Other
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Ideas of a Decade
A special issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, “An Era in Ideas,” goes under the surface of words like “death” and “terrorism” that have entered the public imagination since the September 11th attacks. The collection of essays reflects on…
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Odd-Jobs of the Past
Summer is the most appropriate time to reminisce about those “character-building” odd-jobs of yesteryear. Sometimes perusing a book’s dust-jacket, you learn that your literary idol endured some menial labor or surprising occupation and it confirms their humanity. In the spirit…
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Undocumented Prison Deaths
“..currently, there isn’t a single federal law requiring state-run jails and prisons to report detainee deaths, or what caused them. Not one.” After the Death in Custody Act expired back in 2006, there has been no accountability for the reporting…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Groupon can be tracked throughout history—way back to the ancient Greeks. Also, they apply to all forms of graphs. Real vampires with heat sensors! This is like minute math for adults. Canadian English just got REAL. And officially recognized by…
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Ted Wilson Reviews the World #97
SCRATCH AND SNIFF ★★★★★ (3 out of 5) Hello, and welcome to my week-by-week review of everything in the world. Today I am reviewing Scratch and Sniff.
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The Last Poet I Loved: Maggie Nelson
After four years in England, I know that summer is not the season of budding trees, shy morning sunlight, blue skies, and merry picnics on the grass that my Midwestern American childhood promised me. It is the season of gray.…
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“We Love You From the Start” (Today!)
The Rumpus and the Bay Citizen are excited to announce our next monthly event, “We Love You From the Start.” August’s event features a slew of brilliant writers: Melissa Febos, Brendan Constantine, Steve Fainaru, and Steve Almond. Nato Green is…
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Notable New York, This Week 8/08-8/14
This week in New York Airplane! at Bryant Park, Lev Grossman reads from The Magician King, Moth StorySLAM on business, The Center for Book Arts annual summer reading, authors Emma Forest and Jon Ronson at McNally Jackson, The Final Episode…
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Dan Weiss’s Morning Coffee
Take THAT, mind bending microcosmos. Finally, our very own mini-me’s. Does this mean we all have to reassess the importance our moon signs? Alien hunt on earth? Psshh I’ve been doing #9 for years.
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WHERE I WRITE #16: In Storms
With the exception of the four years I spent at a small college on the east coast, I’ve lived in Chicago all my life. Anyone who grew up in the Midwest, or spent any significant amount of time there in…
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Mark Twain Wanted to Scalp His Critics
Have you checked out Sunday Magazine? It’s writer David Friedman’s site with articles from The New York Times Sunday Magazine exactly 100 years ago from the date he posts. One of the articles for July 30, 1911, “When Mark Twain…
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A Pterodactyl Song
“So…I haven’t read…in 5 and a half years.” David Berman’s baritone voice drizzled out to the 8th floor auditorium at Columbia College in Chicago, sliding shyly over the beige carpet like a hand falling from a bed to the floor…