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Urban/Rural Divide

Interesting article on the urban/rural divide from New York Magazine. Cities always faced formidable challenges including deindustrialization well before rural areas, but their concentration of activists and ability to share solutions allows them to overcome setbacks and tackle problems effectively. I know I felt a strong pull to rejoin our fair Northeastern city when we bought our home in the NW end in ’05.

“For most of us, living in cities means living close to those who are both like us and not. Even just walking down a city block means having no idea who will cross your path, what they believe, or how they will behave. Strolling is a succession of chance meetings, the vast majority of them superficial. At times, a dense neighborhood can feel like a village, where you bump into friends or revive dormant acquaintances. At other times, it means confronting a vast and entrenched homeless population. Urbanites take this haphazardness for granted. We have the ingrained habit of sharing space, of encountering difference, of swimming in the collective soup.”

 

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I wish smart phones were smarter

“I wish smart phones were smarter, more intuitive. If you open your browser or platform or email it can sense your emotional and psychological state and deny you access with screens like, ‘Maybe give it an hour,’ ‘its not a good time to see this,’ or ‘okay, that’s enough.’” – Marc Maron

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Vintage Pineapple Lamp

This may look like a group of grapes, but it is not. It’s a pineapple, a Vintage Pineapple Lamp. Check out eBay if you don’t believe me. I spied this at a thrift store more than a year ago, but I kept my powder dry owing to the $49 price tag. That’s a bit too steep for me for a purely kitsch item. However, I never forgot it, and when one appeared in my eBay feed for $23 about a month before my birthday, I bought it. (Full disclosure: the item cost more than $10 to ship.)

It’s really heavy with a metal base made to look like wood just like the stickers that covered the paneling on a mid-80s Ford Country Squire Wagon. The balls are lucite and strung seemingly by hand with wire around a metal column. The top is plastic and resembles an artificial plant. I rewired it and included a new LED bulb so as not to heat the lucite and damage it. It glows ever so slightly and looks best at night. Lowe’s sells colored LED bulbs around Christmas time, so I may switch it out to a green bulb, which will hide it better amid the cluster of balls.

This version is green and blue, but it also comes in yellow and green, which, frankly, would make it look more like a pineapple and less like grapes. Your taste may vary, but I liked the blue best.

Vintage Pineapple Lamp

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Shop Wisely, Shop Used

Limited edition Adidas Campus sneakers found at a consignment shop for $15
Limited edition Adidas Campus sneakers found at a consignment shop for $15

For the past several years, I’ve kept track of every dollar I spend on clothes in a Google sheet. It’s a very nerdy endeavor for a former English major, but it keeps me on track to spend less and to spend wisely. I also have a formula that calculates the  amount of money I spend as a percentage of my after-tax income and the percentage of total purchases spent on items that were already worn. Americans spend a massive amount of money on clothes, and much of those pieces end up in thrift stores and consignment shops where you can find them for a song. Plus keeping track of your spending will keep you on budget and allow you to make goals. This year, my goal is to increase the amount I spend on used items as opposed to new ones and decrease my overall spending. In 2016, I spent 2.92% of my after tax income on clothing/shoes/accessories and 82.79% of money spent was on used items.

Tips for your spreadsheet: Syntax to sum a column based on a criteria. Mine is “used.”

Syntax: =SUMIF(range, criteria, sum_range)

Happy Shopping and Saving…

 

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Stereotypes are subject to history

Certainly the kind of groupings and stereotypes are so subject to history — that really interests me. For instance, if you’d asked the kids in my school when they were all about 12 what one could expect of, say, a Pakistani-Muslim boy in our class, our go-to image of that young man would’ve been of a rather tedious math or biology student heading for one of the better universities.

It’s funny, isn’t it? So these kind of racial stereotypes of groups, they have the ability to transform. I guess when I’m writing, part of what I’m insisting on is that whatever we’re living in at the moment is not, in some way, fundamental. Things are constantly open to change. And part of the thing which I find dangerous about some of the thought right now is exactly the suggestion of eternal states; so, that things have always been this way, they never could be any other way. Part of historical writing is to remind oneself … things were different, and therefore can be different again. – Zadie Smith on Fresh Air

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Radical Desire for Time Travel

“I would say we’re in the process of radical desire for time travel, which is something different. There was a survey – really fascinating to me – done of Republican voters in this last election by the Times. Seven out of ten of them wishing America could go back to how it was in the 1950s. This is very interesting point for me because that kind of historical nostalgia is only available to a certain kind of person. ”

Gross: “A white person.”

“Mainly. I can’t go back to the 50s. Life in the 50s for me is not pretty. Nor is it pretty in 1320, 1460, 1580, 1820, or even 1960 in this country frankly. That is interesting to me. The historical nostalgia that is available to some but not to others. And I am also historically nostalgic. The left is also nostalgic. As tempting as it would be to apply the solutions of the past to 1970s semi-socialist England to the present problems, I don’t think that is possible either. I think the idea is that you find some way to restate the thinks that you find valuable in the past – if you find them valuable – in a way that people live with – in a way that is livable in this contemporary moment.”

“That interests me. how to deal with nostalgia, which is a total human train on the right and the left – but in a way that is clear-eyed and factual. ”

-Zadie Smith and Terry Gross on Fresh Air

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We learn so little from peace

“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

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The Politics of Fear

“Never feel afraid, never feel disheartened,” Khan said in an hourlong talk at the annual conference of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a Highland Park-based civic organization. He urged the crowd of high schoolers, recent college graduates, nonprofit workers and budding activists to “stand up” against the “politics of fear.”

“Whenever in the life of decent people throughout the history of mankind, whenever there have been difficult times, there have been times when their values were tested. That is why we we are here, that is why I am here, that is why you are here,” Khan said. “To make sure the goodness of this country [lasts], the goodness that we cherish when we call ourselves proud Americans.” – Khizr Khan

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Weeks of to-dos

Weekly to do list

My hack for getting all things done even on a lazy weekend? A list. Always a list. This one just has at least two weeks of to-dos and even includes some spare math problems I encountered. Stay on track and enjoy the sweet relief that comes with crossing something off.