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February 21, 2016
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Continue
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Rough Justice Next month, the Supreme Court will hear the
biggest abortion case in decades — and consider whether laws
designed for the ‘‘protection’’ of women actually harm them.
The Imagination Gap Do technological advances
determine
the health of our economy? Maybe — but what matters most is
how they change us.
Contemplation Therapy A new study suggests there’s
some
science behind the claims made for mindfulness meditation.
XpresSpa A place to recover from the T.S.A.
experience.
Speaking Up for a Pet Pig. If the
pig is hungry, feed it.
A New California Cuisine Roasted yams get
the West
Coast treatment.
Unorderly Conduct The treacherous process of
learning
to recycle in Switzerland.
Jon Taffer The host of ‘‘Bar Rescue’’ sees Shakespeare
in reality TV.
By Taff y Brodesser-Akner
By Kwame Anthony Appiah
By Sam Sifton
Katharina Heinrich
As told to Laura Bauerlein
Interview by Ana Marie Cox
hind the Cover: Jessica Lustig, deputy editor: “Christopher
Anderson photographed Edwin
ymond on a drive to East Flatbush, Brooklyn, where Raymond grew
up, capturing the isolation
black offi cer who has joined a lawsuit against the
New York Police Department.” Photograph
Christopher Anderson/Magnum, for Te New York Times.
By Emily Bazelon
By Adam Davidson
By Gretchen Reynolds
First Words
On Money
Well
Talk
The Ethicist
Eat
Lives
Letter ofRecommendation
00 00
8 Contributors
10 The Thread
20 Poem
25 Tip
26 Judge J
Hodgma
74 Puzzles
76 Puzzles
(Puzzle answers
ruary 21, 2016
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‘Palauans are a very proud people. The whole thing wasa tragedy
and a really embarrassing one.’
PAGE 40
2
6
0
0
Woman
vs. Machine
Double Deal
Sea Sweepers
The Education
of Edwin Raymond
Dana Spiotta’s quietly subversive American fictions.
A documentary reveals the tangled role of paid informants
in F.B.I. terrorism investigations.
The 18 marine police officers of the island nation Palau are
fighting poachers in the Pacific Ocean. How they do it may
help
the rest of the world save all of the oceans.
He thought he could change the New York City Police
Department from the inside. He wound up the lead plaintiff
in a lawsuit brought by 12 minority officers.
By Susan Burton
By Mattathias Schwartz
By Ian Urbina
By Saki Knafo
Copyright © 201 6 The New Yo
ruary 21, 2016
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Investing in a variable annuity involves risk of loss —
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ery week the magazine publishes the resultsa study conducted
online in July and August5 by The New York Times’s
research-and-
alytics department, reflecting the opinions of87 subscribers who
chose to participate.
s week’s question: Do you still read physicalks, or do you
read them on electronic devices?
ear Reader: Real Books
E-books?
Editor in Chief JAK E SI LVER ST
Deputy Editors JESSICA LUSTIG
BILL WASIK
Managing Editor ERIKA SOMMER
Design Director GAIL BICHLER
Director of Photography KATHY RYAN
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Digital Deputy Editor CHARLES HOM
Story Editors NITSUH ABEBE
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Associate Editors JE AN NI E CH OI,
JAZ MIN E HU GH
Chief National Correspondent MARK LEIBOVI
Staff Writers SAM ANDERSO
EMILY BAZELON
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NIKOLE HANNA
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JE NN A W OR TH
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HILARY SHANA Editorial Assistant LIZ GERECITAN
ntributors
Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a contributing writer for
the magazine. She last wrote about the late
Roderick Toombs, known as Rowdy Roddy Piper.
Susan Burton is a writer based in Brooklyn. Sheis working on a
memoir, ‘‘The Invention of the
Teenage Girl,’’ to be published by Random House.
Ian Urbina is an investigative reporter who has beenon the staff
at The New York Times since 2003.
Mattathias Schwartz is a contributing writer
for the magazine. His last feature was about
investors who buy shares in other people’slitigation
proceedings.
tographed by Kathy Ryan atTe New York Times on Jan. 5,6, at
12:25 p.m.
Saki Knafo is a reporting fellow with theInvestigative Fund at
the Nation Institute. He
has written for New York Magazine, GQ
and Travel and Leisure. When he first interviewedEdwin Raymond,
a transit officer who joined a
class-action lawsuit against the N.Y.P.D., Raymond
immediately began quoting lines and citing factsfrom ‘‘The New
Jim Crow,’’ by Michelle Alexander,
and other influential books about criminal justice
and race. ‘‘By that point I’d interviewed other copsabout the
pressures they were experiencing
at work, but I’d never heard any of them connect
those problems to the larger societal issues in such
a compelling way,’’ Knafo said. ‘‘I knew right thenthat if I was
going to write a story about quotas,
I would be spending a lot of time with Raymond.’’
Letter of Recommendation, Page 24
‘‘Woman vs. Machine,’’ Page 32
‘‘Double Deal,’’ Page 36
‘‘Sea Sweepers,’’ Page 40
‘‘ Te Educationof Edwin Raymond,’’
Page 50
san Burton
fy Brodesser-Akner
Urbina
ttathias Schwartz
Saki Knafo
isher: ANDY WRIGHT Associate Publisher: DOUG LATINO
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38% Only read
physical books
4% Only read books onelectronic devices
58% Read physical books
and books onelectronic devices
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BIONIC EXOSKELETONS CAN BE FOUND
IN COMIC BOOKS,
HOLLYWOOD MOVIES, AND NOW
AT MOUNT SINAI.
