Search Results for: Outside

The Honey Hunters

Michael Snyder | Lucky Peach | Summer 2014 | 20 minutes (4,960 words)

Lucky PeachOur latest Longreads Exclusive comes from Michael Snyder and Lucky Peach—a trip into the Sundarbans, where groups of honey hunters risk their lives in the forests to follow the ancient practice of collecting honey.
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The Difficulty of Finding Medical Help for Survivors Who Have Been Struck by Lightning

“Finding a doctor who knows anything about a lightning strike is next to impossible,” says Tamara Pandolph-Peary, 46, who was struck by lightning in August 2010, in the parking lot of the Springfield, Illinois, Men’s Warehouse where she worked.

Following her accident, Pandolph-Peary forgot how to use everyday objects, like a potato peeler; she could no longer get from point A to point B in her hometown; she suffered migraines and fatigue; she tripped over her sentences or suddenly lost the ability to understand what other people were saying; she was often dizzy and off-balance; she had tremors and chronic pain, and would unpredictably lose control of various body parts; and every now and then, when her nerves were on fire, even the slightest touch was painfully intense.

“I struggled with the ‘Why me?’ initially,” she says. “There was a time I was angry. There was a time I really missed who I used to be. I think I got past that part. You can be angry and hold onto that, and it can ruin everything you have left.”

— In Outside magazine, Ferris Jabr talks to people who have been struck by lightning and what life has been like for them since (roughly 90 percent of people who are stuck by lightning survive). Few survivors find adequate medical help since the occurrence is rare and doctors don’t know much about how lightning strikes alter the brain’s circuitry.

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Photo: Oregon Department of Transportation

Understanding Mick Fleetwood by the Story of His Car, ‘Lettuce Leaf’

There’s a way to understand Mick Fleetwood, and it’s through “Lettuce Leaf.” Fleetwood was a 20-something penniless musician playing blues with John Mayall when he saw a 1933 Austin Seven four-seater on a London street. He left the owner a note proclaiming, “I’m in love with your car, if it ever needs a good home, please call me.”

He bought the car two years later, just as Fleetwood Mac was forming, and he nicknamed it Lettuce Leaf for its green color. He drove Lettuce Leaf to his 1970 wedding to Jenny Boyd, the younger sister of Pattie Boyd, then married to George Harrison.

Time passed, and the money and cars started coming in. Fleetwood stashed Lettuce Leaf at his friend Eric Clapton’s British estate when he moved to L.A. in the 1970s and forgot about her for 14 years. His band sold millions of records; he got divorced, remarried, and got divorced again from Jenny. And then he got a call from Clapton’s manager, asking him if he remembered the Austin. Fleetwood found Lettuce Leaf in an apple orchard, with birds and squirrels making it their home. He had the car restored and shipped to Maui. Now he squires Mum to lunch in Lettuce Leaf every Sunday.

Fleetwood’s tendency is never to let go of anything, whether it’s Lettuce Leaf, his band, or the stubborn delusion there’s money to be made in celebrity restaurants. This has been a blessing with the band, less so in his personal and financial life. He bought a farm outside Sydney in 1980, and when his accountant flew out to tell him he couldn’t afford it anymore, Fleetwood simply departed for Singapore in the middle of the night, leaving his accountant behind and sending a note reading:

“Oh Brian, Brian, we’ve something to say./We stopped in Singapore the other day./To a hotel we went, the best in town./Amusements we sought, amusements we found.”

— In Men’s Journal, Stephen Rodrick profiles Mick Fleetwood, who at 67, is still having the time of his life.

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Photo: Joe Bielawa

Interview: Kiera Feldman on Oral Roberts, God and Journalism

In our latest Longreads Exclusive, Kiera Feldman and Tulsa-based magazine This Land Press went deep into the downfall of the Oral Roberts family dynasty—how Richard Roberts went from heir to the televangelist’s empire, to stripped from his role at Oral Roberts University.

Feldman, a Brooklyn-based journalist, and This Land Press have worked together before—her story “Grace in Broken Arrow” was named our top pick for Best of Longreads 2012, and it explored another scandal inside a religious institution, sex abuse at a Tulsa Christian school. I exchanged emails with Feldman to discuss the making of the Oral Roberts story, and her start in journalism.

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The Prodigal Prince: Richard Roberts and the Decline of the Oral Roberts Dynasty

Photo by mulmatsherm

Kiera Feldman | This Land Press | September 2014 | 34 minutes (8,559 words)

This Land PressWe’re proud to present a new Longreads Exclusive from Kiera Feldman and This Land Press: How Richard Roberts went from heir to his father’s empire to ostracized from the kingdom. Feldman and This Land Press have both been featured on Longreads many times in the past, and her This Land story “Grace in Broken Arrow” was named the Best of Longreads in 2012.
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Everything to Live For

Jennifer Mendelsohn Washingtonian | June 1998 | 36 minutes (8,995 words)

Jennifer Mendelsohn is the “Modern Family” columnist for Baltimore Style magazine. A former People magazine special correspondent and Slate columnist, her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, Washingtonian, Tablet, Medium, McSweeney’s and Jezebel. This story first appeared in the June 1998 issue of Washingtonian (subscribe here). Our thanks to Mendelsohn for allowing us to reprint it here. You can also read a short Q & A with the author here.

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How to Spell the Rebel Yell

Elena Passarello | The Normal School | 2010 | 14 minutes (3,470 words)

The Normal SchoolOur latest Longreads Member Pick is a deep dive into the sounds of history, from Elena Passarello and The Normal School. The essay also is featured in Passarello’s book, Let Me Clear My Throat.
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“Yee-aay-ee!” “Wah-Who-Eeee!” -Margaret Mitchell

 

“Wah-Who-Eeee!” -Chester Goolrick

 

“Rrrrrr-yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh-yip-yip-yip-yip-yip!”

-H. Allen Smith

 

“More! More! More!” -Billy Idol

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The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

Below, our favorite stories of the week. Kindle users, you can also get them as a Readlist.

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David Foster Wallace on the Costs of Becoming a Professional Tennis Player

It’s better for us not to know the kinds of sacrifices the professional-grade athlete has made to get so very good at one particular thing. Oh, we’ll invoke lush clichés about the lonely heroism of Olympic athletes, the pain and analgesia of football, the early rising and hours of practice and restricted diets, the preflight celibacy, et cetera. But the actual facts of the sacrifices repel us when we see them: basketball geniuses who cannot read, sprinters who dope themselves, defensive tackles who shoot up with bovine hormones until they collapse or explode. We prefer not to consider closely the shockingly vapid and primitive comments uttered by athletes in postcontest interviews or to consider what impoverishments in one’s mental life would allow people actually to think the way great athletes seem to think. Note the way ‘up close and personal’ profiles of professional athletes strain so hard to find evidence of a rounded human life – outside interests and activities, values beyond the sport. We ignore what’s obvious, that most of this straining is farce. It’s farce because the realities of top-level athletics today require an early and total commitment to one area of excellence. An ascetic focus. A subsumption of almost all other features of human life to one chosen talent and pursuit. A consent to live in a world that, like a child’s world, is very small.

-From David Foster Wallace’s “The String Theory,” published in Esquire in July 1996.

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Photo: jpellgen, Flickr

The Man Without a Mask

Longreads Pick

How the drag queen Cassandro—known as Saúl Armendáriz outside the ring—became a lucha libre star.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Sep 1, 2014
Length: 35 minutes (8,948 words)