Tag: new york times (page 1 of 1)

January 9, 2022 / 0 Comments

How to Read and other links for my last day of PTO

The love of my life shared this piece by Kate Harding yesterday and as she tweeted: [this is good]

“Today’s reader will simply not accept the baton being passed. If something is unclear, the author must expand; if something offends, the author must account and atone.”

I was drawn to fashion articles this week, including this WSJ story about ‘kid core.’ I love the hero image of a man at Paris fashion week looking like every member of the Cosby Kids at once. Dressing like a tween is not for me at this big age, but some of the sneakers I’ve been purchasing and eyeing have a distinct hint of playfulness. Also, black people look great in bold colors!

Also, The decades-old aesthetic that imagines the cultural and technological wealth of a Black future is thriving yet again.

“The biscuit, too, deserves a celebration.”

Still She Rises by Jasmin Pittman Morrell

Chinese names are incredibly purposeful. […] First up is the family name, known as the last name in many Western cultures and similarly taken from the father’s side. This is followed by a name that is shared with your generation, often paternal cousins. Finally, there is the person’s individual name. These names literally show not only our ties to family and history, but how we put them first.

Marian Chia-Ming Liu

“For the past two years, the public company, called Magazine Luiza, or Magalu, has limited its executive trainee program for recent college graduates — a pipeline to well-paying, senior roles — to Black applicants.”

Also, from the NYT, Siddhartha Miller writes about an artist and New Orleans, a place I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Last, but not least, I kinda miss the bloghouse days. Maybe some Justice and Spank Rock will end up in my scrobbles this week.

January 2, 2022 / 0 Comments

A Digital Reset and other links for the new year

Anil does a personal digital reset each year. I took this as a motivator to improve my relationship with Twitter. However, I didn’t do a complete unfollow as he does. Instead, I used Tokimeki’s unfollow tool. I dropped about 200 accounts. I also got rid of some lists. I found myself particularly interested in decreasing the news & politics accounts I follow (unless they were about Los Angeles), removing weak or no longer relevant work ties and people I might personally enjoy but not in tweet form.

What’s left?

people I know and like
good tweeters
basketball
Los Angeles
General Company Town and Streaming work follows

I really want to spend 30 minutes or less on Twitter most days (basketball and televised live events excluded), and I don’t want to be depressed after I’ve done so. Let’s see how it goes.

“The world is not generous with downtime. There’s always more to be done or things that could be done a little better. So to harvest the benefits of rest, you need to nurture it and protect it.” – Alex Soojung-Kim Pang in How to Rest Well

I’m in the middle of a two-week break from work but spent the first two business days of it working (even though everyone in our division was, in theory, also on holiday). Taking rest seriously seems like a worthy resolution.

“No 8 a.m. Meetings in 2022 ”

— Roxane Gay

‘Nuff said.

Do you spend your best hours checking emails, catching up on work, or doing tasks for your family? Try giving that time to yourself instead. Use it to focus on your priorities rather than someone else’s. You can use that hour or two for anything you want — it might be for a hobby, a project that you feel passionate about, time with your children, or even to volunteer and help others. Setting aside your best hours to focus on personal goals and values is the ultimate form of self-care. – Tara Parker-Pope in NYT’s Well Newsletter

Too many NYT links in this list, but let’s do one more.

Let’s leave the last word to Dawn Staley:

“I’ve never felt more Black than right now.”

May 25, 2020 / 0 Comments

Are You Feeling Sad?

“No worries, no worries, oh. You’re gonna be alright.”

— Little Dragon

The route to Saturday’s successful grandma pie started a few weeks ago when I first watched Carla Makes Sheet Pan Pizza.

I had assumed it was a recently published episode of From the Test Kitchen when it popped up in my recommended playlist, but it is nearly a year old. It’s a delightful 11 minutes that close with other Bon Appétit staff members cursing with pleasure after their first bite.

Pizza has been one of my regular cravings during the COVID-19 “safer-at-home” orders. Despite a couple decent pies from a local restaurant, they hadn’t scratched the itch. Carla made it clear that this would.

I haven’t been spending my homebound days baking like many of my friends (and many Americans in general). In this case, though, I made it my mission to make this entire thing from scratch.

