I Was Not a Pretty Child
Remembering what it was like to be ignored or mocked—and now, sometimes, being guilty of the same behavior:
“Female friendships are more complicated. There are nuances and there’s competition and there are magazines and men in bars who talk to your friend and not to you. You cannot take everything at face value. Hyper-analysis is the norm. I’m okay at making female friends. I love other women; they share their shoes. When you have conversations with women about sex, they almost never assume that you want to sleep with them. They drink wine and smell better than boys. I am not intelligent enough to put into words the intricacies of female friendships; there’s a physical intimacy, an immediate want toward sisterhood and trust. That’s how you can tell your friends from your acquaintances. With that openness and trust comes vulnerability, and with vulnerability comes conflict.”
Visiting The Maharaja
The writer recalls a visit to the Maharaja of Travancore, and how difficult it is for him to say “no”:
“But who among us hasn’t set off at one time or another–more likely many times–on these expeditions of presumed obligation, wondering, all the while, Why am I doing this? Why did I agree to do this? Why didn’t I just say . . . ?
“I‘m not talking about running errands to the grocery store (gotta eat, after all) or undertaking the miserable commute to work (gotta earn those bucks to afford to go to the grocery store) or visiting mom and pop in their retirement ghetto (maintaining family solidarity being a prime directive). I’m talking about, well, visiting the Maharaja.
“Did it ever occur to you to say (to yourself–to myself–first of all), No, I won’t, absolutely not, fuggidaboutit.”
The Jockey
A multimedia story about a life dedicated to horse racing. Russell Baze, 55, is the winningest jockey in North American history. But few know his name—he stayed close to home in Northern California, where the purses are smaller and there are fewer opportunities to get into the big races:
“Very few great horses come out of Northern California, and that has meant Baze rarely has been in America’s biggest races. ‘Every jockey’s dream is to win the Kentucky Derby,’ he said, describing the thrill of being at the center of so mammoth a crowd. But he has ridden in the event only twice, both times on long shots. Semoran finished 14th in 1996; Cause to Believe was 13th in 2005.
“A third horse, Event of the Year, was a Derby favorite in 1998. ‘I had the big one,’ Baze said, recalling the momentous opportunity, a chance to be the jockey among jockeys in the race of all races. But the horse — the best he had ever ridden — fractured a knee a week before the race.
“Because Baze has primarily worked in the Bay Area, some horseplayers put a mental asterisk beside his name, likening his record for wins to a baseball home run king given credit for round-trippers in Class AAA.
“That is a reasonable observation, as Baze would acknowledge. ‘I’m not the greatest jockey, and I’ll be the first one to tell you that,’ he said.”
Taken: The Coldest Case Ever Solved
In 1957, a 7-year-old girl named Maria Ridulph was kidnapped from her neighborhood in Sycamore, Ill. and later found murdered. No one was convicted of the crime until 55 years later when new evidence, some of it hearsay, was brought into a courtroom before a judge. An investigation into “the nation’s oldest cold case to go to trial”:
“Janet’s father, Ralph, had long discouraged her from dredging up the past. But after he died, she decided to try the police one last time.
“She found a tip line on the Illinois State Police website and typed this e-mail:
“‘Sycamore, Illinois. December 1957. A seven-year-old child named Maria Ridulph vanished. Her remains were found in another county several miles away in early spring of 1958. I still believe that John Samuel Tessier from Sycamore, IL — AKA Jack Daniel McCullough — was and is responsible for her death. He is living in the Seattle/Tacoma Washington area under the name Jack Daniel McCullough.
“‘I’ve given information to the person responsible for the cold case in Sycamore. I’ve done this a few times. Nothing is ever done.
“‘This is the last time I mention this to anyone. What information I do have makes Tessier /McCullough a viable suspect, and worth looking into. I’m not going to keep doing this over and over. It’s exhausting and it dredges up painful, horrible memories.’
“At 1:04 p.m. on September 11, 2008, she hit ‘send.'”
College Longreads Pick: ‘Gym Class Heroes’ by James Costanzo, Syracuse University
Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. This week’s pick comes from James Costanzo, who wrote this story for Syracuse University’s Vertical Floor.
