In the New Yorker...

[Jeff Wrangler]

David Sedaris' piece in the newish one is pretty good. I mean, he's never NOT good. This particular subject isn't as exciting as some -- it's about the red tape involved when he and Hugh renew their permanent-resident status in England -- so maybe his life is just so settled down and successful that he's running short on experiences with comedic possibilities. But I did LOL a few times, as usual.

Yes, I jumped ahead and read that article, too. He's one of the authors I always turn to immediately.

For all his pissing and moaning, it still sounds to me like it's easier to get permanent residency status in England than it is in the U.S.

Of course, when I say that I've finished an issue, that sometimes means that I've exhausted the articles in it that I'm interested in reading. Sometimes I pass the magazine on with half the contents unread by me.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Talk about ripped from the headlines.  

I'm currently reading the April 1 story about allegations of decades-long sexual abuse of boys by teachers at the elite Horace Mann private school. I was only about a page and a half into the article when it all began to sound eerily familiar. Then it hit me: this was essentially the plot from an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit that aired this past fall.

The similarity went so far as to have a character in the show, a teacher at a school for boys that was being investigated for decades of sexual abuse, say pretty much what one actual teacher from the Horace Mann School actually said: "Everything I did was in warmth and affection and not a power play. In those days it was very spontaneous and casual, and it did not seem really wrong."

According to The New Yorker, an article about the allegations of abuse at Horace Mann was published in the Times Magazine last June, and there was a follow-up story in the Times itself. Allegations of improper behavior went as far back as the 1960s and continued into the 1990s, and the headmaster and the board of trustees did absolutely nothing. The plot of the L&O: SVU episode followed the story of the events concerning the Horace Mann School almost exactly.

(And this all goes to show that the cover-up of abuse of minors is not limited to the Roman Catholic Church.)

ETA: It also goes to show that an elite education isn't everything. One individual discussed obviously had the elite private school education at Horace Mann, and then also at the New England Conservatory of Music, and he still ended up as a hustler ("escort in a gay bar") and a porn performer (never having seen him--that I know of    --I won't call him a "porn star.")

[Jeff Wrangler]

I highly recommend John Le Carre's account in the April 15 issue of his experiences during the filming of the movie version of his novel The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, with Richard Burton.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Today at lunch I enjoyed the article in the April 15 issue about the improbably named puppeteer Basil Twist--whose name really is Basil Twist; in fact, he's Basil Twist III. 

[Front-Ranger]

That was a great article, Jeff. This week's issue (the one with the two moms on the cover reading their Mother's Day Card) has an article about our governor, John Hickenlooper. It's not really very well written and it overdramatizes his latest crisis associated with prisons, but it's worth a scan.

[serious crayons]

Finally finished the April 29 books article comparing writing about the Depression to writing about the recent recession. Fascinating. I'm going to type my favorite passage, partly to help myself commit it to memory:

"The Great Depression left people more helpless and isolated -- Agee's sanctified tenant farmers are passionate and alone -- but the new depression seems to have produced less hope. Over the years, the structures that were built during the Roosevelt Republic to secure Americans against another catastrophe -- banking regulations, collective bargaining, federal credit, business-labor coöperation [ ] public education, a scrupulous press -- have steadily eroded. So has the public's faith in institutions, and the idea of sure upward movement through each successive generation. Americans have been thrown back on their oldest belief of all, the cult of the individual. Its current deities, objects of worshipful fascination, are celebrities and entrepreneurs who preach the native philosophy of mind-cure, handed down from Emerson by way of Napoleon Hill to Oprah Winfrey and Timothy Ferris: if you can think it, you can do it -- you are responsible for your own success, your own failure."

[Front-Ranger]

Hmmm, I'm definitely going to have to read that article! I currently hold similar views but am more hopeful because of the new tools, chiefly the Internet, that make individual influence and power more accessible to the general population.

[serious crayons]

Hmmm, I'm definitely going to have to read that article! I currently hold similar views but am more hopeful because of the new tools, chiefly the Internet, that make individual influence and power more accessible to the general population.

Me too, and I think it helps. Look at what has happened in the Middle East. Or even in the U.S., you can see instances where the freedoms of the internet have helped unleash opinions that might have been repressed by the previous rigid gatekeepers -- and I say this knowing that the gatekeepers were mass media and I was essentially a (low on the ladder) one of them. The internet has opened the door to many more opinions, and that's ultimately liberating for all. But it's still too slow a process for my taste.

[southendmd]

Annie P. has a story in the new fiction issue.  It's titled "Rough Deeds".

She even uses the word "whoreson". 

[Jeff Wrangler]

Annie P. has a story in the new fiction issue.  It's titled "Rough Deeds".

What's with Western writers and tire irons? Sherman Alexie mentions one in his story in the same issue as A.P.'s story.