Search Results for: Time

When Time Costs Too Much

Courtesy of Getty Images

In the U.S., 25 percent of working mothers return to work within two weeks of giving birth — with the financial math of staying home just not adding up. In her piece for Wealthsimple, Karen Russell explores the constant calculations she is making as both a writer and a mother, where “every minute with her kids is work lost, and each minute writing subtracts from precious, un-price-able joy.” With no universal health or child care, many new mothers feel a “low ceiling of dread” around balancing the necessity of work with having children. The result is that the luxuries of time and creativity are often lost: “If you’re afraid that you can’t pay rent, or buy groceries for your family, there is no surplus energy to burn inside a dream.” 

On a daycare morning, like this one, I think about my toddler son near constantly. I worry that my writing days have an emotional cost to him that I sometimes project to be very high, and always pray will be offset by what he gains, also incalculable at this early hour, by attending a good daycare. What I can tally to the penny is the actual dollar cost to our family: $1,200 a month, $300 a week, $100 a day. When I fixate on this math, I begin to have the panicked sense that I gave up time with my son to delete three paragraphs; suddenly writing badly feels like stealing from him. This is obviously not a healthy way to approach creative work, or a pressure that yields good fiction, at least in my case.

One of my best friends is an acclaimed journalist and recently-divorced mother of a four-year-old son. As a contributing writer for the New York Times, she makes $50,000 a year and receives no benefits. Her rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $1,800 a month; the cheapest childcare she could find costs $1,200 a month. “My son is eating Doritos and watching cartoons in a basement right now,” she told me. “That’s the best I can do for him.” Her father, a machinist in Fort Lauderdale, sends her his social security checks. She is struggling to make ends meet despite writing for the most prestigious paper in the world, and is actively looking for a second job.

 

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Mowing the Lawn to Map the Ocean Floor, One Long, Slow Pass at a Time

A scuba diver explores an old, wooden shipwreck in Lake Michigan. The waters of the Great Lakes are so cold that they preserve the many wrecks on bottom.

Related underwater reading: Gene and Sandy Ralston use specialized sonar on their boat to locate bodies under water.

As Matthew Braga reports at The Verge, we’re flithy rich with land maps, ones that show us “how the planet has changed, and how we’ve changed the planet,” over time, but that’s not the case where land is covered by water. The treasure trove of information to be gleaned from mapping the world’s oceans could help scientists understand climate change. Enter BEN, an automated map-making boat Braga met while it plotted Lake Huron. According to Braga, “we’ve mapped just 9 percent of the world’s oceans to modern standards,” which is “why BEN and vehicles like it hold so much promise.” (Note, the fantastic illustrations in this piece were done by the incomparable Zoë van Dijk. Check out some of her illustrations for Longreads.)

It was just past midnight when the Ironton punched a 200-square-foot hole in the side of the Ohio. It was dark, the waters were rough, and the Ohio, a wooden bulk freighter loaded with flour and feed, was no match for the Ironton, a schooner heavy with coal. The Ohio sank within half an hour, and the Ironton soon followed, taking five of its crew down too.

Their ghostly hulls have sat largely undisturbed at the bottom of Lake Huron since colliding in late September 1894 — just two of the many wrecks that lie in a treacherous stretch of water called Thunder Bay off Michigan’s northeastern coast. Some are so well preserved by the lake’s frigid freshwater that their unbroken masts point definitely towards the surface, rigging still intact. Others have dishes in the cupboards, a century late for dinner. A few years ago, local media reported that divers found a 1927 Chevrolet Coupe amid the wreckage of a steamship, covered with algae and barnacles, but nonetheless pristine. You can thank the rocky shoals, frequent fog, and sudden gales of Thunder Bay for turning what was once the bustling marine interstate of America’s early industrial age into a modern-day museum of Great Lakes maritime history. Locals called it “Shipwreck Alley.”

Divers flock from all over the world to see the wrecks for themselves each year — and last spring, they were joined by an unusual interloper: an autonomous boat named BEN. BEN is a self-driving boat that’s been tasked with making maps, and it was brought to Thunder Bay to help lay bare the long-lost secrets of the lakebed.

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When It’s Time to Tell

Roman Krompolc (CTK via AP Images

For The Rumpus, writer and book publisher Laura Stanfill movingly details the traumatic story of domestic abuse and male violence that she kept to herself for 25 years. A week-long writing retreat helped her to see that silence no longer protected her, talking openly did. At the retreat, she was surrounded by story, so she decided it was time, as she put it, to “add my voice to the chorus of women who have said, I survived.” The trouble started in college, when her boyfriend bought a pistol and quickly revealed who he really was.

