Understanding Others: Tone More Than Policies?

20 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest, The Outer Loop

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"China's Lost Cities", "Oracle Bones", "River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze", Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip", Peter Hessler, President Trump, Rural America, The New Yorker

In the past eight months, I have never heard anybody express regret for voting for Donald Trump. If anything, investigations into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia have made supporters only more faithful. “I’m loving it—I hope they keep going down the Russia rabbit hole,” Matt Patterson told me, in June. He believes that Democrats are banking on an impeachment instead of doing the hard work of trying to connect with voters. “They didn’t even get rid of their leadership after the election,” he said.

and

We were at a coffee shop, and Patterson wore his goth look: silver jewelry, painted nails. “I’ve never been this emotionally invested in a political leader in my life,” he said. “The more they hate him, the more I want him to succeed. Because what they hate about him is what they hate about me.

— from Peter Hessler’s New Yorker article, Follow the Leader: How residents of a rural area started copying the President.

I suspect some readers of this blog site mirror, to some degree, my difficulty in understanding the continuing appeal of President Trump to those “Outside the Beltway” — the title of this particular category of MillersTime’s posts.

Peter Hessler, the author of the article above, is someone I have read for years. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer who wrote one of the best Peace Corps books/memoirs I’ve ever read, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. He followed that up with Oracle Bones, then China’s Lost Cities, and Country Driving: A Chinese Road Trip. He has been a staff writer for the New Yorker since 2000 reporting from China and Egypt. In 2007 he moved to rural south west Colorado.

If the two quotes above have interest for you, check out the article from which they are quoted. Hessler has spent at least eight months listening to people in rural Colorado (and elsewhere?) and currently lives Ridgeway, CO,

“Now Is the Time…It Does Not Have to Be Like This”

04 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest, Escapes and Pleasures

≈ 6 Comments

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"Americanah", Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, MacArthur Genius Grantee, The New Yorker

Sometimes it takes someone from outside our society to capture what our own reporters, columnists, and citizens are not saying so clearly.

Thus, a short piece in the New Yorker by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie*, Nigerian author of the wonderful novel Americanah, one of the NYTimes 10 best books of 2013 and also one highly touted by MillersTime readers.

I’ve hesitated to post something such as this, but I think it is time to do so.

Now Is the Time to Talk About What We Are Actually Talking About, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The New Yorker, Dec. 2.

(*Thirty-nine year old female novelist who divides her time between Nigeria and the US.)

Respectful Comments welcomed.

John Hersey’s “Hiroshima”

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest, The Outer Loop

≈ 2 Comments

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Atomic Bomb, Hiroshima, John Hersey, The New Yorker

Last week, The New Yorker made available online the John Hersey Hiroshima article he wrote for the one-year anniversary of the August 6, 1945 atomic blast on Hiroshima.

I may have read it years ago, but I don’t recall having done so. And I can’t imagine forgetting what he wrote. Having just been in Hiroshima last month, I was drawn to the re-release of Hiroshima and read its 31,000 words in one sitting.

It’s a masterpiece.

Return to My Lai, Seymour Hersh cont.

26 Thursday Mar 2015

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest, The Outer Loop

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

"Return to Mylai", Katie Orlinsky, Mylai massacre, Symour M. Hersch, The New Yorker, Vietnam War

Pham Thanh Cong, the director of the My Lai Museum, was eleven at the time of the massacre. His mother and four siblings died. “We forgive, but we do not forget,” he said. Credit Photograph by Katie Orlinsky – The New Yorker

Having recently returned from a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia and being continually disturbed, and sometimes mystified, about the US role and legacy in that part of the world, I was attracted to the current issue of the New Yorker and Seymour M. Hersh’s article Return to My Lai: The Scene of the Crime – A reporter’s journey to My Lai and the secrets of the past.

Hersh, as you may remember, particularly if you ‘came of age’ during the Vietnam War, broke the story about the My Lai massacre, which, in part, led to a reexamination of our role in that war and in that part of the world.

Now, 47 years later, Hersh returns to Vietnam and specifically to My Lai and discovers things he did not know when he uncovered and wrote about the My Lai massacre.

Check out: Return to My Lai

Also, in a companion ‘article’, there are photographs by New Yorker photojournalist Katie Orlinsky, who accompanied Hersh on this trip. Check out: The Memory of My Lai.

A Terrific “New Yorker” Article: “Schooled”

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Cory Booker, Education, Mark Zuckerberg, Philanthropy, Politics, The New Yorker

Politics. Education. Philanthropy.

As in Cory Booker, Newark Schools, Mark Zuckerberg.

If you’re on the MillersTime mailing list, you no doubt have interest in at least one of these topics (unless you got on the list solely because you’re family or you’re interested baseball).

And you may remember a few years ago that then Newark Mayor Cory Booker (now NJ Senator) announced that Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was investing $100 million in what was to be an effort to revamp the Newark public schools.

In this week’s New Yorker Magazine, Dale Russakoff has a fascinating article about what has happened as a result of mixing politics, education, and philanthropy. It’s a long article, but once I started it, I stayed up until I had finished it.

You can read the article, Schooled, on line or get a copy of this week’s magazine. You won’t be disappointed.

Once you’ve finished it, I encourage you to leave a Comment on this site as to what is your ‘takeaway’ from Russakoff’s article and what has happened in Newark.

The Best Article on Parenting Ever

25 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest, Family and Friends

≈ 2 Comments

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The Atlantic Magazine, The New Yorker

No.

I’m not referring to either of the recent Atlantic Monthly articles that seem to have opposite conclusions: Hanna Rosen’s Hey! Parents, Leave Those Kids Alone or Alfie Kohn’s The Over-Protected Kid.

I’m referring to a short New Yorker article entitled New Parenting Study Released with this opening paragraph:

A recent study has shown that if American parents read one more long-form think piece about parenting they will go fucking ape shit.

Read it through yourself, being sure to get to the last couple of paragraphs.

Lance Armstrong – “An American Myth”?

18 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest, Go Sox

≈ 3 Comments

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Lance Armstrong, Michael Specter, The New Yorker

Now that Lance Armstrong has mostly admitted (to Oprah) what he has done, is forgiveness to follow? (Click on the red ‘link’ above to see for yourself three minutes of highlights of Armstrong’s Oprah interview).

Check out this article — What Lance Armstrong Did — in The New Yorker, written by Michael Specter, Jan. 15th.

I agree completely.

Enough of Lance Armstrong.

“Transaction Man” – A Fair Portrayal of Mitt Romney

28 Friday Sep 2012

Posted by Richard in Articles of Interest, The Outer Loop

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Mitt Romney, Nichoals Lemann, The Mind of Mitt Romney, The New Yorker, Transaction Man

The current issue of The New Yorker, Oct. 1, has an interesting article on the strengths and weaknesses of the mind and the career of Mitt Romney.

I recommend Transaction Man: The Mind of Mitt Romney* to all, whether you are for or against him, whether you like or dislike him, whether you support Barack Obama, etc.

The author, Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia and also a writer for The New Yorker, has written what seems to me one of the better profiles of Mitt Romney that I‘ve read this campaign season.

(*The NYer article is behind a pay wall, and I’m not sure the link will get the whole article to you. In the link provided, you will at least get a summary of the article.)