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.
Lauren Fintoni visited Detroit’s Techno Museum, and found that, instead of being depressed by the economic struggles of the city, he was impressed by its potential. Here’s why:
(Vice – approx 11 minutes reading time, 2330 words)
I came to The D in early December to do research for a book I’m writing about modern hip hop production, and the city took me by surprise. I came away thinking that Detroit felt like the future. I saw in it many of the hallmarks – poverty, chaos, destruction, potential – that New York, Berlin or London had before gentrification rendered them distant memories.
2. Do what you love, love what you do?
Miya Tokumitsu examines the idea of ‘do what you love’, which has become”a mantra for today’s worker”. But whether or not it is a helpful mantra is up for questioning.
(Jacobin – approx 12 minutes reading time, 2433 words)
By keeping us focused on ourselves and our individual happiness, DWYL distracts us from the working conditions of others while validating our own choices and relieving us from obligations to all who labor, whether or not they love it. It is the secret handshake of the privileged and a worldview that disguises its elitism as noble self-betterment.
File: John Walton/EMPICS Sport
Frank Bures writes about Mark Cheseto, an accomplished runner who had travelled the world thanks to his talent. But in a tragic incident, he lost his feet. Could he run again?
(Runner’s World – approx 37 minutes reading time, 7547 words)
Cheseto has run this trail countless times since arriving at the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2008. It was through these woods that he pushed himself and his teammates and helped forge the Seawolves into a national force. And it was here that he took that last run, the one that transformed him from the greatest runner the school had ever known into… someone else.
4. The life and death of Jana Van Voorhis
Jaime Joyce writes about Jana Van Voorhis, who wanted to take her own life in 2007. She enlisted the help of Wye Hale Rowe, and outlined a litany of medical problems. But she wasn’t who she seemed.
(Big Round Table – approx 52 minutes reading time, 10,509 words)
In the section of the intake form labeled “prognosis,” Lien wrote Jana’s response: “Doctors have said nothing.” Lien noted on a separate sheet of paper that Jana’s lack of knowledge about her prognosis was “unusual,” and suggested that the Network’s medical committee “ask her some specific questions about that.”
File: AP Photo/Aaron Favila
Barbara Ehrenreich writes about the reality of being poor, the negative stereotypes that surround the less well off, and how this affects those on the breadline.
(The Atlantic – approx 6 minutes reading time, 1213 words)
Picking up on this theory, pundits and politicians have bemoaned the character failings and bad habits of the poor for at least the past 50 years. In their view, the poor are shiftless, irresponsible, and prone to addiction. They have too many children and fail to get married. So if they suffer from grievous material deprivation, if they run out of money between paychecks, if they do not always have food on their tables—then they have no one to blame but themselves.
Gregory D Johnsen writes about the Authorisation for the Use of Military Force, which was created post-9/11 and “remains the primary legal justification for nearly every covert [US] operation around the world”.
(Buzzfeed – approx 53 minutes reading time, 10781 words)
More than a dozen years after the September 11 attacks, this is what America’s war looks like, silent strikes and shadowy raids. The Congressional Research Service, an analytical branch of the Library of Congress, recently said that it had located at least 30 similar occurrences, although the number of covert actions is likely many times higher with drones strikes and other secret operations. The remarkable has become regular.
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
File: Eye Ubiquitous/Press Association Images
In 2006, George Saunders wrote about the ‘incredible Buddha Boy’ in Nepal, who people said had not eaten, drunk or moved from his spot under a tree in seven months. Was this real or a hoax?
(Longform.org – approx 50 minutes reading time, 101,62 words)
I went online. The boy’s name was Ram Bahadur Bomjon. He was sitting in the roots of a pipal tree near the Indian border. The site was being overrun by pilgrims, thousands a week, who were calling this boy “the new Buddha.” He’d twice been bitten by poisonous snakes; both times he’d refused medicine and cured himself via meditation.
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