A man, paralyzed from the chest down in a terrible
accident,
using futuristic technology to do incredible things. It’s
not the latest blockbuster. It’s the real story of Robert
Woo,
a Manhattan architect who was crushed by seven tons of
falling
steel. His injuries were devastating. But thanks to the
Mount
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again with help from a bionic exoskeleton strapped to hi
Proof that sometimes, real life is even better than the m
1 - 8 0 0 - M D - S I N A I
m o u n t s i n a i . o r g / r e h a b
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2.21.16 Illustrations by Tom Gauld
e Thread
he Ethicist was right on with hissponse; but I would have
come downrder on the duplicitous daughters. Itas their moral and
ethical obligation,hen their mother asked what wasong with her,
simply to say, ‘‘You havencer.’’ She could then at least
havedicated how much more she wantedknow. In decades of volunteer
workth hospice and other end-of-life orga-zations, I never met a
dying personho benefited from being lied to. Con-
rsely, I knew many who, facing life’sd with understanding and
compas-n, were able to have rich and mean-
gful exchanges with those they loved,d to maintain a level of
control overeir final days. Both should be everydividual’s human
right.an Moreland Johns, San Francisco
agree that the patient’s daughtersould have at least attempted
to answerr question honestly about what wasppening to her, but the
framing of thatvery important. Hospice workers and
hers are experts in this field and cer-nly can be of great
assistance in theseffi cult conversations. (I served as a
hos-ce chaplain for over 16 years.)The remarks about contrition and
dam-tion, however, are stereotypical andite a shortchanging of the
end-of-life
view and to Catholic beliefs in particular.
‘‘Thursday Night Football’’ — let year-round games?). With
footbalis definitely more.
The Membership should bewagetting what they ask from their
missioner as they choke the gooslays their golden eggs.Steve
McConnell, Windsor, Conn.
Mark Leibovich went easy on the N.
he didn’t even mention ‘‘antitrust’’! the root of the N.F.L.
hubris — it anto nobody but its billionaire benefic
If Senator Claire McCaskill ofsouri and other senators and
rsentatives want to correct the Ndisregard of society,
communitie‘‘honest’’ business, she could leaantitrust-based
movement to prUnited States taxpayers from subing billionaires in
sports while throaway taxpayer-paid incentives (ums, roads
etc.).
Or a single season-ticket holderLouis could file a federal suit
that meventually make the N.F.L. answthe wider society that it
currentlylike it owns.W. Edward Wendover, Cadillac, Mich
‘That’s the
root of theN.F.L. hubris— it answersto nobody butits
billionairebeneficiaries.’
aders respond to the 2.7.2016 issue.
: THE ETHICIST
wame Anthony Appiah discussed a querym a reader wondering if he
should have
formed his mother-in-law about herpending death. Te
letter-writer’s wife ,ng with her sisters, never explained
theerity of the situation to their mother, whod memory
problems.
THE COVER,
ON TWITTER
This cover is just so great/
vertigo-inducing.@kayelbee
Catholicism believes that Christ ispresent in the sacraments,
and one ofthe traditional seven sacraments is theanointing of the
sick. It was never offi -cially seen as essential for
salvation or‘‘to avoid damnation,’’ however. Moviesand novels
emphasized the ‘‘deathbedconversion,’’ containing
confession,anointing and the Eucharist, rather thanthe consolation
of God’s presence in
mercy for strengthening in illness and,perhaps, in facing one’s
death. Appiahconflates these notions and adds thesense of the fear
of damnation if this isnot received. This was never the intentof
this sacrament.
David E. Pasinski, Fayetteville, N.Y.
RE: N.F.L.
Mark Leibovich wrote about how RogerGoodell, the N.F.L.’s
commissioner, and thebillionaire owners known as the
Membership have weathered a year of controversy over
con-cussions, Deflategate and excessive salaries.
While admiring Mark Leibovich’srestraint as a Pats fan (like
me), he onlyscratched the surface of the core issuethat threatens
‘‘the Shield.’’
On Deflategate and other disciplinaryfailures, no one disputes
that the col-lective-bargaining agreement gives thecommissioner
full authority to meteout justice. As in any contract, how-ever,
this assumes that he acts in goodfaith. Goodell’s Deflategate
debacle isthe poster child of bad-faith dealings
— which he could not have conductedwithout the full support of
the majorityof the Membership. That same short-sightedness among
the Membershipis driving toward an expansion thatwill harm players
and be of no interestto fans (does anyone even care about
CORRECTIONS:
Te Diagnosis column on Feb. 14 misidethe school Francis
Graziano, the first rto arrive at the correct diagnosis, atteis
Georgetown University School of Menot George Washington
University.
Te Talk column on Feb. 7, featurinrestaurateur Danny Meyer,
misstat
aspect of the new compensation modelrestaurant group.
Waiters will share restaurant’s revenue, not its profits.
Send your thoughts to magazine@nytime
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Wellness lives in Tribeca.
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st Words
Next month, the Supreme Court will hear the
bi g est abortion case in decades — and cohether
laws designed for the ‘protection’ of women actually
harm them. By Emily Ba
n September 1905, a laundress named Emma Gotcher reported
Muller, the owner of Portland Grand Laundry, for making her wmore
than 10 hours — the state’s legal limit for women — on, of all
d
abor Day. Gotcher was a labor activist, married to a leader
o
hirtwaist and Laundry Workers’ Union. The court found Muller gf
violating Oregon law and fined him $. He refused to pay, anppeal to
the Supreme Court, his lawyer drew national attentio
making a feminist argument: Limits on women’s work hours
actiscriminate against them. Two years earlier, in the well-known
ochner v. New York, the Supreme Court struck down a statehat
restricted bakers, most of them men, to the same 10-hour he bakers
were ‘‘in no sense wards of the state,’’ the court said. W
Muller’s lawyer asked, should women be treated
diff erently? ¶ustices found a reason. A woman, like a child,
‘‘has been looked uphe courts as needing especial care,’’ the
Supreme Court pronounn 1908, unanimously upholding Oregon’s 10-hour
restriction in M
Over Bearing
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2.21.16
st Words
Four anti-abortiondoctors testifiedon the sideof
Texas,portrayingwomen asvulnerableto a lurkingthreat.
