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. Jared Kushner’s real estate empire
In Baltimore, Jared Kushner – Donald Trump’s son-in-law – is a landlord. This essay looks at the complaints some tenants have about how they were treated.
(New York Times, approx 33 mins reading time)
In the cases that Tapper has brought to court on behalf of JK2 Westminster and individual Kushner-controlled companies, there is a clear pattern of Kushner Companies’ pursuing tenants over virtually any unpaid rent or broken lease — even in the numerous cases where the facts appear to be on the tenants’ side. Not only does the company file cases against them, it pursues the cases for as long as it takes to collect from the overmatched defendants — often several years.
In 2016, the worst fire to hit the Smoky Mountains in the South of the US struck. This stunning article tells the story of the survivors – many of whom woke up to find their bedrooms on fire.
(Garden and Gun, approx 24 mins reading time)
“Nicholas, we have to go back up there,” Michael said. With his left hand on the steering wheel and his right pressing his teenage son back in the passenger seat, he drove his gold Honda Odyssey back toward the smoke and into the neighborhood, finding not one house burning, but all of them. “I’ll never get it out of my head,” he would say later. “The noise.”
Amanda Chantal Bacon is a wellness guru who makes money selling items called names like ‘Brain Dust’ and ‘Power Dust’. This (very funny) article looks at how Bacon demonstrates the power of bringing wellness to the masses.
(NY Times, approx 23 mins reading time)
Bacon’s assistant evaporated out the door as her boss set a plate on the kitchen counter: strawberry-rose-geranium bars, tiny “doughnuts” made with mushroom and quinoa and a cinnamon bun that looked as if it were forged by a chic cave man with primitive tools. All of it was vegan, organic and raw. She poured coffee from a yellow enamel pot and slid onto a stool beside me, curling her bare feet up and arraying gauzy cottons around her. Sunshine glowed through the layers. She was, I was quickly realizing, the kind of woman who always seems backlit.
This great profile of journalist Maggie Haberman is a fantastic read about a strong journalist, and how she has followed Trump throughout his career.
(Elle, approx 27 mins reading time)
Trump frequently complains about Haberman’s coverage. He’s tweeted, at various points, that she’s “third-rate,” “sad,” and “totally in the Hillary circle of bias,” and he almost exclusively refers to the Times as “failing” and “fake news.” But no matter what Haberman writes about Trump, he has never frozen her out. Slate called her Trump’s “snake charmer”; New Yorker editor in chief David Remnick recently likened Trump to her “ardent, twisted suitor.” “I didn’t care for that metaphor,” Haberman says. She finds the framing of her relationship with the president in romantic terms “facile.” No one suggests her male colleagues are “wooing” Trump.
What has life been like for Hillary Clinton, post-election? Here’s your answer.
(New York Magazine, approx 45 mins reading time)
Clinton has typically been most loathed when she is running for office, and most beloved after she has lost but is soldiering on, especially if the loss was sufficiently humiliating. But it’s been six months since the cataclysm of November 8, and feelings about her remain fiercely divided. Social media is awash with Hillary fans who imagine alternative universes in which she’s the president, and Etsy booms with crafts made from the words of her concession speech; yet many of her critics — even those who voted for her — are determined that Clinton bear the mantle of worst politician who ever lived, their evidence being that she lost to … the worst politician who ever lived.
6. The woman who could see music
Daphne Oram set up the famed BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and created the Oramics machine, where the user could ‘draw’ the sounds they wished to hear. She’s not a household name, but her story is fascinating.
(BBC, approx 10 mins reading time)
“We immediately saw this was a fascinating, almost unbelievable life story. And we were concerned that we hadn’t heard of this person before and started to recognise that very few other people had,” Brotherston says. “There seems to be a dedicated core of musicians and technicians – but on a wider scale, she’d been forgotten about.”
…AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES…
Earlier this week, Tiger Woods was pictured after being arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. This jam-packed longread looks at how things started to go downhill for him – and his obsession with the Navy SEALs.
(ESPN, approx 57 mins reading time)
Docking in a luxury marina is about the only place to catch a random glimpse of Tiger, who moves through the world in a cocoon of his own creation. When he bought his plane, he blocked the tail number from tracking websites: It ends in QS, the standard code for NetJets. Many athletes, by contrast, have some sort of vanity registration, and some even have custom paint jobs; Michael Jordan’s plane is detailed in North Carolina blue, and his tail number is N236MJ — the “6″ is for his titles. Jack Nicklaus flies around in N1JN nicknamed Air Bear. Sitting on a tarmac, Tiger’s plane looks like it belongs to an anonymous business traveler, nothing giving away its famous owner. He comes and goes quietly.
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