Well, once again, I hope your weeks are carrying on through in this time. Please wear your mask as indicated by the sign above.
Links
Certainly more to come this week about Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but the Times obit is really very full and interesting, about everything from her legal career before the court to her relationship with Sandra Day O’Connor, and especially about RBG’s parents, who you probably know all about but I was less familiar with the real difficulty of their lives:
[Bader Ginsburg] grew up in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood essentially as an only child; an older sister died of meningitis at the age of 6 when Ruth was 14 months old. The family owned small retail stores, including a fur store and a hat shop. Money was never plentiful.
Celia Bader was an intellectually ambitious woman who graduated from high school at 15 but had not been able to go to college; her family sent her to work in Manhattan’s garment district so her brother could attend Cornell University. She had high ambitions for her daughter but did not live to see them fulfilled. She was found to have cervical cancer when Ruth was a freshman at James Madison High School, and she died at the age of 47 in 1950, on the day before her daughter’s high school graduation.
From my colleague Zoe Tillman (who is worth following on Twitter if you aren’t, as the best legal reporter working), she explains how the court works with only eight justices, especially in an election year.
Here’s sort of a compelling argument a few people both left and right have made in various iterations: It’s good that people don’t passionately support Joe Biden, if he’s elected.
One of my colleagues wrote a lovely piece about dropping his twin daughters off at college this year (and also how weird and alien the campuses look at present).
And, separately, another colleague wrote about his grandmother, his late grandfather, and their family’s experience with grief during the pandemic (and immigration more broadly).
Personally think the best line reading in His Girl Friday is when Cary Grant asks Ralph Bellamy to conjure up future Rosalind Russell in “lavender and old lace” and, as Bellamy looks dreamily into the middle distance, goes, “She looks OLD, doesn’t she!” That is not in this piece, but another great entry in Caroline Siede’s ongoing look at romantic comedies here about the movie.
W magazine asked a bunch of actors which shows they’re binging during the pandemic, and people gave really full answers here (especially Kathryn Hahn on Broadchurch and her, like, complete romance with watching it alone).
Makes sense but personally didn’t know there weren’t organ transplants until the 1950s. This obituary on one of the pediatric pioneers is really interesting.
This story about Kamala Harris’s parents is interesting as hell — gets into how and why they each left India and Jamaica, and their extremely unique social set at Berkeley (they were really in with an academic black nationalist set), especially given that while Harris is similarly accomplished, and of course liberal, she herself seems far less inclined to radicalism or academia.
What happens to Bernie Sanders now that’s he’s lost? A ton in here about how and why he’s doing a lot for Biden, to the frustration of various people who love him. (Additionally, details on his favorite band, Mango Jam Band, and how some staffers are living on a rented farm.)
Light book commentary
I read the first half of War and Peace earlier this summer (like The Power Broker, it was already physically present in my apartment and I didn’t have to lug it around), which was wonderful but for whatever reason I stopped reading, and am now working to finish. Anyway, now that I’ve reached this juncture of War and Peace, it is jarring to read the parts in War and Peace where actual Napoleon and actual Alexander I are characters, surrounded by approximately 20 generals of varying nationality, then without any transition you’re back with Pierre’s terrible wife.
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.