Ah, it’s hot, and I’m too sluggish to care about much.
Saturday – friend and I went to Brooklyn Botanic Garden and later saw the Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. Loved the roses, hated the heat, and still bemused by the otaku / anime subcultures – and certainly a little uncomfortable about the erotic nature of some of Murakami’s pieces. Oh well.
The changes in NYC (putting aside the heat thing) –
I had seen the new “Train in Thought” prose in a subway some time ago, but I’m already missing “Poetry in Motion” – so sad that it’s no longer around. NY Times’ Jim Dwyer has an article that gives the transition of the poetry in the subway some perspective.
Some politics:
Fascinating profile on Barack Obama – particularly found these lines of Michael Powell’s article most interesting:
“[Obama] has the gift of making people see themselves in him and offers an enigmatic smile when asked about his multiracial appeal.
“‘I am like a Rorschach test,’ he said in an interview with The New York Times. ‘Even if people find me disappointing ultimately, they might gain something.'”
NY Times’ Bob Herbert raises a great point – we still have a long way to go, whether we may ever have a black president or a woman president, but we ought to savor this time, because this is really something. It’ll be a quite the dream if we may ever reach a point that having either scenario isn’t too extraordinary at all (just running for presidency is a feat regardless of race or gender, I’d daresay).
I think this is the key quote in Dahlia Lithwick’s article, regarding the generational differences between feminists:
Yes, my generation grew up in the plush comfort of academic equality and equal access to jobs. It’s true that far fewer of us have bumped our foreheads on a rigid glass ceiling. But we’re not blind to sexism and we don’t tolerate it any more than our moms did. We’ve worked very hard to broaden our definition of feminism to include women of different classes and races and we are proud that the men we date and marry have met us halfway on the little things. We don’t think our choices are frivolous. We think they are complicated.
As Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter notes, the calculus in trying to see who could be Obama’s VP is ridiculously complicated (or not that complicated – just really hard to choose). Alter’s Newsweek colleague Howard Fineman writes how it’s no less easier for McCain to select a VP.
Ooh – found this lovely time-lapse video of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s cherry blossoms:
Last but not least: the passing of Jim McKay, who will forever be remembered for the lines: “the thrill of victory… the agony of defeat.” Modern broadcast sports owes much to McKay.