IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair. We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
Alexia Nader takes a trip to Bed-Stuy in New York, the neighbourhood of photographer Ruddy Roye. His Instagram photos capture his home district as he sees them, and as he wants others to see the people living there. He uses his photos to spark debate, and bring attention to inequality.
(Bklynr – approx 19 minutes reading time, 3860 words)
The captions he writes prominently feature his views on race and inequality, and his social mission — to change perceptions of poor, black people — guides the way he takes pictures of his subjects. He often frames them in the most flattering way possible: in one of his photos, a man with visible tattoos of a skull and crossbones, the number 666, and the words “Eat P***y” looks mellow and even almost wholesome.
Zadie Smith writes about the Boboli Gardens in Florence, and the trip she took (aged 17) with her father using money from her first advance. From here, she explores the notion of parks, the freedom they bring and the importance they hold.
(New York Books – approx 19 minutes reading time, 3853 words)
Harvey and I knew from experience that it takes a while for immigrants to believe a park is truly public and open to them: my mother always used to complain, exaggerating somewhat (and not without a little pride), that she was the only black woman to be seen pushing a stroller through St. James’s Park in 1975. Sometimes a generation of habitation is needed to create the necessary confidence; to believe that this gate will open for you too.
Bryan Curtis and Patricia Lee collaborate on an oral history of the 1989 World Series, wich was held in San Francisco. Just minutes before the scheduled start of the third game, a massive earthquake hit the city. Those who were there talk about what happened next.
(Grantland – approx 59 minutes reading time, 11808 words)
Eckersley: I kept thinking, OK, everybody relax. OK, let’s play. It sounds awful, me even saying it. But that was my thinking. Everybody in a crisis reacts differently.
Ley: We make our way downstairs. At that point, people are still being led into the stadium. The cops haven’t stopped it. Nobody knows what’s going on.
Gallagher: We had no emergency power. We had no way to talk to people. The emergency preparedness, if you will, was really sorely lacking.
Andrew Leonard meets Chad Whitacre, who, unhappy with his software developer job, started the site Gittip. It’s about ‘sustainable’ crowd-funding, funding the salary of independent workers. How does this work, and should we be sceptical of it?
(Salon – approx 10 minutes reading time, 2035 words)
To a cynic, the whole thing sounds hopelessly idealistic and maybe even a little bit crazy. And the more you learn about how Gittip actually works in practice, the more odd certain aspects of it become. But philosophically, Gittip’s mandate is rooted in the most ancient of Internet cultural traditions, the “gift economy” dream that great things can be built by freely cooperating communities of volunteers.
David Sedaris‘s sister Tiffany took her own life in May of this year. She hadn’t been in touch with her family for quite some time, and in the wake of her death they went to a beach house on Emerald Isle. There, they reminisced about their childhood, and their struggle to deal with Tiffany’s death looms large.
(New Yorker – approx 21 minutes reading time, 4275 words)
Each of us had pulled away from the family at some point in our lives—we’d had to in order to forge our own identities, to go from being a Sedaris to being our own specific Sedaris. Tiffany, though, stayed away. She might promise to come home for Christmas, but at the last minute there’d always be some excuse: she missed her plane, she had to work.
Mike Giglio tells the story of ‘Wild Bill’ Suess, who was born in Germany but raised in Missouri. After a life of drug use, motorcycle gang membership and multiple crimes, he was arrested on conspiracy to sell cocaine. He was eventually removed to the United States – sent to Germany, where he had not been since his birth.
(Buzzfeed – approx 24 minutes reading time, 4905 words)
When Suess was arrested in the summer of 2009, America was in the midst of a new deportation push. Hoping to appear both tough and humane on illegal immigration, Barack Obama has ramped up deportations but moved the focus to people with criminal convictions. Local government agencies increasingly share information with immigration authorities in hopes of weeding out criminal aliens.
…AND ONE FROM THE ARCHIVES…
In 1998, Peter Perl wrote about Prisoner #09185-016, Jonathan Jay Pollard, said to be an Israeli agent sent to jail for espionage. He had sent classified information to Israel – and was granted citizenship there in 1998. Perl looks into Pollard’s past, and what drove him to such measures.
(Washington Post – approx 24 minutes reading time, 4905 words)
These officials still consider Pollard a dangerous traitor whose release would send a terrible message that it’s okay to spy for a friendly nation or to help an ethnic or religious homeland. And they portray Pollard as an arrogant, greedy and sometimes delusional young man who sold out his country for $50,000 in cash, jewelry and lavish trips abroad. President Clinton has heeded their opposition in rejecting annual pleas to commute Pollard’s sentence.
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