Hope everybody had a good week now that baseball and basketball have returned.
Links
Rare good COVID news: There have been fewer premature births during the pandemic, or at least in anecdotally and in early data — this story is really interesting on that subject.
This is from last weekend, but if you read the last section (the unanswered questions) of this piece on the NFL protocols for this season, it’s crazy how little they had figured out vs. the NBA or MLB at such a late date.
Anne Helen Petersen makes a really sharp observation here about how get-through-this-habits are now like a way of life.
This piece from Dave Weigel on the suburbs and Trump’s push there, and whether that’s down the fool’s path, works through a lot of the issues at hand.
If you want to read some quality reviews of the new Taylor Swift album, can’t go wrong with Amanda Petrusich or the A.V. Club’s.
If you like process stories, this from Aaron Dessner is really interesting on how the (great!) Taylor Swift–Bon Iver song got written. Dessner also talked about the writing process for the album with Pitchfork, including the totally wild secrecy involved. (As an aside via that interview, apparently Taylor Swift also attended a highly memorable National show last summer in Prospect Park where it POURED for an hour and they kept playing, even though that seemed like a real electrical hazard!)
Here’s a sad, but interesting thread from the Auschwitz memorial Twitter account about a lapel pin in an old photo, and theories about why this Czech boy might have worn a Spanish soccer team’s pin.
Belatedly, this collection of Carl Reiner anecdotes from various famous people and former colleagues is really great.
Lindsey Adler, who covers the Yankees for the Athletic, has a great piece about how she plans to cover the baseball season, which hits on both the ethics of constrained resources right now and the delight of a great distraction like baseball.
And this may be of varying (i.e. little) interest to you, but I think there are some parallels between the process of sports and political reporting (and not in the “politics as game” way); specifically, the value in being physically present. Take this from Lindsey:
Truthfully, I miss clubhouse availability. The Yankees have been getting us quite a few players each day, but what I enjoy the most is talking to people in person and one-on-one. As I’m sure many of us have learned over the last few months, video calls are a nice tool to have during a pandemic, but there’s no substitute for the ease of conversation that happens while speaking face-to-face instead of screen-to-screen. But, this is what makes sense for the safety of everyone, and we’re all adjusting to a new reality under our social-distancing sensibilities.
For campaign reporters I’ve worked with over the years, at least a good deal of the source relationships and little details and texture accrued over time come through being at events and on the road. Baseball games obviously have endless variation in a way that campaign events don’t exactly match (the candidate generally gives set remarks, even if the venue or audience varies). But a lot of the inside details you find in bigger pieces or compelling day-to-day coverage (whether that’s a deep profile of a candidate’s humanity, or a story about abuse within a campaign) begin with the relationships developed over time with staff. Even my, er, more observational pieces really come from just getting to be places and see things, and catch like the sound guys bored in the back or feel the true weirdness of a candidate speak to like six people. Obviously, the lack of not being there is a problem people face to varying degrees in all walks of life, professional or otherwise — but I thought Lindsey, as ever, had some interesting thoughts on the challenge of covering the season that resemble some of the ones we have in politics.
Light book commentary
Isn’t this cover design great? The book is really tiny, too, in a pleasing way. Sadly, as I have been reading the Federalist Papers for some work-related stuff, this edition does not have the full Federalist Papers, just a choice selection. But maybe that’s all the Federalist Paper one really needs.
Also, lest you think anything particularly changes over time, the first Hamilton paper opens with a lengthy consideration of what thin motives people might have on either side (a sort of virtue-signal in glory vs. avarice and corruption in favoring the current regime), and how you just have to proceed with the good faith assumption that people will take your argument seriously.
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.