HELLO and welcome to the 124th installment of Things I Read That I Love, wherein I share with you some of the longer-form journalism/essays I’ve read recently so that you can read them too and we can all know more about playgrounds! This “column” is less feminist/queer focused than the rest of the site because when something is feminist/queer focused, I put it on the rest of the site. Here is where the other things are.
The title of this feature is inspired by the title of Emily Gould’s tumblr, Things I Ate That I Love.
Is There Hope For The Survivors of the Drug Wars? (April 2014) by Monica Potts for The American Prospect – Following formerly incarcerated men struggling to get back on their feet in a world where they have been branded less-than-citizens for life.
The Overprotected Kid (March 2014), by Hanna Rosin for The Atlantic, I sort of expected to hate this article and only get through two paragraphs, but it’s mostly about playground design and the value of letting kids do things that are considered dangerous. Which I found really super-interesting.
Chevrolet Caprice (April 2014), by Ruth Curry for The Paris Review – “My parents didn’t like [Tracy] either, in part because Tracy actually knew who Rayanne Graff was, which implied Tracy watched TV—cable TV, even!—which further implied a familiarity with sex, drugs, Michael Jackson, and the Delia’s catalog, all of which were forbidden in my house. This, of course, made me like her more.”
Who Were The First Teenagers? (March 2014), by Hunter Oatman-Stanford for Collectors Weekly – I really want to see this movie TEENAGE now that I’ve read this very interesting article about the evolution and definition and creation of this class of persons.
The Stacks: The Searing Story of How Murder Stalked a Tiny New York Town (June 2001), by E. Jean Carroll for Spin Magazine – Um wow, this town really got hit hard by tragedy after tragedy. It’s almost incomprehensible, all the death and death and death and then sadness.
How Burrowing Owls Lead To Vomiting Anarchists (Or SF’s Housing Crisis Explained) (April 2014), by Kim-Mai Cutler for Techcrunch – Um, can somebody tell me how to feel about this? It takes like an hour to read the whole thing.
The Peephole (April 2014), by Melissa Gira Grant for Guernica – On how stories about sex workers are told, on how sex workers’ stories are told through surveillance rather than through our own voices and experiences, and how sex workers are spoken for and spoken of, but not spoken to.
The Only Black Guy At The Indie Rock Show (January 2013), by Martin Douglas for MTV Hive – “When I listened to rock music as a kid, it often felt like I was sneaking past the guards of racial barriers and into a cool party I wasn’t invited to. But I didn’t wantto feel that way. I just wanted to enjoy the music just like everybody else.”
oh man I thought that said life after reincarnation, kinda bummed but still interesting.
Yaaaassss ‘Teenage’! It’s narrated by Ben Whishaw who is a certified perfect human. Definitely worth seeing.
So American children/Millenials today are now:
“less emotionally expressive, less energetic, less talkative and verbally expressive, less humorous, less imaginative, less unconventional, less lively and passionate, less perceptive, less apt to connect seemingly irrelevant things, less synthesizing, and less likely to see things from a different angle”
than our parents?
Jfc,why not just scrap us all and start over?
or they could move us onto a tropical lesbian commune island. also, well, that assessment is inaccurate. is that really what it said in the article? maybe i just glazed over that paragraph
Kind of, the article is quoting an essay which references an analysis of results of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking by Kyung-Hee Kim, who’s an educational psychologist. But a lot of the article towards the end leans toward the “our kids suck because they’re wimps and have Peter Pan syndrome” schtick.
The island sounds like a better idea than what I said.
Thanks for sharing the Only Black Guy at the Indie Rock Show. Great read.
Finally finished the San Francisco piece. Thanks for sharing. Except now I have to get my friends to read it so we can discuss it!
OMG Chevrolet Caprice just made me feel all the feels.