October 2, 2013 First Person Radio Silence By Jill Talbot I am driving west on Highway 51. It’s Tuesday, the day before Indie’s ninth birthday, and as I pass the city limits of Stillwater on my way to Oklahoma City, I switch from the Sinatra station, the one playing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” to the seventies station, the one playing Marshall Tucker Band’s “Heard It in a Love Song.” I’m gonna be leavin’ at the break of dawn. I rarely listen to the song now, though sometimes when Indie is in the car, I’ll let it play, even sing along, assume the next time she asks me why he left, I can say, “You know that song, the one about the guy who never had a damn thing but what he had, he had to leave it behind?” She’ll know the song. So many times, when she’s singing along to Ambrosia or Bread, Jackson Browne, especially America, in the car, I ask her how she knows all the words to those long-ago songs, and she always has the same answer, “You sing all the time.” He used to tell me that, too. I change the station to NPR. I recognize a familiar voice: The American family has changed. The nuclear family in the house across the street is still there, but different kinds of families live on the block, too: unmarried parents, gay parents, people who choose not to have children at all and, of course, single parents. A new Pew Research poll asked Americans about these trends and found almost 70 percent believe that single women raising children on their own is bad for society. Of course, there is a wide array of single mothers. Some women choose to raise children by themselves. Others find themselves without a partner through divorce or abandonment. But when seven in ten believe this is bad for society, it makes you wonder. So we want to hear from single mothers today. How do people treat you? Tell us your story. 800-989-8255 is the phone number. Email us, [email protected]. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. I grip the steering wheel and glance at my cell phone in the cup holder. I keep my eyes out for a rest stop. Read More
October 2, 2013 Video & Multimedia Good Grief By Sadie Stein Full disclosure: I once played Charlie Brown in a summer-camp production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. It was a deeply scarring experience. I hate Peanuts. It feels good to admit that. Today marks the sixty-third birthday of Peanuts. Here is a slideshow of some of the strip’s greatest hits. And here is the theme song.
October 2, 2013 On the Shelf Dickensian Peg Legs, and Other News By Sadie Stein There are so many wooden legs in the works of Dickens. David Bowie’s one hundred favorite books include The Trial of Henry Kissinger, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. “You’ve published a novel, and half a dozen short stories, and you’ve found clever ways to fluff up your bio. You think of your writing resume as one of the most creative pieces of fiction you’ve written.” Justin Kramon on being a fiction-writing professor. “Fleming was essentially a bureaucrat during the war. But, being an imaginative man, he could not help thinking about a more active role as a secret agent.” The real story behind the birth of James Bond. Yup: the Library of Congress is closed, too.
October 1, 2013 Bulletin Announcing: A Call for a Writer-in-Residence By Sadie Stein The Paris Review is partnering with the Standard, East Village to find a Writer-in-Residence. The idea is this: in January, a writer with a book under contract will get a room at the Standard, East Village, in downtown Manhattan, for three weeks’ uninterrupted work. Applications will be judged by the editors of The Paris Review and Standard Culture. Find application details here.
October 1, 2013 Quote Unquote The October Game By Sadie Stein Winslow Homer, An October Day, 1889. “He had never liked October. Ever since he had first lay in the autumn leaves before his grandmother’s house many years ago and heard the wind and saw the empty trees. It had made him cry, without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to him. It always went away with spring.” —Ray Bradbury
October 1, 2013 On the Shelf The Font of Least Resistance, and Other News By Sadie Stein Fave: yet another word with a surprisingly venerable history. A bookie’s take on the Nobel Prize in Literature. “Fame has a dark side. When Times New Roman appears in a book, document, or advertisement, it connotes apathy. It says, ‘I submitted to the font of least resistance.’” The strange mystery of editor Ronald Lane Latimer.