Thursday, November 28, 2019

(M)Aria by Toni Watson ... Amy Purdy: Living beyond limits

 “To be alive──is Power.”
Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson


You cannot know how frightened gods are of pain. There is nothing more foreign to them, and so nothing they ache more deeply to see.
It was a trick of his, to set a sentence out like a plate on a table and see what you would put on it.

When Tones and I capped off a huge year

She's the talk of Australian music at the moment.
If you haven't heard Dance Monkey on the radio, in a supermarket, in an Uber … what even is your life?
Toni Watson's second single as Tones and I, released in May, has gone to number one in 35 countries, including Australia, where it broke a record for the longest stint in that spot.


When she was 19, Amy Purdy lost both her legs below the knee. And now ... she's a pro snowboarder (and a killer competitor on "Dancing with the Stars"!). In this powerful talk, she shows us how to draw inspiration from life's obstacles.

Amy Purdy: Living beyond limits | TED Talk

 

 

Watching Teen Superstar Billie Eilish Growing Up

It is an understatement to say that a lot has happened to Billie Eilish in the past three years. She has gone from being a well-regarded but little-known singer/songwriter to being Grammy-nominated and one of the biggest young stars in the world. For the third year in a row, Vanity Fair sat down with Eilish to ask her about her life and career, what being famous is like, and how she views her past selves.

 




The New York Times – Charles Finch: “…Until the 2010s, if you were reading, it generally meant you weren’t doing it online. Though change had been in the offing, this was the decade that irreversibly altered how we consume text — when the smartphone transformed from a marvel to a staple…It would seem as if few times in history could be less hospitable to literature. Not even 20 years ago we mostly read about things in lag, on thin slices of tree, whereas now we do — well, this, whatever this is. Yet instead of technology superannuating literature once and for all, it seems to have created a new space in our minds for it…”


The Guardian got a bunch of writers and performers — folks like Olivia Colman, Roxane Gay, Nigella Lawson, and Victoria Beckham — to ask the delightful Phoebe Waller-Bridge a bunch of questions and the whole thing is delightful because she is, as I said earlier, delightful.


  • “88 Days of Recovery: How a Girls’ Soccer Team Healed a Broken Coach” by Manny Fernandez and Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times.
  • A New York TV meteorologist claims he was fired for a mere slip of the tongue. Now he’s suing the mayor whom he believes caused his firing. The Washington Post’s Michael Brice-Saddler has the details.
  • Speaking of the Post, media critic Erik Wemple caught up with NBC News chairman Andy Lack at last night’s debate and asked him about a possible independent investigation into sexual misconduct at NBC News.

     

     

    Coffee: The most important meal of the day

  • This is actually one of my favorite things today: Emma Dumain, who covers Congress for McClatchy’s Washington bureau, became a big deal on Tuesday … for drinking coffee. During impeachment testimony, Dumain could be seen in the background getting her last few drops. Kudos to Slate’s Heather Schwedel for reaching out to Dumain about it. And kudos to Dumain for having fun with her viral moment.
    “It’s hilarious,” Dumain said. “It looks ridiculous.”
    Dumain explained that the coffee was good and that she needed it — her 19-month-old daughter had woken up before 6 a.m. and Dumain needed every bit of caffeine should could get.
    Dumain said, “Of all of the embarrassing things that could happen on live TV that I may have done, this was definitely far from the worst thing that I can imagine. Luckily, I didn’t make a mess or miss my mouth or spill all over myself, which is certainly within the realm of possibility given how clumsy and sloppy I can be.”