Older things, for some reason
And a new morning commute.
It’s finally becoming fall here.
We returned to campus this week, so as long as I can hack it, my new commute two days a week involves biking four and a half miles to the ferry, taking the ferry to Wall Street, biking over to campus, teaching an hour and a half, and then reversing the whole thing.
New York autumns are the greatest time on the planet — I’ve been a lot of places, you can’t convince me otherwise — and while I know I’ll inevitably get forced onto the subway eventually, I’ll hold out as long as I can.
And honestly, with views like this in your commute, who wouldn’t?
Some things you might like:
This older piece on the difference in work culture between Switzerland and the US is … eye-opening.
Also older, though not quite as much, and maybe I’ve shared it before? But I love it: the street in Paris that gave its residents hope, even in the April lockdown.
Also much older: I once again taught this essay by John Jeremiah Sullivan, about going to the Creation Festival, this morning in my criticism class. (We discussed how he constructs his narrator, but you can just read it for fun.) It remains one of the best, most authentic explorations of lost faith that I have ever read, and also it is screamingly funny.
This is only a few weeks old, but the documentary Feels Good Man, about how the sweet goofy Pepe the Frog cartoon got turned into some kind of insane iconography for the dankest corners of the alt-right Internet and from thence — and this is not an exaggeration — we got Trump, is both fascinating and terrifying and, oddly, kind of uplifting? Anyhow I recommend it if you want to understand what on earth is going on with the Internet, 4chan, QAnon, and the world gone nuts. You can rent it on a variety of digital platforms.