Links for April 2nd
Library books, NCAA sponsorship deals, Ukraine, gas prices, Pedro Almódovar, Will Smith, teaching, Abbott Elementary
Hello, hope you had a good one.
This week, an abundance of links. Hope you find one here that sounds intriguing.
Links
Nice Story Alert I: Since they ended library fines last year, “more than 21,000 overdue or lost items have been returned in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx, and more than 51,000 have been returned to branches in Brooklyn.” Details in there about books getting returned from the ‘70s.
Nice Story Alert II: These two brothers have been drawing signs for restaurants in New York for decades but have a whole new audience and clientele via Instagram.
This is one hell of a story about a family that had to send their 11-year-old son/brother on a solo journey out of Ukraine.
Super fascinating story about which NCAA sports have benefited most from name-image-likeness, how different localities have approached, and the second-ranking sport: women’s basketball!
Kristin Soltis Anderson gets into the nitty gritty of polling and whether Americans are actually willing to pay more for gas because of Russia (her take lands on “yes, but by how much”).
In terms of the fluid combo of high-brow and low-brow writing, you will not beat Pedro Almódovar’s delightful diary of his Oscars weekend.
And then in terms of the Will Smith situation, this Wesley Morris piece was one to read and puts all the events in the context — as Tom Gara noted on Twitter — of the broader meltdown of people’s emotional health going on right now.
And then in terms of the broader societal meltdown, Rosie Gray interviewed a couple dozen teachers about how challenging the last few years have been in the classroom.
For a nice but thoughtful read, this interview with Quinta Brunson about Abbott Elementary, which gets into what’s going on or isn’t going on in TV broadly:
I’ve read that the show doesn’t sound like a Twitter timeline. People were tired of seeing their Twitter regurgitated back to them through their viewing. A lot of shows had started doing that. But people still want stories. That was important for me from the beginning of writing the show. We are talking about this school, these people in West Philly. They have a job to do. They don’t have time to sit down and have an articulate debate. I think that was refreshing for people — because the debate stuff entered television, but it’s rarely how people outside of New York and Los Angeles are talking. Then I also think that we’re giving people slice-of-life stories.
Cool stuff (and in the case of this bathroom below, even beautiful stuff) to look at:
a. More Frank Thorp photos from the Hill (this time of senators)
b. This bathroom
c. This townhouse renovation, the dream
Light book commentary
Check out this little bit of a letter George Washington sent Alexander Hamilton, trying to get him to come back to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia:
“I almost despair of seeing a favorable issue to…the convention and do therefore repent having had any agency in the business. […] I am sorry you went away. I wish you were back.”
Romance!
A note on all this
Thanks for subscribing. Hope you enjoy. The goal here is just to offer up some links you may have missed, and maybe the occasional commentary on something in politics or a book I may have read that you, the reader, might enjoy. If you have thoughts on any of this, hit me up at katherinemillernyc@gmail.com or just tweet at me.