Enjoyable read — indie design studio heads talking shop in “Studio Culture Now”. A few common themes: There’s freedom in staying small; having a nice workspace is a plus, but too much overhead’s a crusher; your design output matters, but so do process, leadership & owning your POV; social posts and basic PDFs can aid biz development more than a high-maintenance, glacially updated website; you can find success based anywhere, but be engaged w/ the field and your community. 📚
2021
From my Christmas wish list to under the tree: Self-Reliance. That “I” is just perfection. Designed by Jessica Helfand and Jarrett Fuller. 📚
Finished The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Did not hit the heights for me of My Struggle, bit there’s always something special about being inside his sentences. I found myself losing some interest 70% of the way through, then was absorbed completely in that final section. 📚
Smart thoughts here from Benedict Evans: “Notes on newsletters.”
Compelling reading this holiday: A Civic Thanksgiving - by James Fallows.
Enjoyed The Chancellor by Kati Marton. Qualities vital to Merkel’s rise and 16-year tenure: endurance, humility, steeliness, patience, calm. (She once described herself, as she stood next to the high-energy, publicity-seeking Sarkozy, as an “energy-conserving lamp.”) 📚
How to write an engaging, smart e-newsletter opener, by the editorial team at Massive Science:
For the past few years at Massive, we’ve tried to avoid a gee-whiz attitude towards scientific discovery. It’s a little * flips open dictionary * reductive, shrinking complex stories into neat boxes, making what are often small nibbles at progress into big kabooming breakthroughs. We know our readers are savvy enough to see through that kind of framing. But sometimes, it’s fun to indulge, and let the wonder of the world wash over you a bit. This Weekend’s Reading is on, well, discoveries and their thrills.
Learned of comedic writer Simon Rich on Conan O’Brien’s terrific podcast and picked up his new book, New Teeth. The opening story, about two pirates coming to care for a stowaway baby, was just perfect. Here’s a version on The New Yorker’s website. 📚
Nice line from Kelefa Sanneh’s “Major Labels”:
Unlike many virtuosos, Eddie Van Halen had a knack for making virtuosity seem like a good time, and all the early Van Halen albums sound as if they were recorded at house parties, with the party noise somehow edited out.
“Fewer have more”
9/11/21
This phrase and passage from Cullen Murphy’s April Atlantic essay, “No, Really, Are We Rome?”, have stuck with me:
But resilience does not prevent calamity. And being blindsided in slow motion is the hardest fate to avoid. The historian Ramsay MacMullen once distilled the long arc of the Roman Empire into three words — ‘fewer have more’ — but only the time-lapse perspective of a millennium and a half allows us to understand such a thing with brutal clarity. The sack of Washington unfolded suddenly, in a way no one could miss. The greater dangers come in stealth.
“Invisible does not mean uninterested.” — Jim McKelvy in his smart, highly readable book “The Innovation Stack," on finding previously ignored markets (as he and Jack Dorsey did with Square)
“Astronomers take the position—an incidentally ethical one—of knowing.” — Rivka Galchen in The New Yorker, on the James Webb Space Telescope
Enjoyed and was impressed by Jim McKelvey’s “The Innovation Stack." I expected the smarts, but it’s also consistently funny. Great pacing, light on its feet. The STL connections are an added bonus.
Jeff Tweedy’s new Substack newsletter, Starship Casual, is unsuprisingly great — at turns goofy and thoughtful, just like his books and interviews. Today’s post, “Heart of Glass (Rememories 5), was especially memorable. He’s a slyly penetrating artist.
“Theodicy,” by Nick Laird. What a phenonomal poem, with a vivid, piercing close.
Year in Review: 2020
1/1/21
*Sylvie, sipping through a backyard quarantine concert by a friend and SLSO musician*
Year 20 of my annual cultural-recap tradition was quite something.
Thus far my family’s had good fortune amid the global pandemic, so we’re spending most of our time feeling grateful, yet exhausted, then grateful, yet exhausted.
With lots of time at home, there was some enjoyable culture to take in. Here’s a look at some highlights:
Books
- The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches & Meditations, Toni Morrison
- Uncanny Valley: A Memoir, Anna Wiener
- Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, George Packer
- Having and Being Had: Eula Biss
- My Parents: An Introduction, Aleksandar Hemon
- Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong
- Weather, Jenny Offill
- Promised Land, Barack Obama
- Then the Fish Swallowed Him, Amir Ahmadi Arian
- Jack, Marilyn Robinson
- My Life in France, Julia Child
- Severance, Ling Ma
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson
- Luster, Raven Leilani
- Intimations, Zadie Smith
- Monocle: How to Make a Nation
- The Passion Economy, Adam Davidson
- These Fevered Days: Ten Pivotal Moments in the Making of Emily Dickinson, Martha Ackmann
- Wine Simple, Aldo Sohm
- Normal People, Sally Rooney
- The Lying Lives of Adults, Elena Ferrante
- Girl, Edna O’Brien
- Lurking: How a Person Became a User, Joanne McNeil
- How to Be a Family, Dan Kois
- Mies van der Rohe, Edith Farnsworth, and the Fight Over a Modernist Masterpiece, Alex Beam
- The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St. Clair
- No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram, Sarah Frier
- Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, Hanif Abdurraqub
- How to Write One Song, Jeff Tweedy
- How Architecture Works, Witold Rybczynski
- Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, Barton Gellman
- To Start a War, Robert Draper
- The Spy Masters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future, Chris Whipple
- Agent Running in the Field, John le Carré
- The Monocle Guide to Better Living
- Hell and Other Destinations, Madeline Albright
- The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger
- Bitter Brew, William Knoedelseder
Movies
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire (exquisite, perfect)
- Parasite
- Booksmart
- Marriage Story
- Little Women
- Uncut Gems
- 1917
- Meyerowitz Stories: New & Collected
- The Irishman
- The Trip to Greece
- Palm Springs
- Rams
- Knives Out
- The Other Guys
- Maggie’s Plan
- Shoplifters
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
- The Price of Everything
- Ford v. Ferrari
- Despicable Me
TV Shows
- Better Call Saul, Seasons 4 and 5
- Atlanta, Seasons 1 and 2
- Schitt’s Creek, All Seasons
- Never Have I Ever
- Call My Agent, Season 1
- Roadkill
- Devs
- Great British Bake-Off, Season 6 and 8
- Ted Lasso
Visual Art
I can’t recall a year when I saw less art — whether here in St. Louis or in cities we didn’t travel to. With that unfortunate reality, I’m especially grateful to have been able to see the fantastic exhibition “Terry Adkins: Resounding” at the Pulitzer this summer.
Podcasts
Favorite new discoveries: The Modern House Podcast, Distributed, with Matt Mullenweg, Siegel+Gale Says, and Simplicity Talks. Valuable mood-improver for 2020: Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend.
Music
My Spotify’s a shared-with-kids mess, and for loads of weekly hours I stream jazz and classical music that I don’t make a note of to be recalled. That said, I did especially enjoy new records from Fiona Apple, Phoebe Bridgers, Adrianne Lenker, Jeff Tweedy, Lomelda, Bob Dylan, Run the Jewels, and Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist. I’m grateful to have been turned on to the music of Big Thief, Harold Budd (via the e-newsletter Flow State), Eleanor Bindman, and Haley Heynderickx, whose “Oom Sha La La” always brightened our family’s quarantine, with the kids screaming and jumping along to the swelling refrain, “I need to start a garden!” Here’s to what’s to come.