Oregon. ‘‘She is properly placed in a classherself, and
legislation designed for her
otection may be sustained.’’After the court’s decision, states
all overcountry passed employment rules that
ofessed to protect women by settingecial health and safety
requirements orring them from working at night or tak-jobs like
bartending. ‘‘The court said
t whereas male workers should have
freedom to contract for themselves,men could be denied that
freedom,’’
ys Alice Kessler-Harris, a historian atlumbia University who
writes aboutor and gender. ‘‘They justified the lackfreedom as
‘protection.’ That languagemes up again and again. It’s really
aphemism for the public welfare: Wom-s purpose is to become healthy
motherso produce healthy children. Their bod-should not be
weakened, and the valuesthe home shouldn’t be undermined bycoarse
workplace.’’
Feminists objected. If night work wasgainst nature,’’ the lawyer
Blanche Cro-r said dryly in 1933, then starvations even more so. In
2008, on the 100thniversary of Muller v. Oregon, Justiceth Bader
Ginsburg said in a speech,aving grown up in years when women,law or
custom, were protected fromange of occupations, including law-ring,
and from serving on juries, I amtinctively suspicious of
women-only
otective legislation.’’By then, thanks in no small part
tonsburg’s eff orts, the Supreme Court had
ped to undo Muller, recognizing thatuality for women meant
giving them
same right that men had to fend formselves. In 1973, the court
ruled 8 to 1
favor of a female Air Force offi cer whoallenged a law that
gave her husbands access to benefits than the wives ofle service
members. In his opinion,tice William Brennan disavowed the
urt’s previous ‘‘ ‘romantic paternalism’ich, in practical
eff ect, put women nota pedestal, but in a cage.’’In light of
this history, it’s telling thatday’s abortion opponents have
dusted
the word ‘‘protection’’ to justify regula-ns that are shutting
down clinics acrosse country. The anti-abortion group
mericans United for Life, which draftsdel legislation for
states, has what itls a Women’s Protection Project,
witht-of-the-box bills called the Women’salth Protection Act and
the Women’s
Health Defense Act. After decades of bat-tling for the life of
the unborn child, abor-
tion opponents have started arguing thatfor the sake of women
seeking abortions— to protect their health and safety —
thestate must impose strict new regulationson clinics. In 2013, the
Texas Legislaturepassed a bevy of new rules (the epilogueto State
Senator Wendy Davis’s filibus-ter in her pink tennis shoes). The
newlaw requires clinics to employ a doctorwho has privileges to
admit patients ata nearby hospital and to meet the con-struction
and equipment standards foran ‘‘ambulatory surgical center,’’
whichinclude temperature controls, hallways
wide enough for a gurney and specialventilation units. The
estimated costof renovating an existing clinic is $1.5million to $3
million.
On March 2, the Supreme Court willhear a challenge to the Texas
law. Whole
Woman’s Health, which operates fourclinics in the state,
has brought the suit,
arguing that Texas’ stated goal of pring women is a cover for
closing c
and that the law has no real medicapose. Instead, it imposes an
‘‘undueden’’ — the Supreme Court’s constitutest — on women’s right
to reproducare. If the Texas restrictions are allto go fully into
eff ect, the number oftion clinics in the state is projected
toto eight or nine, from 44 three yearacross nearly 270,000 square
miles. than 20 states have enacted lawssome or all of the Texas
restrictions
In July 2014, I visited a clinic in Arun by Whole Woman’s
Health, wwomen recovering from abortions
ed in reclining chairs, drinking teafleece blankets over their
laps. Suchforts have been off ered by abortionics since they
were founded (mainfeminists) in the 1970s. Tea and blaaren’t
allowed, however, in the sterenvironment of a surgical center.
Thtin clinic closed a couple of weeks aft
Illustration by Javier Jaén
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There’sno phrasefor menequivalentto ‘damselin distress’and no
suchthing as
‘protective’legislationfor men.
Kessler-Harris, who submitted a brief inthe Texas case, along
with 15 other his-torians. (Colonoscopies have a mortalityrate more
than 30 times as high as therate for abortion.) ‘‘Abortion is one
of thesafest medical procedures performed inthe United States,’’
states another brief bythe American College of Obstetricians
andGynecologists and the American Medical
Association. The major medical groupswere exceptionally
blunt in disputing
the protective rationale for the Texas law,saying there is ‘‘no
medical purpose’’ forrequiring abortion clinics to meet the
stan-dards for a surgical center. The admitting-privileges
requirement for doctors ‘‘like-wise does nothing to improve the
healthand safety of women.’’
The brief from the medical groupsargues damningly that far from
protect-ing women, the Texas law endangersthem. By causing clinics
to close, and thusforcing women to travel longer distancesto have
abortions, the law ‘‘has delayed,and in some cases blocked,’’
women’s
access to the procedure. ‘‘Both outcojeopardize women’s
health.’’
The main audience for these briethe court’s single swing voter
on abortJustice Anthony M. Kennedy. He uphthe core of Roe v. Wade
in 1992, butlatest opinion on abortion, in 2007, hinof old-school
paternalism. ‘‘Some womcome to regret’’ their choice of
abortKennedy wrote then. ‘‘In a decisionfraught with emotional
consequen
some doctors may prefer not to discprecise details of the means
that wiused.’’ In other words, to spare womfrom hearing about a
type of late-tprocedure, Kennedy permitted Cgress to ban it.
