A snippet from what Elmore Leonard had to say at the New Yorker festival:
“I don’t write New Yorker stories. I mean, my stories are easy to understand. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
Leonard — aka the Dickens of Detroit — is one of my favorite writers.
Related: his 10 rules for writing. The central guideline: “If it sounds like writing, re-write.”
Notes on High School contains scans of…notes passed during high school. Sample snippet, since today’s Friday:
Hello. I’m so glad that today is Friday. Fridays are probably the best day of the week. I wish I had a taco right now…
Tacos make everything better.
NAKHON NAYOK, Thailand — It is the ultimate in second chances: a Buddhist temple here offers, for a small fee, an opportunity to die, rise up again newborn and make a fresh start in life.
Nine big pink coffins dominate the grand hall of the temple, and every day hundreds of people take their turns climbing in for a few moments as monks chant a dirge. Then, at a command, the visitors clamber out again cleansed — they believe — of the past.
It is a renewal for our times, as recent economic hardship brings uncertainty and people try seeking a bailout on life. In growing numbers, they come here from around Thailand to join what has become an assembly line of resurrection.
“When the economy is down, we latch our hopes onto some supernatural power,” said Ekachai Uekrongtham, the writer-director whose movie “The Coffin” is in Thai cinemas now with a plot revolving around such funerals for the living.
Don’t miss the accompanying video.
Thanks to Austin B. for the link.
The Times: “High-kicking new life into beautiful game”
Think you’ve seen Diego Maradona’s “Hand of God”? Of course you have. But probably not as danced by a tiny ballerina in a short frilly tutu, raised high into the air by men in tights, slapping an imaginary ball into an imaginary net. To the strains of Nessun Dorma.
…
“You’ve got to be a highly polished athlete as a dancer and as a footballer. You need discipline, technique, teamwork and a few players of genius, and both careers are short,” Wayne Eagling, the artistic director of the English National Ballet, said.
Eagling’s company has created The Beautiful Game: A Football Ballet, a 15-minute work commissioned by The New Football Pools to showcase ten iconic moments as voted for by 20,000 visitors to the Pools’ website.
(Emphasis mine.)
The (understandably) England-centric moments reproduced in the ballet include:
(Sadly Fortunately, one of the most memorable moments in goalkeeping history has been snubbed also been featured. I refer not to England’s Gordon Banks denying Pele in the 1970 World Cup — the so-called greatest save of all time — but to Colombian goalkeeper Rene Higuita’s scorpion kick in 1995.)
Thanks to A for the link.
EDIT: fixed the above — the scorpion kick was, indeed, reproduced 🙂
CSM: “Ecuador votes to lock in its shift to the left”
The overwhelming approval by Ecuadoreans of a new Constitution that gives leftist President Rafael Correa a tighter grip on the economy puts the country firmly on a socialist track similar to Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela.
“Today Ecuador decided to found a new country,” Mr. Correa said Sunday after nearly 70 percent of Ecuadoreans voted for the new charter. “The old power structures have been defeated.”
With the passage of the new Constitution, Ecuador became the first country after Venezuela in the region to institutionalize its leftward shift, says Larry Birns, director of the Council of Hemispheric Affairs in Washington.
“This is a lurch to the left on the part of Correa,” he says.
AP: “Ecuador has new constitution; opposition worried”
Ecuador’s leftist President Rafael Correa urged his opponents Monday to join his efforts to build a more just society, saying the overwhelming victory of his constitutional referendum gives him a broad mandate.
“Thank God my triumph was so convincing and so crushing, beyond all our expectations,” he told international reporters at a breakfast. “Let’s hope they reflect and let the country advance peacefully.”
With 90 percent of ballots counted, 64 percent of Ecuadorean voters approved the measure, according to official results. Correa got the majority he needed in all but two of Ecuador’s 24 provinces.
The 20th constitution in the history of this chronically unstable nation considerably broadens Correa’s powers and will let him run for two more consecutive terms, consolidating what he calls a citizen’s revolution.
NY Times: “President Wins Support for Charter in Ecuador”
Ecuador’s president, the leftist Rafael Correa, won easy approval of a new Constitution on Sunday that enhances his power in the chronically unstable Andean country while introducing a range of other measures, including raising pension payments for the poor and prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Following a huge spending campaign by Mr. Correa’s government, voters approved the Constitution by 63 percent to 29 percent, according to early unofficial returns.
The victory reflects festering resentment against Ecuador’s traditional political class and hopes that Mr. Correa, an American-educated economist, can broaden the reach of antipoverty programs. Repeated economic crises in Ecuador have prompted more than 10 percent of the population to emigrate.
And finally, Andes scholar Miguel Centellas has some interesting observations here and here.
Image credit: yesterday’s front page from La Hora newpaper in Quito. Via the Newseum’s Today’s Front Pages feature.
![[not my image] Vertigo Rooftop Bar, Banyan Tree, Bangkok](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3232/2897625883_0dae736713_m.jpg)
Yesterday my friends S and J and I participated in the 10th annual Banyan Tree vertical marathon here in Bangkok. The rules of the contest were as follows:
1. Sprint up the stairs to the top of the 61-floor hotel.
2. Go as fast as you can.
3. There is no rule three. Just run!
And I did just that. More or less. I ran up the first 10 floors and then I realized that there was no way in hell that I could maintain that pace for 51 more floors. So the rest of my ascent amounted to light jogging and brisk walking. But I didn’t stop.
I made it to the top in 11 minutes and 23 seconds, which was good enough for 184th place out of 513 participants. I finished 79th out of 159 in my category (men between the ages of 26 and 39). Here are the official results. The winning racer made it up in 6:19!
I was happy with my showing, given the fact that I didn’t train for the event. S and J, who also went in blind, did really well — they each managed top-15 finishes in their categories. (We ran separately.)
The race concluded at the Banyan Tree’s aptly-named rooftop bar, Vertigo, pictured above. Considering that it was 8 a.m., and given the state of our cardiovascular systems, we had water, not cocktails, to celebrate finishing. And then we took the elevator down.
Here are some of the best magazine covers of 2008.
(Via Kottke.)
American friends who live abroad: don’t forget to register to vote or request an absentee ballot for the fast-approaching presidential election. Most states close registration in early Oct., and forms must be mailed in via snail mail. Go to the easy-to-use Federal Voting Assistance Program site for more info.
(This PSA has been paid for and endorsed by me, Newley Purnell, firm believer in participatory democracy.)
For an in-depth explanation of the subprime crisis — which has now, of course, led to the current chaos involving mortgage-backed securities — look no further than “The Giant Pool of Money.” That’s the name of a special, hour-long episode produced by This American Life and NPR News. The show aired back in May and has been widely praised. From the show notes:
We explain it all to you. What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money.
I also suggest checking out the Sept. 12 episode of TAL. In the second part of that show, called “Enforcers,” producer Alex Blumberg looks the SEC’s decision to ban naked short selling. (Related: NPR recently launched Planet Money, a new podcast devoted to financial issues.)
Don’t miss “Scenes from India,” from the Boston Globe’s exceptional photo blog.
Number 19 — the pic of the Bengal tiger being returned to the wild — is one of my favorites. Number 24, the shot of the human pyramid, is also incredible.
(My own meager attempts to make compelling photos in India can be found here and here.)