Reader killed the blogging star

So did teaching full time. I'm not blogging anymore for now. Maybe I'll resume in the summer, when I have more time on my hands and juicer writing jones. In the meantime, I've been beaming my stuff, myself through my Google Reader*, which is nice, it works like a scrapbook.

Until I return here, have a look at Beyonce's "Single Ladies" video (embedding verboten) and then Gwen Verdon's "Mexican Breakfast" below. Gwen was choreographer's Bob Fosse's wife ("Chicago" is his). May it hit you like a ton of bricks.



Until then, BIG kisses, maybe I'll be back.

*It works like this: I have a little dossier of blogs that I follow (that seems to grow by the week) and I'm notified when the blog has updated. If I read something I like, I click "share" or "share with note" and presto, other people with Reader can see what's been catching my eye. I strongly encourage you to join me. Get an account.

Can't do it like I used ta!

Yea, so I've just started work at middle school X. It's going great. Kids only come next week, but the prep has been relatively intense (briefings, seminars, orienteering, unpacking, stapling, cutting, gluing, getting know a ton of peoples).

I used to read blogs and their posts, almost as they came up. I was on the internet for several hours a day, trigger-happy with the "send" and "refresh" buttons. With this new job, on with 23 eight-year-old freaks all day, it simply cannot be done. My Google reader is far into the terrifying triple digits and stale by the time I get home. I'm just going to cut it down to my nearest and dearest -- friends' personal blogs and the New York Times.

Not to mention, I have to figure out whether I should kid-proof my general internet presence, from Facebook photos to anonymytating this thing. They know how to do everything!!!!

My nets has been wrenched away!

In the meantime, my midsummer has been good. The above is me and Paul-do at Tom Petty. I put up pictures on my Facebook.

for my radio-nerds

“I keep waiting for it to stalk down the hill and attack the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Herb Caen on Sutro Tower

4 things of beauty

(spent this morning looking at cool stuff with Bira)

1. Michael Phelps' miracle finish, frame-by-frame at Sports Illustrated. This is all over the web, but I had to put it as well. Not for the finish, but for the beauty of the butterfly -- the relatively young, incredibly difficult stroke, that if mastered, is the fastest way to move in water.
2. Tony Cragg's sculptures. I suddenly remembered a small tucked-away exhibit of his in Rome in 2003, I spent some good time today revisiting him online.
3. Daphna Simon's jewelry. Ooooh.
4. Video for "Day in the Life" by the Beatles. It's nightmarish, surreal and luminescent all at once.

Primeira medalha de ouro do País nos Jogos Olímpicos de Pequim

In the 50m freestyle, in a big upset, Cesar Cielo Filho broke an Olympic record this morning, won his second medal, Brazil's first gold in these games and the first gold ever in swimming. At the end of the race, when he realizes he's won, he goes ba-na-nas. I was bursting with pride and joy!!!!!!

I haven't seen footage of him recieving the medal, but I've been told by my people back home he couldn't stop crying and was positively inconsolable when the Hino Nacional started playing. Bless him.

I had to share

I've been having this problem with stinky towels in my house. No matter how often I washed them, how consistently I hung them up, how hot the water was, there would always be this weird musty smell. Especially in David's towels, which are a little threadbare. I kind of gave up after a while. Just lived with the gross towels.

Then, on a nice quiet day, I googled "stinky towels" and millions of pages of advice came up. It turns out it's mostly due to old machines where there's been a lot of residue-build-up, which sounds about right in my case. The most common and do-able trick was adding a cup of vinegar. Went and bought a ton of cheap white vinegar, and dumped a cup in after a normal wash and ran it again. It WORKS! They smell divine at last.

Personal History by Katharine Graham

Personal History by Katharine Graham

It's been a long time since I've posted a proper book review, having let this blog wind through a somewhat random phase (it's been a brownian-motion summer.)

In any case, the best book I have read this year, far and away, is Katharine Graham's autobiography, Personal History. I'm not the type to list heroes and heroines, but, oh, this woman. She's just incredible.

Summary: Born into a wealthy D. C. family, her father, Eugene Meyer purchased the down-and-out Washington Post for a song when Katharine was a child. It would be one of his favorite investments, and would eventually pass the role of publisher on to his beloved son-in-law Philip Graham. A bright and talented superstar in D. C. Mr. Graham made the paper competitive and developed many powerful relationships in the White House, notably with Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy. Unfortunately, he had serious alcoholism combined with manic-depression. He committed suicide in 1963. One month later, insisting that the beloved newspaper be kept in the family, his wife Katharine walked into the office and to step into his shoes. She would make the Washington Post as we know it today and history as one of the world's most powerful women.

She had been educated at Vassar, had always taken a personal interest in her father's pet project and had a lively post-college stint as a reporter in San Francisco. However, as soon as she got married, she removed herself from any professional ambitions and never expected to take on the role as publisher. She did just fine as a mother, wife and demure hostess (she would later look back on her acquiescence with some embarrassment). When she took over after Philip Graham's death she found herself, not only stumbling with nuts and bolts of the institution, but struggling with how to position herself in the powerfully male world of news and politics. Despite the odds, she became even more formidable, feared and admired than her husband.

I could go on forever about her and her book. It is long and every page is riveting, with many incredible stories, such as her own family's history (always my favorite part of autobiographies) juicy tidbits about celebrity friends (Capote's infamous Black-and-White Ball was held in her honor), acute remembrances of the presidents, other high-profile politicians (Adlai Stevenson had a mega-crush on her). There is a great deal said about journalism, a bit of bickering between the D. C. paper and the Grey Lady in New York, and of course, Watergate. She oversaw the breaking of the story and investigation (though never knew Deep Throat's identity), which takes unheard-of courage in a small town like Washington. However, what I love most is her tremendous insight into the emotional texture of her time and place:

President Kennedy's charm was powerful. His intense concentration and gently teasing humor, and his habit of vacuum-cleaning your brain to see what you knew and thought, were irresisitible. The Kennedy men were also unabashed chauvinists, as were the great majority of men at the time, including Phil [my husband]. They liked other bright men, and they liked girls, but they didn't really know how to relate to middle-aged women, in whom they didn't have a whole lot of interest. This attitude made life difficult for middle-aged wives, and induced -- or fed -- feelings of uncertainty in many of us in those years. Though the men were polite, we somehow knew we had no place in their spectrum. My ever-present terror of being boring often ovewhelmed me in social situations with the President at the White House, particularly whenever I was face to face with the president himself or one of his main advisers, and my fear was a real guarantee of being boring, as it paralyzed and silenced me. (p. 290)

For me, today in 2008, it's a familiar sentiment, though I don't have as recognizable a context (!) Katharine Graham at this point was easily one of the most powerful people in the world, yet she had incomparable grasp on her circumstance as a woman-- the injustice, possibility and fear

Though she may not have written extensively in her career, her love and talent for clarity and engagement certainly betray her as a writer. To offer such a precise description, rolling from the president, to the people in the room, to herself, not only reveals an incredible intuition regarding others, but her sense of self, which is always the more heartbreaking.