Contrast that to his ring endorsement of liberty and equin
proclaiming a constitutional righsame-sex marriage last summer.
Forcouples, Kennedy championed the ‘‘auomy’’ to make ‘‘profound
choices.’’ Heyet to express the same faith in womIt’s not hard to
see, though, that Tex‘‘protecting’’ women at their
peril.
t, anticipating the high cost of comply-with the new
regulations.
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedthe biggest abortion case the
Supremeurt has heard in a quarter-century. Attrial in Austin, four
anti-abortion doc-s testified on the side of Texas, por-ying women
as vulnerable to a lurkingeat. Calling the state’s law
‘‘protectivepatients,’’ James Anderson, the headVirginia Physicians
for Life, said it was
essary to address ‘‘cracks in the healthtem,’’ claiming that the
complicatione for abortion is ‘‘underreported.’’ Aftermilar trial
in Alabama, the judge dis-dited Anderson’s testimony,
express-‘‘concerns about his judgment or
nesty’’ because he submitted a report,hout verifying its
content, written by
ncent Rue, who has a Ph.D. in homeonomics and whose testimony
wasown out in two past abortion caseslack of scientific rigor.
The language of fear has been eveniner in the recent push by
conserva-
e Republicans to deny Planned Par-hood government funding.
‘‘Plannedenthood is not a safe place for vulner-e women,’’ the
president of the con-vative group Concerned Women for
merica said on Fox News last summer,ming that the group
‘‘coerces women
o abortion’’ and ‘‘sells their baby parts.’’These claims are not
backed by evi-nce. But still the alarms ring, playing into
usual assumptions that the impulse tootect is benevolent and,
perhaps, thatmen are especially deserving of solic-de. The
association between ‘‘protec-n’’ and women is deeply
embeddedculture. The image of the domestic-lence victim who
receives a protectiveer is female, though men have the same
ht to go to court. Shakespeare describedd’s protection of the
king, but over the
nturies, writers from E. M. Forster torman Mailer to Jonathan
Franzen havepsodized about the male impulse tolter women. Once in a
while, a female
aracter voices vexation. ‘‘I won’t betected,’’ Lucy protests to
her irritatingor in Forster’s ‘‘A Room With a View.’’ ‘‘Il choose
for myself what is ladylike andht. To shield me is an
insult.’’There’s no phrase for men equivalent‘damsel in distress’’
and no such thing‘protective’’ legislation for men. ‘‘No
e says anything about sending men togical centers for
colonoscopies,’’ says
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Money By Adam Davidson
Do technological advances determinehe health of our economy?
Maybe
— but what matters most is how they
hange us.
One day in 1980, when I was my great-grandmother’s livand
poured out questions abouwas like for her as a girl in Belashe was
still sharp and could aquestions. But she didn’t betrayemotion I
hoped for. Born in 18village powered by horses and manner hardly
changed from
ancient Rome, she grew up to winvention of the airplane and thof
electricity and the telephonher to join me in marveling at
thworld-changing transformatiI knew were beyond anythinhood self
could have imagineanswered my questions calml‘‘No, I don’t remember
the firssaw.’’ ‘‘No, I don’t remember thson I called on a
telephone.’’
A key question in economiDoes technological
advancemeimprovement in average peoplconditions that it creates,
continat a steady rate? Or has it alreaIt’s no small question. If
we haanything, it is that peace, demoues and even self-reported
hapclosely connected with economEconomies that are stagnant
leflict; if the pie isn’t getting biggthe only way to improve your
losomeone else’s slice. It’s tellingthe current presidential
campaithis lens. Bernie Sanders is arthis stagnant-pie-stealing has
b
on for some time, while Donsays that he can keep outsidersour
desserts altogether. In a napolitics have long been
characindefatigable optimism — in rhin reality — it’s striking that
no pcandidate in 2016 is off ering anoptimistic vision of the
future.
In articulating such a visiodidates will find little help
Gordon’s ‘‘The Rise and Fall ofGrowth.’’ Published by Princetoty
Press last month, the book is
equivalent to Thomas Piketty’sthe 21st Century’’: an essential
economists, who are unanimouby its boldness and scope even iagree
with its conclusions. Throful study of the entire history
otechnological advancement, Gcludes that despite all the uphepast
200 years, there have reallya handful of fundamental step
2.21.16 Illustration by Andrew Rae
-
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Money
ctricity, the telephone, the combustiongine, mass production,
indoor plumb-g, the conquest of infectious diseasesd the computer.
He argues that every-ng else, including the Internet and
theartphone, is simply a variation on these
mes — and that for all our 21st-centuryk of ‘‘innovation,’’ the
pace of real trans-mative innovation has radically slowedring the
past half-century.We can see this, he argues, in the
minishing impact on productivity in American work force.
Productivity
owth, at its simplest, means that peoplen achieve more in a
given amount of
me than they used to be able to. It’s the
The strongest backlash againhas come from techno-optimicon
Valley, who assure us
wonders are coming soon. Tout that even the things we alrabout —
robots, drones, artifigence, smart devices — will bto significantly
improve pronce they have been fully uBetter still, they argue,
therbe new, radical inventions theven predict yet.
I, too, am more optimistic thbut for reasons that have
littlefuture technological advances. acknowledges, there is
gener
gap between a new technologtion and its wide impact on
prPrimitive steam engines beganin the 17th century, and the
telepatented in 1876. Yet we didnhuge spike in productivity unt
That’s because productivitlives in general, improve not at tof
invention but when society conditions to allow new ideas
Adam Davidson
is a founder of NPR’s‘‘Planet Money’’ and
a contributing writer for the magazine.