The original plan was to make it for our ninth wedding anniversary. Problem number one: we had flour in the house but no yeast. Yeast has been hard to come by during the pandemic. I had yet to see any of it restocked in our local grocery stores when I’ve made my occasional excursions out for provisions. On Mother’s Day, however, when I ventured out for my first low risk meet up with my parents and sister—outdoor, ten feet apart, masks on—I was able to procure yeast from my mama.

When I went about the making of the dough, though, a new problem: the yeast wasn’t active. No exciting reactions in my warm water. No foaming. Nada. Anniversary plan derailed but, no worries, dear reader, we ate very well.

In the time before the coronavirus, I’d cultivated a life of great convenience. We live in a comfortable neighborhood, surrounded by grocery stores and shops of all kinds, all within walking distance. They are usually stocked with all manner of goods in multiple varieties to appease the upscale palettes of the surrounding zip codes. How brain disruptive to be denied such a common ingredient?

I would not be denied. A little online hunting and a large quantity of yeast was ordered. There would be no instant gratification, as it would take more than a week to arrive. Still, the delay of good things, the earning of them even if it is just by having to wait, has been a lesson I have enjoyed re-learning over the last two months.

Ten days later than planned, yeast went back into the mixer. Ten minutes after that, bubbles appeared. A ball of dough formed. 24 hours after that, a pizza went into the oven and, fuck, that’s delicious.

There’s joy in cooking. There’s joy in circling the block. There’s joy in Los Angeles. There’s joy in remembering to care for others.

Even now, there’s joy.

October 3, 2015 / 0 Comments

On Living Wisely: What are your Core Values?

“From there I’d see all I wanted to see instead of all this misery.” – Ben Westbeech, Welcome

What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? – Richard J. Light, How to Live Wisely (New York Times)

The Core Values Exercise. Pick five words that best describe your core values. How might you deal with a situation where your core values come into conflict with one another?

This is interesting. The Times article doesn’t provide the full list of values from the class and there are a ton of crazy lists that go from twelve terms to over a hundred. In searching, though, I came across this post by Scott Jeffrey who suggests coming up with your own list so, away we go.

After going through a bit of his process, I’ve come to this:

I want to be a good citizen of the world. Most essential to this are compassion and kindness.
I want to be a loving person. I show this through commitment and thoughtfulness and expect it in return.
I want to be thought of as, and surrounded by, smart. I most respect the clever and the creative.
I do not like feeling stagnant. Progress and change are my friends. Let’s keep it moving and let’s do it in style.

Most often, my need for progress runs into conflict with thoughtfulness and compassion. Not everyone moves at the same speed as I do, and my natural sensibility is to go quickly towards changing what I see as a bad situation. That’s not always the most compassionate thing.

Others may need to sit with something awhile. The situation might not be changeable. Change doesn’t always mean better. It’s not always my responsibility to Fix-It Felix.

My heart knows this. My head doesn’t get the memo every time.

And it’s actual conflict for me. Maybe my heart doesn’t know it. My chest swells with emotion for things I cannot change but for which my head has come up with solutions. I want things to be right. Or different. Or just in motion.

Keep on movin’. Don’t stop. Like the hands of time.

I know stuck exists, but I don’t believe in it.

I hope that more often than not I let my heart lead with compassion and thoughtfulness—weird that I don’t place thought in my head, right?—and that my personal needs don’t get in the way of being a better citizen, friend, partner, fam.

My regrets in life have come from the times I wasn’t kind, thoughtful, and selfless. I imagine that will still be true whenever I’m taking my last breaths. When I’m there, I hope you will just sit with me in that space for a moment instead of worrying about what we can change to make it better.

I’d value that.

September 29, 2015 / 0 Comments

On Living Wisely: Finding Meaning in the In-Between Time

“Offer me something inside. A place to go. A place to hide.” – Jessie Ware, Something Inside

Yesterday, I tried to reconcile how I want to be spending my time with how I spend my time. I was unsure, so I spent time SnapChatting my day to see what was going on. I don’t think I did enough talking about what actually happened so tomorrow I’m going to do more explaining. More storytelling.

