Many Things, etc

Before I get to the link round-up, a little shameless self promotion: Over on Another Mother Runner I wrote about resilience. It’s only sort of about running and a lot about this thing called life.

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• The complicated history of indigo in the United States.

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• A gorgeous teaser for a documentary about Icelandic bathing culture.

• We use the book above as our Bible in the Lippett Farmstead at the Farmers’ Museum. There’s a new biography out about Mrs Child, who was far more of a rebel than I ever knew, which is often the case.

• Speaking of the Farmers’ Museum: another interpreter muses about what interpretation means.

• Honoring both the extraordinary and the everyday in a museum.

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  While this song and moment is absolutely iconic, what I really want to see is the infrastructure of Beyonce’s costume. How was this shape achieved? I mean, some of it it is just, you know, genetics, but there is more going on than meets the eye.

• This piece perfectly sums up what running the NYC marathon is like.

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• I’ll say it again: who your coroner/medical examiner is is important.

• Everyone should take a seminar on improv. Seriously.

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• … doesn’t everyone watch this as a satire? I mean, have you read Starship Troopers?

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• No lies detected: The Worst Journey in the World.

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• Rather than explain to my kids why their GenX parents are fatalists, I’m going to make them listen to the first episode of Ed Helms’ SNAFU podcast.

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  The series is about a war games exercise that almost went horribly wrong in 1984 but the first episode talks about The Morning After, which was seared into my brain when I was 12
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  and has never left.

• Finally, McSweeney’s usually runs satire but this is straight-up reporting: Timeline for our Town’s Plan to Install a Single Traffic Light.

1. Apologies to Prince, who lives inside his own heart.

2. Of course slavery is involved. You can’t even glance at U.S. history without finding it.

3. One of the reasons why I love the Farmers’ Museum is that it is devoted to your average daily experience in a rural area in the mid-1800s. It’s not glamorous but it is quietly inspiring.

4. Added data point: I still have and wear my Dunkin’ hat.

5. Can I get a “Yes, and?”

6. I know, I know. Satire is hard to pick up if your reading comprehension skills aren’t sharp. But, seriously? This isn’t even an edge case.

7. Hat tip to Mark Remy.

8. I’ve only listened to the first episode but already have doubts that there’s enough material to warrant seven more. I’d like to be wrong because I like Ed Helms.

9. and those brains of millions of my peers