Tagged "The New York Times"

sjriley:

Man Said to Be Acting Head of New England Mob Is Held
Via NYTimes

“It was the first time that the authorities had publicly identified Mr. DiNunzio as the leader of La Cosa Nostra. They say he spoke unambiguously of his role. According to the indictment, Mr. DiNunzio was recorded bragging that he would remain the boss if he went to jail and telling a member of New York’s Gambino crime family that he would be willing to bury uncooperative insubordinates alive.”

I can’t even focus on how intense this is because I’m so distracted by his mom jeans.

Man Said to Be Acting Head of New England Mob Is Held

Via NYTimes

“It was the first time that the authorities had publicly identified Mr. DiNunzio as the leader of La Cosa Nostra. They say he spoke unambiguously of his role. According to the indictment, Mr. DiNunzio was recorded bragging that he would remain the boss if he went to jail and telling a member of New York’s Gambino crime family that he would be willing to bury uncooperative insubordinates alive.”

I can’t even focus on how intense this is because I’m so distracted by his mom jeans.

Bookstores are thin places, too, and, for me, none is thinner than Powell’s in Portland, Ore. Sure, there are grander bookstores, and older ones, but none quite possesses Powell’s mix of order and serendipity, especially in its used-book collection — Chekhov happily cohabitating with “Personal Finance for Dummies,” Balzac snuggling with Grisham.

Eric Weiner describing Powell’s bookstore in Portland as a “thin place.” I wholeheartedly agree - Powell’s is fantastic.

Soon after, Anthony stopped and leaned against a large boulder, and unlike the first time, when he had merely labored for breath, now he collapsed onto the ground. I called out his name, but he was already unconscious and his breathing had stopped completely. I performed CPR for half an hour while begging the smugglers to find a doctor. I hoped for a miracle. Turkey was now out of the question, and backtracking would only return us to a remote border village. Finally, a small covered truck drove quietly within sight of us and we carried Anthony, whose death I could still not come to terms with, into the back, where I climbed in with him.

Tyler Hicks absolutely tearful account of his last reporting trip in Syria with Anthony Shadid, who died in front of him. This is one of the more tragic things I have read in a while.

At 9, he settled a dispute with a pistol. At 13, he lit out for the Amazon jungle.

At 20, he attempted suicide-by-jaguar. Afterward he was apprenticed to a pirate. To please his mother, who did not take kindly to his being a pirate, he briefly managed a mink farm, one of the few truly dull entries on his otherwise crackling résumé, which lately included a career as a professional gambler.

Mr. Fairfax was among the last avatars of a centuries-old figure: the lone-wolf explorer, whose exploits are conceived to satisfy few but himself. His was a solitary, contemplative art that has been all but lost amid the contrived derring-do of adventure-based reality television.

This obit of John Fairfax is one of the most absurd, enthralling and encouraging stories I have ever read.

In sum, for time to be meaningful, it needs to be filled by distance; for distance to be meaningful, it needs to fill an appropriate measure of time. A long trip like mine — timewise, I mean — requires a lot of distance to make the whole experience rise above standing on the roadside. You have to pedal and keep pedaling.

A Man, a Bike and 4,100 Miles by Bruce Weber

‘I mean, it’s easy to go out and shoot a beautiful sunset or a beautiful girl. They’re beautiful, O.K.?’

He gestures toward the middle of the studio.

‘I’ve got a noodle over here.’

Grilled Chicken, That Temperamental Star by David Segal

The thing about anniversaries, particularly this one

One thing you learn in journalism school is that the media loves an anniversary. It’s an easy pitch, with familiar plot lines, characters, story arcs, statistics, etc. Great (re: tragic) stories are rewound, fast-forwarded, paused, contemplated, and dissected. Slide shows of pictures then and now, past and present roller coaster through history. Broadcast, both TV and radio, film footage from the epicenter, accompanied by the sights and sounds of what used to be.

It’s one big fucking spectacle, honestly, and more often than not, I’ll do my part of reading the stories, watching the broadcasts, immersing myself with whatever occupies the news cycle.

9/11 is the exception. My entire life and family are, and have been for decades, in the New York City/Northern New Jersey metro. I don’t need a 10th anniversary media package to remind me what happened, where I was, who I was with, or why it impacts me now.

My memories of that day, like everyone else, no matter how hard I try to ignore or erase, are stained in my history book for eternity. I don’t want to read any more stories or stare at any more footage and pictures. It’s terribly counter-productive to grieving, but it’s how I choose to compartmentalize what happened.

I still haven’t stepped foot on or seen the WTC since it happened. My memory is standing on the George Washington Bridge and watching the black smoke snake its way into the atmosphere; of armed soldiers standing watch for months after the attacks; of cheering for the soldiers as loud as I could at Knicks and Yankees games; of people crying.

My memory is my father sitting on our front steps, face and shoulders covered with soot and ash, explaining in a hushed tone how he ran down 50+ flights of stairs in the 2nd tower, after he saw burning furniture falling from the sky, and helping up strangers who were being trampled, swallowed by the stampede of people running for their lives.

My memory is thinking, what did this man, who taught me how to shoot a basketball, to be patient, to work hard and be humble, who grew up poor in a 3rd world Caribbean island eating wet bread for dinner, who dropped out of college to raise a child, who worked his way to a successful career in New York City finance, who raised a family with all his love - what the fuck did he do to deserve this? What did any of us do to deserve this?

Maybe because he hasn’t spoken a word of what happened since that day is why I choose to ignore this anniversary as much as possible. Perhaps not so much ignore, but remember it in my own way: with two stories, The Falling Man by Tom Junod and Lost and Found by Colson Whitehead, perhaps a couple innings of the days’ Yankees game, and a good meal to tide me over until it’s September 12, and only 364 more days until I have to repeat this cycle all over again.

Where you’ll find me every Sunday.

I’ll typically gather all the stories, magazines, Sunday NYT, book (chapters) and other printed stories I collect throughout the week and work my way through them.

I read for perspective, for inspiration, for tranquility; that throughout my hectic week I’ll have learned something from reading every Sunday that will serve me well.

There’s some class-inflected hypocrisy in the food world, where the center seems to be ceding territory to two wings: the self-appointed sophisticates and the supposed rubes. And the latter — represented by Deen and other objects of Bourdain’s ire, including Rachael Ray and Sandra Lee — have come on strong over the last few years.

Frank Bruni on “Culinary Elitism.” Very well written, and accurate to an extent. And FYI, I’m as big a fan of Momofuku as they come, but their fried chicken is nothing to write home about.

Carr, who reports on the media and contributes to the Times‘ Media Decoder blog, is a splendid movie subject, snapping profanity-laced defenses of the Times at the editors at Vice, waxing poetic about his job and pounding away at his keyboard.

Rossi paints him as a new breed of journalist, different from archetypes like legendary Times editor Turner Catledge — the buttoned-down, domineering newsman — or dogged muckrakers like Woodward and Bernstein.

Jason Silverman (via soupsoup)

mattlawyue

Man Said to Be Acting Head of New England Mob Is Held