Good Sunday, friends! Detritus scooped while wayfaring the labyrinth* this week:
- What do jazz legend Wynton Marsalis and PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra K. Nooyi have in common? Paranoia, freedom within a framework, egoless ensembles, harmony through conflict, and more.
- A history of books that forecast the future.
- Counter Histories: Documenting the Struggle to Desegregate Southern Restaurants (a stunning website from Ole’ Miss).
- Joyce wrote Finnegan’s Wake to ‘keep the critics busy for 300 years’. It didn’t quite take 300 (and maybe I should stop whining about not making it through ‘Wake’ yet, at least I didn’t have to translate it into Chinese).
- TACT: Tale of American Culinary Transformation. Just when I think I have enough food books in my library, along comes The Culinary Imagination by Sandra M. Gilbert. (Emily Dickinson’s kitchen was referred by her as ‘Domingo’?). Must have, here’s a review.
- ‘Children make you see distances’, Anne Carson’s Dialogue of Grief.
- I’m not much of an animation fan but I am a fan of brilliant creatives, like Hayao Miyazaki (director of Spirited Away and more). Mami Sunada shot a documentary about the recently retired auteur.
- I once picked Texas dirt out of my teeth for two weeks. My friend Mark sent this to me with a wry insult (of course) about my former mutton-busting career (we rode calves and steers though, not sheep). Still, a flood of memories hit me while reading this article and my head ached, all over, again.
- What is needed to read Grimm’s tales? According to Richard Marshall, ‘courage and an imminent doomsday’.
- I love the snarky scribbling of Regina Schrambling. ‘Eating in Italy changed my life, but it anyone ever holds a gun to my head, I want one last meal in France.’ Regina gave me permission to dislike Italian cuisine, ‘food in Italy is simply comforting, rarely thrilling’.
- Chuck Close reads a letter to his 14-year old self. ‘Quadriplegics don’t envy the able-bodied, we envy paraplegics, we think they have a much easier road ... there’s always someone worse off than you.’
- Mr. Turner: Iconoclast Strapped to the Mast
*The labyrinth might constitute the web or my library, the impulse to share is irresistible, hence, this top ten(ish), weekly(ish) newsletter.