Illustration by Andrew Rae
only way that human beings, as a group,can become better
off . There was an enor-mous upward shift in productivity
between1920 and 1970, a rate of growth unseen atany other time in
human history. But after1970, that growth slowed. Then there
wasanother, lesser blip upward during theyears surrounding 2000, as
computerswent mainstream and became married tocommunication, in the
form of the Inter-net. If we exclude that blip, though, the past50
years have seen roughly half the rate of
productivity growth as the 50 that preced-ed them. Gordon argues
that this relativelyslow growth in productivity, together
withrising inequality, helps explain not just thestagnation in
American wages but the gen-eral feeling of anger and despair.
Worse,he argues that this post-1970 sluggishnessis with us to stay,
because the remarkableseries of inventions of the previous 100years
is unlikely to be repeated.
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Threshold of the Oblivious Blossoming By Larry Levis
When I said one blossom desires the
air, Another the shadows, I was freeOf desires. Beyond the
doorsill the café tables
Were empty because it was raining.The rain was empty as
well, & there was no poignancy
Left in it when I looked up at it falling, & went onSitting
inside & waiting for my dealer to show up so I coulTwo grams of
crystal methedrine from her, talk for a mom
And finish my coff ee.
When I thought of the petals of the magnolia
blossomFlattened by passing traffi c to the pavement & the
gradualDiscoloration of them, their white like that of
communion
Becoming gray & a darker gray moment by moment,
When I knew I wanted them to mean nothing
And suggest everything, desire rushed back into things,But
not into the blossoms & not into the air.
egrated into our daily lives. The basichnological conditions for
the expansive
oductivity growth of the 1950s and 1960ssted in 1900 and,
arguably, long beforet. But society had to do a lot of workt. There
had to be new schools (only
out 10 percent of Americans attendedh school in 1900, and far
fewer went tolege) so that people had the education
use the new inventions. Unions and thedern corporation matured
to help allo-e labor. A new political system evolvedfit an economy
that operated nationally,t just as far as a mule could walk.It was,
of course, a messy, often ugly,nlinear process. The single hardest
tasks internal: Americans had to changew they thought about
themselves. Noty did some of the iconic jobs of the 20th
ntury not exist in the 19th century; theyren’t conceivable.
There weren’t manyge corporations, so there was less ofradition of
specialized jobs with nar-w tasks. People had to learn to think
ofional markets, huge firms, accredited
ofessions, new forms of urban identity.hile writing this column,
I was emailingh a friend, a woman who does brandrketing for a
credit-card company. It
curred to me that literally every noun inr job title would have
made no sense tor great-grandmother, or to mine.The very evidence
Gordon cites forssimism — persistent inequality, lowoductivity
growth, lack of major innova-ns — can also be read as signs of
oppor-
ity. In the last century, the main way arson’s productivity rose
was by going tork at a large company and doing whatboss said.
Today, lots of people are find-ways to improve their own lot —
and
erall productivity — on their own. Theyl crafts on Etsy, get
funding on Kick-rter, build toys with 3-D printers. Theyrn through
online classes and proveir skills on sites like Topcoder.Right now,
the benefits of this dig-, shared, distributed economy are
cruing only to a tiny group of people
d, even more, to the companies thatve them. But it’s at least
conceivablet digital technology could help build
w models of education, new ways forrkers to collectively
bargain, new toolsallow more people to identify and sellir skills
and ideas to those who wantm. There could be financial productst
make it easier to withstand increas- volatility and insecurity.
There could
Natasha Trethewey served as the poet laureate of the United
States from 2012 to 2014. Larry Lthe author of five poetry
collections when he died in 1996. ‘‘ Te Darkening Trapeze:
Last Poems’’ waslast month by Graywolf Press.
Poem Selected by Natasha Trethewey
‘‘A poem should not mean/But be,’’ wrote the American poet
Archibald MacL poem by Larry Levis, the movement from ideas
about blossoms to concrete ima petals of the magnolia
blossom/Flattened by passing traffi c’’ — reflects a
transin the mind of the speaker. From that precise seeing,
something ineff able arriv
be an easier path to entrepreneurship,so more people with good
ideas couldpresent them to the market.
I called Gordon and described thisvision to him. He replied,
with a kindchuckle: ‘‘You are in a dream world. Yourlist of needed
improvements in institu-tions and society are a wish list that
isn’thappening now and is very unlikely to hap-
pen in the future.’’ And maybe he’s right.
The language of the current pcampaign — when it’s cohereis of
taxes and regulation, imand carpet-bombing. It is the lzero-sum
stagnancy, not expangrowth. But it’s worth being cleindeed doomed
to a generatigrowth, it’s a lapse in our colleination, not in
technological i
that is holding us back.
It occurred tome that literallyevery nounin her job titlewould
havemade no senseto her great-
grandmother,or to mine.
Money
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8/19/2019 Nyt m 20160221
22/792.21.16 Illustration by Anna Parini
e benefits of mindfulness meditation,reasingly
popular in recent years, are
pposed to be many: reduced stressd risk for various diseases,
improvedll-being, a rewired brain. But the exper-ental bases to
support these claims haveen few. Supporters of the practice haveied
on very small samples of unrepre-ntative subjects, like isolated
Buddhistnks who spend hours meditating every
y, or on studies that generally were notndomized and did not
include placebo-ntrol groups. This month, however, ady published in
Biological Psychiatryngs scientific thoroughness to mind-ness
meditation and for the first timeows that, unlike a placebo, it can
change
brains of ordinary people and poten-ly improve their health.To
meditate mindfully demands ‘‘anen and receptive,
nonjudgmentalareness of your present-moment expe-nce,’’ says J.
