Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
An Artwork by Romanian born artist Mircea Cantor intlited “Stranieri” 2011 made with wooden round table, bread, knives, salt is displayed during the press preview of the exhibition “Food” on December 18, 2012 at the Ariana museum in Geneva. The international travelling contemporary art exhibition will be presented later in Milan, Sao Paulo and Marseille. AFP PHOTO / FABRICE COFFRINIFABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images
Art or breakfast?
I know nothing about Bishop Allen, the band behind this song – which I found, I think, on a freebie download Christmas album from superstore Target, but I may be misremembering – but I can only hope that the rest of their music has exactly the same combination of twee, ramshackle and somewhat catchily adorable that this one does. There’s something heartwarmingly slapdash about this song, but it’s one that I find myself singing when I least expect it. It’s very good as accompaniment to doing the dishes, I find.
“All journalists are constantly negotiating stress in both positive and negative ways,” said Bruce Shapiro, executive director of the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma in an interview by phone. “There’s the stress of the deadline itself, there’s the stress of the subject matter in the story, and there’s whatever personal stress and professional stress we’re carrying. To a point, stress is helpful. Then there’s a point where stress becomes overwhelming and performance declines.”
From here.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
The Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft is lifted on to its launch pad at the Baikonur cosmodrome this morning. The Soyuz spacecraft is to bring US astronaut Thomas Marshburn, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield to the International Space Station later this week. Photograph: Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters
I adore this so much. It’s so well composed, there is so much to unpack in it…
This song matches my mood today, both in the beautifully melancholic way it sounds (The instrumental break at 1:53 just breaks my heart every single time, I don’t know why), and the lyrics; the end of which roughly translate as “Sleep, you shall be awake soon enough/Sleep, before going into your cross/Sleep, sleep little dear/Sleep until the morning.” Which… you know.
Sad day. A sad song feels right.
I could try to explain it, but I’m sure I would fail. There’s no words that I could come up with that would even come close to describing the sheer terror of hearing that your son is in a place, or your child’s in a place, where there’s been violence. You don’t know the details of that violence, you don’t know the condition of your child and you can’t do anything to immediately help them or protect them. It is a powerless and terrifying experience.
From here, a parent of a student at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT talking about hearing about the shooting this morning.
News like this just derails everything else; I find it hard to think about other things, to care about what I’m supposed to write about, and so on. It’s exhausting, horrible, unthinkable; describing it as “powerless and terrifying” is something that fits most people’s experience with the news, I suspect. I think that’s why the response on social media that I’ve been tracking has been do… vitriolic, for want of a better word. We don’t want to accept our powerlessness, so we’ll rail loudly about gun control and the lack of mental health care and other (important, worthy) issues, because at least then it feels like we’re doing something.
(That said, to everyone who says things like “Now is not the time to talk about gun control”: No, now is exactly the time. There have been two mass shootings in a week. What other sign do you need that this needs to be addressed?)
(Also, I feel simultaneously aghast at, and jealous of, those who seem to be perfectly capable of having a normal day on Twitter today, making jokes and going “Woo!” about things. Would that I could do the same.)
I was 8 the first—and only—time I spoiled Santa for a believer. My parents had come clean about the Santa myth to me a year or two earlier because I was offended that the jolly geezer didn’t care about me, a Christmas carol-singing Jew from the northern Chicago suburbs. Why did he only leap down the chimneys of my Christian friends? What had I done to deserve this prejudicial treatment? My parents finally cracked, and I was relieved. My friends weren’t more special than me after all!
I knew, of course, that most kids my age were not privy to this knowledge. Possessing the secret made me feel deliciously superior. I understood the cruel, complicated world a little better than my third-grade buddies. Unfortunately, my newfound sophistication didn’t enhance my secret-keeping abilities.
From here.
I had Santa ruined for me when I was… Five? Four, maybe? Young, I remember; a friend came over on Christmas Day to show off his toy haul, and when I attempted to show him what Santa had brought me, he laughed at me for even mentioning Old Saint Nick. “There isn’t a Santa! It’s just your mum and dad pretending!” he told me. On Christmas Day.
Ah, the casual cruelty of youth.
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Snow covers the ‘Piazza Duomo’ square in Milan, on December 14, 2012. AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images
I admit it: I am dreaming of a White Christmas this year, even though it’s apparently unlikely to happen here in Portland.