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.
1. He disappeared in the desert
Deputy Jon Aujay went for a run in the Los Angeles desert in 1998 and disappeared. There are numerous theories about what happened.
(LA Magazine, approx 25 mins reading time)
A few of Aujay’s friends thought he had surreptitiously returned to the military for a covert assignment. There was speculation that he might have dropped out and moved to Alaska, a place he’d fantasized about living in. Aujay’s younger sister, Jan Kaltenbach, decided that he had plans to flee, stashing money, obtaining a new identity, and staging his disappearance.
One of the most singular voices in contemporary music belongs to Joanna Newsom, who has a new album out now. She talks to Rookie about making music, being different, and her heroes.
(Rookie, approx 40 mins reading time)
I didn’t grow up listening to music. It was around a lot, but I was writing. Whatever that impulse is when you’re a teenager and you wanna get home and put on your headphones and lie on your floor, I had that feeling, but I would just go and play harp. At that point, I wasn’t singing, so it was just instrumental stuff. I think the first record I got into was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. I knew bands, but I didn’t get excited about anything as my own until I was older.
Mark Hogancamp was beaten up and left for dead after telling men he met in a bar that he cross-dressed. His way of dealing with the trauma has been to create a miniature war village called Marwencol. The great Jon Ronson went to visit.
(The Guardian, approx 14 mins reading time)
“When my therapy was cut off I hated every man on Earth,” he says. “I felt like I’d been kicked out of the tribe of men on planet Earth. But after a month of hating everything I thought, ‘I have to do something or else this hate and anger is going to build up and kill me.’ I needed to do something.”
This incredible interactive article mixes images, video and text to put together the story of Greenland’s melting ice, and the scientists who track it.
(New York Times, approx 11 mins reading time)
Taking each measurement was so difficult and dangerous that it would require two scientists at a time, she said. They would have to plan a sleep schedule to ensure that a group was always awake to do the job. Everyone knew the team would be working just upriver from the moulin — the sinkhole that would sweep anyone who fell into it deep into the ice sheet.
In August, two reporters from Virginia station WBDJ were shot during a live broadcast. Both of them, Alison Parker and Adam Ward, were killed. This CNN article looks into how the tragedy changed the newsroom at WBDJ.
The live shot signal was still up and running in the transmission room, so Episcopo instinctively turned the volume up. He heard more screams and more shots, then silence. It was 6:47 am. Ward’s camera was on the ground now, tilted at a sideways angle. Within a minute, Ward’s arm fell in front of the camera, so his ticking watch was visible to Episcopo back at the station. ”No one had to tell me. I knew Adam was dead,” he said.
Peter Robinson (of Pop Justice) goes backstage at the MTV Europe Music Awards, watching the rehearsals, checking out the free swag, and reporting on all the bonkers stuff that goes on there.
(The Guardian, approx 16 mins reading time)
Along one side is a room with “anti-piracy” written on its door. The anti-piracy room is where things such as unofficial YouTube uploads of the show will be annihilated and it is not exactly LOL central. “We’re blocking live-streams, too,” says anti-piracy expert Deborah Robinson. “If you look online now, you’ll probably see that people are advertising that they’re going to live-stream the show. They’re not.”
… AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
ESPN’s site Grantland was pulled earlier this week. It was a site for those who loved sports and pop culture, but also those who loved great writing. Here’s one of its longreads on the tragic death of basketball player Bobby Phills.
(Grantland, approx 34 mins reading time)
Those close to Phills never seem to run out of stories about his selflessness. There was the time he jumped out of his car at an intersection to help a motorcyclist who was engulfed in flames after crashing into a nearby truck. Phills would sign autographs until his hand hurt. He ran basketball clinics and contributed to Charlotte-area charities. If you had five minutes to spare for Phills, he had 10 minutes for you.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say