David Creswell, who ledstudy and is an associate professor of
ychology and the director of the Health
d Human Performance Laboratory atrnegie Mellon University. One
diffi cul-of investigating meditation has beenplacebo problem.
In rigorous studies,
me participants receive treatment whileers get a placebo: They
believe they areting the same treatment when they aret. But people
can usually tell if they areditating. Creswell, working with
scien-s from a number of other universities,naged to fake
mindfulness.First they recruited 35 unemployedn and women who were
seeking work
d experiencing considerable stress.ood was drawn and brain scans
wereen. Half the subjects were then taughtmal mindfulness
meditation at a resi-ntial retreat center; the rest completedind of
sham mindfulness meditationt was focused on relaxation and
dis-cting oneself from worries and stress.
We had everyone do stretching exer-es, for instance,’’ Creswell
says. The
new study suggests there’s some scienceehind the claims made for
mindfulness meditation.
ell By Gretchen Reynolds
Contemplation Therapy
mindfulness group paid close attentionto bodily sensations,
including unpleasantones. The relaxation group was encour-aged to
chatter and ignore their bodies,while their leader cracked jokes.
At the
end of three days, the participants all toldthe researchers that
they felt refreshedand better able to withstand the stressof
unemployment. Yet follow-up brainscans showed diff erences in
only thosewho underwent mindfulness meditation.There was more
activity, or communica-tion, among the portions of their brainsthat
process stress-related reactions andother areas related to focus
and calm. Four
months later, those who hadmindfulness showed much loin their
blood of a marker ofinflammation than the relaxateven though few
were still me
Creswell and his colleagues bthe changes in the brain
contribsubsequent reduction in inflaalthough precisely how
remain Also unclear is whether you neethree uninterrupted days
of conto reap the benefits. When it commuch mindfulness is needed
thealth, Creswell says, ‘‘we still habout the ideal
dose.’’
Follow-up brainscans showeddifferencesin only those
who underwentmindfulnessmeditation.
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AT THE NATION’S LEADING RESPIRATORY
HOSPITAL, WE NEVER SAY NEVER.Jake Cohn was born with severe
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much of his childhood in the hospital. For a while,
it looked like he’d never lead a normal life. But then
he came to National Jewish Health in Denver.
Thanks to our cutting-edge technology, groundbreak
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Jake CohnProfessional Skier
Asthma Patient
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24/79Photograph by Jonno Rattman
tter of Recommendation
tting permission to travel by air shouldt be as degrading
as it is. As a mattercourse, you — with your wide eyes and
nuine smile and clear conscience andid identification — are
bombarded byisible rays that reveal explicit details
your anatomy. You are made to endurewanted touching,
particularly if, like me,scanning of your body invariably leads
follow-up searches of the tip of yourad and the seat of your
pants. Every singlee. Then, the blue latex gloves come
out,
d even if you have the presence of mind
to ask that they put on a new pair to combthrough your hair and
conduct somethingthat is not not a rectal exam — no
pene-
tration, not exactly, and yet — they will beresentful. And
though they will acquiesce,they will punish you for your request
bygoing extra rough on both your tenderhead and your poor, weary
rear.
I bring this up only because a post-security-line mind-set is
important tounderstanding the allure of XpresSpa. Ispent several
years ignoring the incongru-ous Zen glow that emanated from
those
XpresSpaTaffy Brodesser-Akner
The airport spa
offers the perfect
counterpoint to the
poking and prodding
of the securitycheckpoint, restoring
your dignity to
baseline levels.
stalls — tucked among the CCheeburgers and the Hudson with their
women in chinos and
polo shirts, cracking their knureadiness. I would recover froma
of the T.S.A. line-grope byinto myself and avoiding all huaction.
Besides, like everythingairport, XpresSpa seemed like you didn’t
want to touch.
I’ve never sought out masway, except when I am forcedoccasions:
baby-shower gift-
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2.21.16Illustration by Radio
Tip By Malia Wollan
demptions and compulsory ‘‘girls’y’’ sorts of things. It’s not
that Iuldn’t use a massage; I spend mostmy waking hours hunched
over mymputer, curled into a question mark.
worry some days that I might lose myck entirely as my shoulders
pursue armanent engagement with my ears.t I can’t stand the
expectation ofndfulness that you find at nonairport
as. Out there in the regular world,y hand you towels and
slippers andk that you escape your life amid theirrm oils and
groping hands and tinkly
usic. They force you to surrender to at of relaxation that
doesn’t exist for. They ask that you leave at the door allur
obligations and become a versionyourself that is as pure and
unsaddledd malleable as a newborn.My conversion was sudden; it
hap-ned last summer, just before a flightRussia. I arrived three
hours early — asu must when you know that you willve to use all of
your feeling words torgain for an aisle seat, and, if that fails,e
a pregnancy — and I had a crick in
y back, a result of having hoisted mygage into an overhead
compartmentweek before. In the Turkish Airlines
minal at Kennedy Airport — no powertlets anywhere, no Wi-Fi to
be found finally submitted to the glow.
I took my place in a leather Barcaloung-in a line of other
Barcaloungers, in fullw of other travelers. A woman in aock stood
over me, staring straight
o my eyes. I didn’t tell her about theck, or about how I’d gone
to severalropractors and yoga classes to treator about how I also
bought a cervicallow, or about how none of this hadde the slightest
diff erence. I just satre. She reached behind my back,
feltund, found the spot and, locking eyes
th me, manipulated whatever stringsre are in my back until it
was released.‘How did you know?’’ I asked her.‘It’s my job,’’ she
answered. Only then
d she look away.
