty Images.
By Jan Swafford (via Slate)
Check out our Spotify playlist of the Leonard Cohen songs discussed in this essay. Leonard Cohen has a new album out: Old Ideas, his 12th, and his first in seven years. He’s 77 now, and if you know Cohen you know his age will get its due in the new songs. The...
Watch
Death penalty case puts racism on trial in North... →
By Kate Dailey (via BBC News)
Photo: Judge Gregory Weeks presides over the hearing in North Carolina’s Cumberland County
In North Carolina, the Racial Justice Act seeks to remedy years of inequity on death row. But can racism be regulated?
In 1991, 18-year-old Marcus Reymond Robinson and a friend convinced Erik Tornblom, 17, to give them a ride home from a gas station.
Robinson and...
Why Lana Del Rey Scares Rock's Boys Club →
by Liz Phair (via The Wall Street Journal)
Photo: AFP/Getty Images
Rolling Stone asked me to speak about Lana Del Rey. I wanted to know how big my participation in the piece would be–was it substantial or just a quote? Just a quote, they said, to which I replied that I wasn’t super interested. Which was a lie. I have a lot to say about her, but no sound bites. You see, Lana Del Rey is exactly...
Total Incarceration →
In American prisons scattered across the various countries of the world, but outside the United States, prisoners are regularly raped, hung from hooks, subjected to waterboarding, burned, attached to electrodes, deprived of food, water or medicine, attacked by dogs, or beaten until their bones are broken. When on American military bases or on American territory, they are subjected to sensory...
WatchIn December 2011, leaders from around the world gathered at the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations meeting in Doha, a forum meant to encourage dialogue between cultures and people.
The host nation, Qatar, asked Vangelis, the Greek composer, to create the music for the event, which also marked the inauguration of Doha’s cultural village and Greek-style amphitheatre. The event brought...
Sharon Van Etten was once an aspiring songwriter in Tennessee, but she had no idea how the music industry worked. So she moved to New York City and took an unpaid internship working for a record label.
“I started doing mail orders and then learned my way around the music blogs,” Van Etten says in an interview with Weekend All Things Considered host Guy Raz. “I didn’t...
A Glimpse Behind Bars: Juveniles In The Justice...
by Dana Farrington (via NPR)
Photo: Richard Ross/Juvenile In Justice
This 10-year-old, R., was brought in from school by a policeman. He had stabbed a schoolmate, but it was unclear what tool he had used. He was waiting to be picked up by his mom, who couldn’t get him until she got off work, for fear of losing her job.
In the confines of jail cells, photographer Richard Ross...
Wislawa Szymborska, 1923-2012: The Szymborska Poem... →
by Dana Stevens (via Slate)
For over seven years, since tearing it out of a December 2004 issue of the New Yorker,I’ve had the same Wislawa Szymborska poem taped up above my desk. Here it is*:
ABC
I’ll never find out now What A. thought of me. If B. ever forgave me in the end. Why C. pretended everything was fine. What part D. played in E.’s silence. What F. had been expecting, if...
