Author: Chad
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Win It All
I watched The Verdict recently. Paul Newman’s lawyer character bluffs his way into a high-stakes case, but repeatedly fails on his way to the climax, when a Deus Ex Machina saves the day. I thought about that while watching Joe Swanberg’s latest film Win It All. Getting past the minor thrill of seeing my current…
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Fakelin Newsevelt
Learned a lot from Susan Douglas’s Listening In: Radio And The American Imagination about the development of radio technology and culture, and their impact on 20th century America. Also learned, in a tidbit about Franklin Roosevelt’s crusade against newspapers, that he sounded a lot like another ostensibly anti-media president: Privately, the president in 1940 ask the…
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What I Think Right Now
This all continues to be insane. It’s like being in a car with a drunk driver. I don’t care whose idea it was to let him drive; I don’t care about his protests that Relax I’m fine and You’ll thank me later for driving—I just want to get home safely, whatever it takes.
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Durham Days
We just got back from a long weekend in Durham, North Carolina, for a friend’s wedding. I had a great time bummin’ around the area while my wife was busy on bridesmaid duty. Had some barbecue, heard some blues, and took a few pictures… at Ponysaurus Brewing: at Carolina Soul Records, where I found some…
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The Bullies Pulpit
From Politico: More than 100 years ago a Republican president worried that America wasn’t doing enough to protect its most treasured wild and sacred places from over-development, mining and drilling. So Congress passed and President Teddy Roosevelt signed the Antiquities Act of 1906, giving presidents the authority to preserve imperiled mountains, forests, cultural treasures and…
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The Family Stone
The Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus of The Family Stone says that “This family holiday dramedy features fine performances but awkward shifts of tone.” I mean, yeah. That’s why it’s so good. I didn’t come away loving it when I saw it in the theater. Too mercurial, I thought. And that excruciating dinner scene… But upon…
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America in Five Cities
It dawned on me recently how the names and locations of the top 5 most populous cities in the United States tell the story of the nation: New York, in the east, with the English name, representing the history of our relationship with England. Los Angeles, in the west, with the Spanish name representing the…
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Escanaba in Da Moonlight
For dose dat don’t know much about the Superior State, dere’s a couple of tings that need to be explained. First ting is, in da U.P., we don’t explain tings. Second ting is, we got some of the best huntin’ and fishin’ in da whole world. So says Albert Soady, patriarch of probably the most…
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Word by Word
“The process of creating a dictionary is magical, frustrating, brain wrenching, mundane, transcendent. It is ultimately a show of love for a language that has been called unlovely and unlovable.” Unlovable? Bah! English may be a strange, amorphous beast, but its quirkiness is its charm. In Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, Kory…
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Ötzi-quel
This ongoing saga of Ötzi the Iceman fascinates me. I first learned of him from Radiolab a few years ago, but turns out we keep learning more about this mythic Italian mummy: The more scientists learn, the more recognizable the Iceman becomes. He was 5 feet 5 inches tall (about average height for his time),…
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Saint Benedict in Technopoly
Perhaps it was because I had just finished reading Neil Postman’s 1992 book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology when I started in on Rod Dreher’s latest, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, but I was detecting a subtle yet strong Postmanian vibe throughout the book. Then, when Dreher actually quoted Technopoly, I realized…
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Down with S-Town
Yesterday I managed to mainline all seven episodes of S-Town, the new podcast from This American Life and Serial that were released all at once. It’s a fascinating blend of those two shows: at once an extended version of a TAL episode, complete with idiosyncratic characters and a vivid setting, and a Serial-esque mystery, with…
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Refer Madness: Finding Angels
Almost two years ago I started writing about strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk, in a series I call Refer Madness. My latest one, titled “Finding Angels,” is debuting over at Booklist, as part of the latest issue of “Top Shelf Reference” newsletter. I’ll continue Refer Madness here, but hope…
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Helen Huhta: A Life
“Take care and keep in touch.” My grandma Helen would close every letter she sent to me with that phrase. They were also the final words I said to her on Sunday, before she died yesterday at the age of 92. After slowly declining for years, she took a turn for the worse this weekend.…
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Glass Case of Delusion
Today in “Donald Trump doesn’t realize he is the President of the United States”: President Trump refused to back down on Friday after his White House aired an unverified claim that Britain’s spy agency secretly monitored him during last year’s campaign at the behest of President Barack Obama, fueling a rare rupture between the United…
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La La Librarians
Lots of great anecdotes from the New Yorker story “Scenes from the Oscar Night Implosion“, including this one on the Academy librarians planted in the corner of the press room: In the back corner was my favorite part of the press room: the librarians’ table, where the Academy librarians are on hand to answer questions. Under…
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Fun New Things
Some fun stuff I’ve been enjoying lately: “This Machine Kills Fascists” Pencils From Frog & Toad Press in Rhode Island, which has several other colorfully messaged pencils and other goodies available. Library Extension for Chrome Not sure where I found out about this, but I’ve been digging it thus far not only with my personal…