If it sounds sexual, I don’t know whatsay. It wasn’t. But it was
a special expe-nce shared by two people, and I will
ways treasure her and wonder what herme was. Part of it was the
massage,. The other part was a touch of kind-
ss and healing after the blue-latex-ve experience, like a cold
plunge inpool after the sauna.
XpresSpa does not pretend to be apalace of luxury. Before
you even enter,it conveys to you its brisk effi ciencythrough
its name, with that economicalomission of an initial ‘‘E’’ and a
final,redundant ‘‘S.’’ You won’t take off yourshoes
(unless you’re getting the footmassage). You can even continue
towork your phone while your service ishappening, for certainly
XpresSpa does
not expect you to close your eyes in anairport. There is no
implied moral judg-ment against you for continuing to bethe person
who got this stressed in thefirst place.
The modern airport has evolved tomimic the world outside of
airports, tovarying degrees of success. There’s aKiehl’s at J.F.K.
now, around the corner
from a Michael Kors. There ain between selling artisanalcheese
experiences, all pedillusion that you would be habsolutely didn’t
have to be. Eis receiving an upgrade, excep Airport
Experience, which rawful as ever. And this makesan oasis for those
whose exphave been wisely lowered. It d
tend it is heaven. Its only job isyour dignity to baseline
leveit also knows what’s aheadarcane preboarding exercisetaking up
the entire arm resurinated-upon toilet seat. Andthey wish you luck
as you leavthey know exactly what you’into: an airport, and then
an
Flight-departure
performance at
some of the busiest
airports in the
United States,
according to the
T.S.A.:
Delayed
Newark: 23%
O’Hare: 22%
J.F.K.: 20%
Boston: 18%
Philadelphia: 19%
Dulles: 18%Honolulu: 8%
Canceled
Newark: 4%
O’Hare: 4%
J.F.K.: 3%
Boston: 4%
Philadelphia: 3%
Dulles: 3%
Honolulu: 1%
How to Lull aGrown-Up to Sleep
‘‘Don’t do baby talk or have a parentaltone,’’ says Drew
Ackerman, a librarian inthe San Francisco Bay Area and the hostof
‘‘Sleep With Me,’’ a podcast designedto help adult listeners fall
asleep. Yoursubject matter can be mature, but keepit sedative in
nature; avoid topics likereligion, politics, sex, violence and
spi-ders. Be careful not to overengage youraudience. ‘‘I’m always
asking myself, Do Ineed to make it more boring?’’ Ackerman
says. Your goal is not to get your listenersto stay with you to
the finish; it is to losethem along the way.
Choose content that dips into theotherworldly; you want to
trigger thatbizarre neurological state at the edgeof sleep. If the
outlandish makes youfeel self-conscious, imagine yourself asa
character. To lead someone else into
that vulnerable space betweeness and dreams, you need
totaneously calm and wildly imor what Ackerman calls ‘‘the of weird
but not creepy.’’
Be empathetic; no matter the inability to fall asleep is
detling. Tens of thousands of peoload each episode of Ackerma(there
are more than 340 of thon feedback from listeners, hethat a third
suff er from chr‘‘Your job is not to fix the prosays. ‘‘It is
just to be there to t
It is helpful to have an outli
before you begin, whether youining a fairy tale or recountinhis
three weekly shows, Ackerrecaps television programs. focusing on
plot twists, he mfive minutes describing a painwall of a
character’s home (cminutiae ‘‘just melts people’Most episodes run
longer thabut Ackerman estimates that of listeners tune in for just
ovutes. Even if you begin to heanever ask your audience if the
ing. That question provokes those who are still awake.
Don’t close with ‘‘the endslow down your speech. Finiand then
keep going a little lonsaying a few more nonsensicalthe dark.
Gently taper to silena parent,’’ Ackerman says, ‘‘waward out of the
room of a sleepi
-
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2.21.16 Illustration by Tomi Um
e Ethicist By Kwame Anthony Appiah
ShouldI Speak UpFor a
Pet Pig?
I am in a profession where I often go to people’s
houses to work with their children. I have one client whom I
like verymuch and who has requested my services
a number of times, but whenever I leavethat client’s
house, I find myself troubled.Tis family has a teacup pig, which
liveswith them in a medium-size apartment.
I consider myself an animal lover, and it so happens
that I have looked into the fadof teacup pigs. I know that they are
really
piglets of a larger variety, the potbellied pig,
which are unintentionally underfed byowners who have been led by
dishonest
sellers to believe that the pigs need to eat
less than they really do. Right now the pig is small,
perhaps to pounds, but I know it will keep growing
and thatthe lowest healthy weight for a full-grown‘‘teacup pig’’ is
about pounds; a
potbellied pig can easily grow to more than pounds. I
asked the family how bigthe pig would get, thinking perhaps
theyknew the facts and had some plan. Teytold me that they expect
it to remain the sizeit is now.Te worst part?Tey often remarkthat
the pig is acting hungry; I imagine they
feed him the too-small amount they were directed to
by the seller. I believe that this
family loves their pig very much and that I am
witnessing an unintentional act of animal cruelty, but I am in
a quandary:Should I tell them that they are unwittinglymistreating
their beloved pet? I worry that
I would be overstepping my professionalbounds. People can
be very touchy whenit comes to their pets, and I want to
maintain
submit a query:
d an email tocist@nytimes
m; or send mailThe Ethicist, Thew York Timesgazine, 620hth
Avenue, Newk, N.Y. 10018.lude a daytime
one number.)
