Higher Learning

Remembrances of the first year of high school, and advice for getting through your own, from some of our favorite grown-ups. Joss Whedon: “Rule One: DON’T BE LIKE THEM. I knew I was going to be mocked as an outsider and a weirdo, so I established my weird cred before anyone had time to get their mock on. Our study area was a great room ringed by tiny wooden cubicles (called ‘toys,’ in both the plural and the singular—Know Your Notions!), about 50 to a room. On the first day of term I posted a notice outside my toys that was pure nonsense, a portentous abstraction that conveyed the simple message that ridiculing me would not only be weak and redundant, but might actually please me in some unseemly way. As boy after boy read the notice and either laughed or puzzled, I could feel a small patch of safe turf firm up under my feet.”

Author: Staff
Source: Rookie
Published: Sep 5, 2011
Length: 21 minutes (5,416 words)

Remains of the Day

“It’s pretty much with you all the time. And then there are just silly things—I think a week before the most recent 9/11 anniversary we were riding [the] PATH, and you’re a little antsy anyway. We get on the PATH train and there is a bag sitting on the floor. It’s a Victoria’s Secret pink-striped bag and there’s a man, kind of standing near it. The next stop he gets off and the bag is just sitting there. So I say to my husband, ‘Go check out the bag.’ He says, ‘Somebody left their bag.’ I said, ‘No. I’m not staying on this car, unless you go check out the bag.’ So he goes over, and he comes back. And he says, ‘Somebody left their lunch.’ I said, ‘How do you know it’s their lunch?’ He said, ‘There’s a banana on top.’ I said, ‘What’s under the banana?’ He said, ‘It’s a napkin.'” #Sept11

Author: Staff
Published: Sep 1, 2011
Length: 25 minutes (6,351 words)

The Great Campaigner

“I guess I’d call Rick Perry’s campaign ghostly, because he was not the main character. (Karl) Rove, who recruited him to switch parties and run against me, directed the effort. Perry was not any good at campaigning; he had no idea how to deal with Houston and Dallas and San Antonio and South Texas and all that, though I don’t know of any inappropriate comments that he made, because he wasn’t really getting any media. Rove got frustrated with him and sent him out to West Texas to attend Farm Bureau county meetings while Rove raised, I think it was about $3 million, and threw it into TV ads against me. They ran ads of me endorsing Jesse Jackson—ran that in East Texas. One ad showed a hippie setting a flag on fire and throwing it on the ground, and my picture came up out of the flames. So I had supporters in Dallas and Houston and East Texas who said, ‘Well, I liked ol’ Hightower but I didn’t know he burned flags.'”

Author: Staff
Source: Texas Monthly
Published: Aug 14, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,427 words)

Portraits Redrawn: For 9/11 Families, Healing Comes With New Starts and Tributes Paid

Shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, reporters at The New York Times began interviewing friends and relatives of the people whose lives had so suddenly been ended. The result was “Portraits of Grief,” a collection of brief sketches of the victims. These fresh visits with some of the families were written by Glenn Collins, Anthony DePalma, Robin Finn, Jan Hoffman, N. R. Kleinfield, Maria Newman and Janny Scott, all contributors to the original “Portraits of Grief” project in 2001. #Sept11

Author: Staff
Published: Aug 10, 2011
Length: 19 minutes (4,879 words)

Three Mile Island: Nuclear Nightmare

In the dead of night, the hulks of four 372-ft. cooling towers and two high domed nuclear reactor container buildings were scarcely discernible above the gentle waters of the Susquehanna River, eleven miles southeast of Harrisburg, Pa. Inside the brightly lit control room of Metropolitan Edison’s Unit 2, technicians on the lobster shift one night last week faced a tranquil, even boring watch. Suddenly, at 4 a.m., alarm lights blinked red on their instrument panels. A siren whooped a warning. In the understated jargon of the nuclear power industry, an “event” had occurred. In plain English, it was the beginning of the worst accident in the history of U.S. nuclear power production, and of a long, often confused nightmare that threw the future of the nuclear industry into question.

Author: Staff
Source: Time
Published: Apr 9, 1979
Length: 19 minutes (4,950 words)

The Sabotaging of Iran

Majid Shahriyari became an Iranian martyr while he was driving to work on an autumn day in Tehran. As he made his way along Artesh Boulevard, an explosive device ripped through his car. The 45-year-old was a devout man: Iranians would describe him as a Hizbollahi, a person fiercely loyal to the country’s Islamic system and easily identified by his unshaven face and simple clothes. But Shahriyari also stood out for another reason. He was one of Iran’s leading atomic scientists, an expert on nuclear chain reactions.

Author: Staff
Source: Financial Times
Published: Feb 11, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,421 words)

‘Citizen King’ (PBS Transcript)

From PBS’s American Experience, transcript from a documentary on Martin Luther King Jr.:

CORETTA SCOTT KING: Christmas will be sad for us. As it will be for many people I think this year. But I think that it doesn’t mean that we will sit around and bathe in our grief. I think that, very often, a time like this causes people to really reflect on the deeper meaning of say, Christmas or any other occasion. I remember Easter of 1963, when my husband was jailed in Birmingham. I had just had my fourth child and was still confined to my house. And he had gone to jail on Good Friday. And I was very depressed. But somehow that was the most meaningful Easter that I have ever experienced because, you know, Easter is a time of suffering. But it’s creative…you know, it can be creative suffering. And I think if we think in terms of my husband’s life and his death in those terms, then we will not be as sad. We will be hopeful, because in his death there is hope for redemption.”

Author: Staff
Source: PBS
Published: Jan 19, 2004
Length: 58 minutes (14,509 words)