A couple of articles, blog posts, etc., have caught my eye recently. I share most of the links to stories I like on my Delicious page, though I’ve been using Twitter more lately for this purpose.
“Running in the Rain,” The New York Times. I’ve always loved running, especially in the rain. It brings back memories of when my cross-country teammates and I would run outside, taking in the New England autumn weather. Rain gave us a distraction, a cool reprieve, a reason to be kids who jumped in puddles, not high school seniors who were about to jump to the next stage in life. Many times throughout xc season, my sneakers would be stuffed with newspapers to absorb the dampness, only to get wet and smelly again the next day. I didn’t care, though. Running shoes were never meant to look (or smell) pretty.
“The Invitation You Can’t Refuse: Why Sonia Sotomayor Was Talking about Race in the First Place,” Slate and “Sotomayor’s ‘Empathy’ May Be Best Trait,” by Cynthia Tucker. Interesting thoughts from Tucker:
“… a thing or two ought to be said about the bizarre notion than Sotomayor should be disqualified because she has acknowledged that personal experiences play a role in her judgments. That’s a commonsense observation, but it has been cast as a breach of judicial ethics, a heresy among the black-robed Spocks who render objective judgments about the law.
“Hogwash. All human beings, including affluent white men, see life through the prism of their experiences. We cannot separate our views and values from the experiences that made us who we are.”
“Therapists Wired to Write,” The New York Times. It makes sense that therapists would have a lot of material for stories given that they hear so many intimate ones when talking with patients. Themes of love, loss, betrayal, abuse, etc. inevitably arise. The challenge is figuring out how to write stories in such a way that doesn’t break the confidentiality that therapists try to maintain with their patients. This quote from the article resonated with me:
“Everybody comes in with their own stories, and they can be so staggeringly original,” said Bonnie Zindel, the psychoanalyst who started the writing group seven years ago. “We all need stories to make sense of our lives, we’re all wired to tell stories, and nature gave us that. For us, we wonder, ‘What is the story that our patients are telling?’ There are mother stories, father stories, ghost stories and the eternal universal story of a child trying to separate from its mother.”
“Her Prince Has Come. Critics, Too,” The New York Times. In this story about Disney’s first movie featuring a black princess, critics raise a valid question: “We finally get a black princess and she spends the majority of her time on screen as a frog?” Why is that?
“onBeing,” The Washington Post. I love one of the quotes from last week’s interview with makeup artist Bailey Orenia-Sessoms: “When you have a lack of self love, you’re more susceptible to accepting society’s beauty standards and then you’ll find yourself not liking who you are year to year because every year it changes.” I never really thought of it that way before, but it’s so true.
Indexed: I’ve looked at this site for a while now and it continues to amuse me. Who said index cards were just for studying?
Word on the Street 