Today’s exercise, though, asks about how I spend my spare time.

Well, right now, I’m writing. It’s 8:51 P.M. and I’ve watched the premiere of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah (Good job, kid!) and what I’d rather be doing than anything else is typing words into the white screen that Ulysses provides. I don’t do this enough.

I wrote on the first night of XOXO:

I’m most human when I’m writing.

That’s true. I also feel most human when I’m reading other people’s words. I do that often. When I take a break from work and grab an iced skinny hazelnut latte at the nearby Starbucks or take lunch by myself, I’m usually spending my time with the writing of others.

I talk a lot and watch a lot of basketball. When I was a kid, Hell, up until my late twenties, I played a lot of basketball. These days, I’m particularly passionate about women’s pro ball. We are season ticket holders for the Los Angeles Sparks. I’ve seen more women’s basketball live than I’ve seen any other sport, by far.

I love television and consume it in large quantities.

So how do I spend my spare time? Writing. Reading. TV. Ball is life.

Now, the way the question is presented in the Times article, the question is meant to help a person focus their college studies. I extrapolate that to presume this is supposed to be a good way to make decisions professionally, but I’m not so sure. What I know is that when I’ve had to write as the primary work product of a job, it’s dimmed my love for writing.

Having worked in/around television for the bulk of my professional career, my love for it only grows when immersed in the process. I like how those donuts get made. I imagine, at some point, I will get back to that.

I do a lot of reading as part of my gig now. Reading. Editing. Massaging copy. I should do more of it. It’s painful but making someone else’s words better whether through soft nudges or complicated surgery is satisfying.

If a professional basketball team came calling for my services in some way, I’d have to consider it but I worry it would tarnish my love of the game. I’m a fan first. Could I still be with a paycheck on the line?

What I didn’t mention to this point is that I also enjoy doing things in service of the greater good. I didn’t include it because I don’t do enough of it.

I’m making time for writing and reading and basketball and my eyes glued to the endless hours of great tv, but I haven’t been creating space for making the world a better place.

Huh.

There it is.

A moment of clarity.

September 28, 2015 / 0 Comments

On Living Wisely: How Do You Spend Your Time?

You told me to take the chance and learn the ways of love.” – DeBarge, All This Love

What does it mean to live a good life? What about a productive life? How about a happy life? How might I think about these ideas if the answers conflict with one another? – Richard J. Light, How to Live Wisely (New York Times)

I’ve come back to this article a few times since dropping it in my Pocket in early August and while these questions are rarely far from top of mind for me, they’ve taken on greater urgency since leaving Portland after XOXO. There, the question is, perhaps, more specific-What does it mean to make good things?—but as Amit Gupta’s talk conveyed, these questions may, ultimately, be one in the same.

The first exercise referenced in Richard J. Light’s essay is:

Make a list of how you want to spend your time. What matters to you? Then make a list of how you actually spent your time, on average, each day over the past week and match the two lists.

Stream of Consciousness Answer:

I want to make good shit every day. I want to spend time coming up with creative ideas and then executing on them. I want to talk about what’s good and why. I want to spend time figuring out why certain things get seen, read, watched and others don’t. I want to work on big ideas. I want to delight and surprise. I want to be clever. I want to waste less time. I want to read more for pleasure. I want to Tumblr. I want to help more people more often. I want to workout. I want to spend time with those I love.

How do I normally spend my time?

I dilly-dally on the internet in the mornings.
I spend two hours of the day commuting usually listening to podcasts and dilly-dallying on the internet.
I spend a lot of time looking at why things are or aren’t working.
I spend a lot of time in or preparing for meetings answering other people’s questions
I watch a lot of TV.
I workout.
I twitter.
I…

I don’t know. Well, what I do know is I don’t spend enough time being creative and making stuff. I don’t spend enough time talking about what’s good or working on big ideas. I don’t give enough of my time to others in need. At least that’s how it feels.

I want a more accurate view of this, though. This week I’m going to SnapChat my days and document what the hell I’m actually doing.

You can follow me there if you don’t already. And bug me if my story seems a little thin. I haven’t done much SnapChat making so I tend to forget and/or get shy.

Does your every day look like how you envision?