Instead of confiding in a friend or alerting the college administration that my boyfriend shot at me, I moved into his dorm room. He wanted me where he could keep an eye on me. It seemed safest to follow his commands. To say, If that’s what you want. I covered the lodged bullet with putty, filling in the hole in the wood, wanting to hide the evidence. I stepped over that mismatched blotch on the way to and from class.

Through the rest of my college years, I hid from friends and classmates, inventing excuses when they extended invitations. I spent hours on the bathroom floor, sick to my stomach at the thought of appearing in public with my boyfriend. He might yell or humiliate or hurt me. He often became more dangerous if a stranger interfered. I wrote false, cheer-filled notes to old friends on other campuses. I lost weight, became bones and savage bile. The doctors couldn’t figure it out; I didn’t give them any context. My parents worried about me and paid the medical bills and never suspected the cause. Or, if they did, they didn’t confront me about him.

When I turned twenty-one, my boyfriend proposed at a fancy restaurant and called me stupid for not noticing the gold ring shining at the bottom of the champagne glass. He had gone to all this effort.

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The Time I Sabotaged My Editor With Ransomware From the Dark Web

Longreads Pick

Drake Bennett conducts an experiment to see if any idiot could go on the dark web, purchase ransomware from a hacker, and infect an (un)suspecting victim.

Published: Feb 6, 2020
Length: 19 minutes (4,795 words)

Question Time: My Life as a Quiz Obsessive

Longreads Pick

From India and Ireland to the U.S., quiz tournaments are enduringly popular even — if not especially — as information has become more accessible than ever.

Source: The Guardian
Published: Jan 28, 2020
Length: 24 minutes (6,084 words)

Behind the Magic: The Story of Prince’s Super Bowl Halftime Show

MIAMI GARDENS, FL - FEBRUARY 04: Musician Prince performs during the "Pepsi Halftime Show" at Super Bowl XLI between the Indianapolis Colts and the Chicago Bears on February 4, 2007 at Dolphin Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. (Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

At The Ringer, read an oral history of how Prince ruminated on and carefully selected the setlist for his legendary 12-minute Super Bowl XLI halftime show in 2007. As Alan Siegel reports, Prince did it all his way, from playing specially chosen cover songs during his concert, to upending the traditional pre-game press conference — a checkbox “requirement” of the halftime act — with a live performance before stunned journalists. Super Bowl organizers learned to their delight that you can plan for a lot of things, but you simply cannot plan for the genius of Prince.

Shelby J: “We’re thinking, ‘Are we gonna change some stuff? … Are we gonna wear tennis shoes now?’ Prince was like, ‘Don’t change nothing.’ And that was part of him teaching us and me personally to be fearless.”

Prince’s Super Bowl week was booked solid. In between a full show at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino on Wednesday and an appearance with Latin funk outfit Grupo Fantasma at a private party for CBS on Friday, he made time for the halftime act and national anthem singer’s customary press conference at Miami Beach Convention Center.

Mischer: When we said, “You’ll have to have a press conference. They would like to interview you,” Prince point blank said, “I don’t do interviews.”

Coplin: There were just a few things where he was like, “I’m not gonna do that.” We’re like, “We’re not gonna break the deal over this.”

Mischer: He said, “I’m just gonna play for them.” And we said “OK.”

Meglen: The run-through on Thursday, they have to tape that. Because if for some reason, you physically can’t really do the halftime show, they still have to have something to broadcast to the rest of the world, right? So they tape that one. But the whole time they’re in rehearsals, Prince never turned his guitar on, and never turned his vocal mic on, so he knew what everybody else was doing at all times.

Hayes: That’s why they shoot it at the dress rehearsal. If there’s something like a weather anomaly, then they’ll just run the footage, [and] cut it for television like it’s live. They had it all planned out. The prep stuff, it was always intense. He’s like, on everybody. He’s on the techs. He’s on us. He’s with the production. He’s out in the sound truck. It’s just crazy intense because he’s trying to cross every “t” and dot every “i.”

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Pure Magic: The Oral History of Prince’s Super Bowl XLI Halftime Show

Longreads Pick

“As the heavens opened up and rain poured down, the Purple One ran through a handful of covers and some of his own songs, delivering an iconic set on the biggest stage possible and only expanding his legend.”

Source: The Ringer
Published: Jan 29, 2020
Length: 28 minutes (7,138 words)

Lockdown: Living Through the Era of School Shootings, One Drill at a Time

Longreads Pick

What’s an active shooter drill like? Hear directly from 20 students and learn “what they see, hear, and feel during what has become a routine experience in American schools” — read excerpts, or listen to the audio of their conversations.

Source: The Trace
Published: Dec 18, 2019
Length: 14 minutes (3,698 words)