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.
Adele is back, with new music on the way – and after a big break she’s been chatting to the press.
(Vogue, approx 26 mins reading time)
Well, no one has seen her, have they? Mysteries abound. Will she be happy? Will she be heartbroken? Will she have gone very “LA”? Will she be thin? The thrum of a thousand tabloid headlines echo in my head and then – boom – she is before me, perched at a table amid the flora and fauna, as nervous, glamorous and rare-seeming as a snow leopard, with a tumble of caramel-coloured blow-dried hair and a burst of Byredo perfume, in Etro double patchwork-denim, Fashion Nova vest and white leather heels. A manicured hand is proffered, a firm but fluttery handshake bestowed, followed by the most comforting of salutations: “’Ello, I’m Adele.”
2. Finding peace and craving war
Over at our sister site The42.ie, Gavan Casey writes about the boxer Caoimhín Agyarko, growing up in Belfast, and the challenges he has faced.
(The42, approx 16 mins reading time)
If the blade had traveled just over an inch further, it would have severed an artery and killed him in seconds. Agyarko was rushed to hospital for specialist treatment and facial surgery. In the four and a half years since, nobody has ever been charged for the crime. What was done to Agyarko would change anybody’s life but much of the psychological torment he endured in its aftermath centered on the fact that he was an extremely talented amateur boxer, by that stage a five-time Irish champion through the age grades.
3. The indecent exposure epidemic
In the wake of the killing of Sarah Everard, a look at the epidemic of indecent exposure on the streets.
(The Guardian, approx 9 mins reading time)
Because she was in a campervan, it wasn’t easy to get away quickly: Clara had to get out to fold away some seats. “I decided to jump out,” she says, “and when I looked at him, he was wiping ejaculation off his dashboard and looking at me.” She took a photograph of his car numberplate and drove away. But the man realised what she had done and gave chase. For 15 minutes, he tailed her through the streets of Glasgow. Frightened for her life, Clara drove to a police station, but the man turned off before she arrived.
4. The ship that became a bomb
A ship stranded in Yemen’s war zone has more than a million barrels of oil aboard – what will happen if it explodes?
(The New Yorker, approx 38 mins reading time)
The Safer’s problems are manifold and intertwined. It is forty-five years old—ancient for an oil tanker. Its age would not matter so much were it being maintained properly, but it is not. In 2014, members of one of Yemen’s powerful clans, the Houthis, launched a successful coup, presaging a brutal conflict that continues to this day. Before the war, the Yemeni state-run firm that owns the ship—the Safer Exploration & Production Operations Company, or sepoc—spent some twenty million dollars a year taking care of the vessel. Now the company can afford to make only the most rudimentary emergency repairs. More than fifty people worked on the Safer before the war; seven remain.
This story went viral this week – the story of two writers, accusations of plagiarism, and a donated kidney.
(The New York Times, approx 43 mins reading time)
Over email, on July 21, 2015, Larson answered Dorland’s message with a chirpy reply — “How have you been, my dear?” Dorland replied with a rundown of her next writing residencies and workshops, and as casually as possible, asked: “I think you’re aware that I donated my kidney this summer. Right?” Only then did Larson gush: “Ah, yes — I did see on Facebook that you donated your kidney. What a tremendous thing!” Afterward, Dorland would wonder: If she really thought it was that great, why did she need reminding that it happened?
A look at how a kissing scene in the Netflix series is groundbreaking for its depiction of disability and desire.
(Gal-Dem, approx 10 mins reading time)
In the show, Maeve and Isaac have a summer holiday romance, building what looks like a comfortable routine of sharing breakfast together in the mornings. This caravan kiss is the culmination of mutual interest: Maeve wants him, too. This is only one of a handful of times that I can remember seeing someone with a visible disability being the object of desire. Growing up as a disabled person and almost always seeing everyone but you being fancied or romantically pursued in films and TV shows lead to the idea that if it were ever to happen, it could only occur within the fantasy or science fiction genres.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
In 2012, Michael Finkel told the story of Daniel Kish, who is blind and uses skills learned from things like echolocation to help him move around the world.
(Men’s Journal, approx 25 mins reading time)
Bats, of course, use echolocation. Beluga whales too. Dolphins. And Daniel Kish. He is so accomplished at echolocation that he’s able to pedal his mountain bike through streets heavy with traffic and on precipitous dirt trails. He climbs trees. He camps out, by himself, deep in the wilderness. He’s lived for weeks at a time in a tiny cabin a two-mile hike from the nearest road. He travels around the globe. He’s a skilled cook, an avid swimmer, a fluid dance partner. Essentially, though in a way that is unfamiliar to nearly any other human being, Kish can see.
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