Interview with My Mom, One Who Stayed Home
After reading the New York Times Magazine story on women who “opted out,” Gay asks her mom about her own experience:
“Sometimes when people talk about women and the workforce, they say a woman cannot truly be equal to a man unless she has her own income. What do you think?
“Well. Equality. What a word. When we choose go outside in the world, when we come home, we’re still mommy. The second shift starts. Equality doesn’t exist, period, even when you share the chores. Some days it can be 70/30 and other days it is 30/70. I don’t think that’s what we should be fighting for.
“What should we be fighting for?
“Men participating more in the home, but it’s petty to say 50/50, because life doesn’t allow that.”
The Poorest Rich Kids in the World
Georgia and Patterson are teenage heirs to the $1 billion Duke family fortune—the same Dukes who controlled the American tobacco market and established Duke University. But they were also raised by drug addicts who neglected and abused them for years:
“Georgia and Patterson survived a gilded childhood that was also a horror story of Dickensian neglect and abuse. They were globe-trotting trust-fund babies who snorkeled in Fiji, owned a pet lion cub and considered it normal to bring loose diamonds to elementary school for show and tell. And yet they also spent their childhoods inhaling freebase fumes, locked in cellars and deadbolted into their bedrooms at night in the secluded Wyoming mountains and on their ancestral South Carolina plantation. While their father spent millions on drug binges and extravagances, the children lived like terrified prisoners, kept at bay by a revolving door of some four dozen nannies and caregivers, underfed, undereducated, scarcely noticed except as objects of wrath.”
Playlist: 5 Podcast Episodes on the History of Hip-Hop
Gabrielle Gantz (@contextual_life) is the blogger behind The Contextual Life, a frequent longreader, and a fan of podcasts. Here are her picks from KCRW, WBUR, Jesse Thorn and more.
Merchants of Meth: How Big Pharma Keeps the Cooks in Business
Lawmakers in states across the country have been fighting to make pseudoephedrine—an ingredient found in over-the-counter medicine like Sudafed used to make methamphetamine—a prescription drug to reduce the number of meth labs being built. Few states have succeeded to match the lobbying power of drug manufacturers, while those that have have seen results:
“Pharma companies and big retailers ‘flooded our Capitol building with lobbyists from out of state,’ he says. On the eve of the House vote, with the count too close to call, four legislators went out and bought 22 boxes of Sudafed and Tylenol Cold. They brought their loot back to the Legislature, where Bovett walked lawmakers through the process of turning the medicine into meth with a handful of household products. Without exceeding the legal sales limit, they had all the ingredients needed to make about 180 hits. The bill passed overwhelmingly.
“Since the bill became law in 2006, the number of meth labs found in Oregon has fallen 96 percent. Children are no longer being pulled from homes with meth labs, and police officers have been freed up to pursue leads instead of cleaning up labs and chasing smurfers. In 2008, Oregon experienced the largest drop in violent-crime rates in the country. By 2009, property crime rates fell to their lowest in 43 years. That year, overall crime in Oregon reached a 40-year low. The state’s Criminal Justice Commission credited the pseudoephedrine prescription bill, along with declining meth use, as key factors.”
Marketing Portland’s Music to the Masses
A profile of the music supervisors in Portland, Ore. who are getting local musicians exposure and money by licensing their music for films and advertisements:
“By profession, Matarazzo is known as a ‘music supervisor.’ Marketing companies, brands, and filmmakers hire her to find that perfect song—such as an electronic track by the artist Dabrye that sonically propelled a Motorola commercial in which a sleek room fractures and folds up into a Moto Razr phone. When she can’t find the right song, she hires someone to write it, to order. The string quartet she commissioned from the young composer Nicholas Wright for Nike’s ‘Find Your Greatness’ London Olympics spot, showing everyday athletes around the world, won the Association of Independent Commercial Producers’ award in June for best original music. Often, the tracks she discovers come from Portland’s fertile independent music scenes. She’s placed the swinging rock of Sallie Ford and the Sound Outside in ads for Target and J. Crew, casting the band’s songs farther than any radio play has. Given the otherwise dismal state of the music industry, any of those phone calls Matarazzo relentlessly places or receives could change the life of a starving songwriter or a scruffy band.
“This power has helped Matarazzo and a few local colleagues make Portland a fulcrum for a major shift in how the music business works, especially for the kind of independent, edgy, underground artists the city prides itself on breeding.”
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