Bonus Advice From Judge John Hodgman
Denise writes: We are expecting our first baby, and I wa
her to grow up in a home where people still pay attentio
one another. I’d like to put a friendly sign on our door th
asks guests to use phones in our home only in the even
an emergency. My husband cringes at the thought.
————
A sign would certainly solve the problem, because it wil
make your home look like a school library or a radiology and
your friends will never come back. Or you could just sp
to them face to face, as in the old days, and say, ‘‘Would
mind not checking your Kik account right now?’’ Oh, but y
child? Even way back when, that kid wouldn’t pay atten
to you. Whether through TV, comic books or just explori
dangerous caves and well bottoms, kids had ways to ign
their parents long before smartphones.
cordial relations with them for the sake ofmy continued
employment. Do I have
an ethical obligation to tell them the truth about
teacup pigs?
Name Withheld
If you’re right, this pig is suff ering fromhunger and
malnourishment, and its own-ers don’t know. Because animals
can’t
speak, it’s especially important that wespeak for them. These
owners, in yourview, don’t mean to harm their pet. So intheory,
they ought to be grateful to youfor bringing the facts to their
attention.In reality, as you fear, they might be cha-grined and
reluctant to see you again.Much comes down to diplomacy. You cansay
that coming to know their pet led youto explore what you had heard
about thebreed . . . and then tell them what you’vefound out. When
it comes to the treatmentof animals, Jeremy Bentham captured
the
essentials more than two centuries ago:‘‘The question is not,
Can they reason? nor,Can they talk? but, Can they
suff er?’’
For a research project on a famous ancestor of mine
whose father is unknown, I’ve genetically tested (with their
full permission) a number of male descendants.(I’m female, so
my own DNA won’t giveme the information about the male line.)One of
these relatives is an elderly manwho is very proud of this
ancestor. But theresults showed that the man he thinks is
his biological father is not. I haven’t shared
this news with him because I think it might hurt him
terribly, but I don’t know him well
enough to know that for sure. He also children who might want to
know thei
actual genetic line. I truly don’t knowright thing to
do.
Name Withheld
This issue is going to come up and more often. Genetic
testing maincreasingly clear that fatherhood inv
more faith than motherhood. Studiecome up with figures ranging
from cent to 30 percent for rates of nonpnity, though the most
likely figure fcontemporary United States is at thlow end of that
range.
The combination of expanded getesting with a growing interest in
gogy means that people will have to dwhether they care about their
biolancestry or their social ancestryhardest cases will involve men
leathat their children aren’t biolog
theirs, and children learning the about their fathers.If there
were a standard form tha
and your relative filled out togethecould rely on that previous
agreeas you proceed. But there isn’t. So have to do your best to
take into aca variety of considerations.
To start with, the revelation coupainful to your relative. Not
only whe have to think diff erently about hinection to his
family’s famous forehe might feel the shame of
illegiti Although that stigma has (thankfully)
ly disappeared, he comes from a getion for which it was a more
serious m
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ame Anthony Appiah teaches philosophyN.Y.U. He is the
author of ‘‘Cosmopolitanism’’ ande Honor Code: How Moral
Revolutions Happen.’’
Some might invoke the privacy rights ofe mother or the husband.
But I wouldn’tve either much weight: Presumably yourative’s parents
are long dead. Whatout the medical case for disclosure?
nless there’s something in the data thatggests biological risks
that he and hisildren wouldn’t have anticipated (andat they could
usefully act on), I doubt thatowing about his mother’s infidelity
willof much use. Still, as you say, his children
ay want to know what you found.Finally, you have to ask yourself
what
uths about your parents’ or grandpar-ts’ relationships are
important enoughat you would want to know them even ifey were
painful. Would you resent it ifmeone had such information about
youd withheld it? If you think you would,s can be your compass
here, howeverffi cult the resulting conversation. A gen-al
moral, though: Talk before you test.
ve in a suburb of Minneapolis and haveared a driveway with our
neighbors foryears. Some days, I come home fromrk for lunch, and my
neighbor’s son (whon high school) is also home. He is
metimes with a girl and sometimes withends. I frequently smell
illegal drugsng smoked. Should I let his parents knowat I’ve
observed? Or should I keep
y nose out of their business?
me Withheld
u mention the length but not the depthyour relationship
with your neighbors, soassume you’re not close. But as with our
NA tester, it will help to ask yourself whatu would want the
other party to do if youruations were reversed. You needn’t agreeth
the laws against marijuana (that’s what’re talking about, right?)
to think that aung person who smokes in the drivewayaying himself
open to trouble. In Min-sota, possession of more than one and af
ounces is theoretically punishable byto five years in prison. And
there are
her reasons to worry about a high-schoold getting blitzed in the
middle of the day.nsider how you would feel — how you
ould be entitled to feel — if your neighborled to pass on
similar observations aboutur own children. I’d be guided by
that.
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t By Sam Sifton
Photograph by Grant Cornett
A New California Cuisineoasted yams get the West Coast
treatment.
Food stylist: Maggie Ruggiero. Prop stylist: Rebecca Bartosh
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Comment: nytimes.com/magazine 2.21.16
Gjelina’s Roasted Yams
Time: 1 hour
large yams
tablespoons honey
tablespoon Espelette peppecrushed red-pepper
flakes
tablespoons extra-virgin oli
Kosher salt and freshly groublack pepper
½ cup Greek-style yogurt
tablespoons fresh lime juiceapproximately
limes
scallions, both green and wtrimmed and thinly
sliced, f
1. Heat oven to 425. Cut the yams
into 4 wedges per yam. Put them
bowl, and toss them with the hone
tablespoon of the Espelette peppe
red-pepper flakes and 2 tablespo
olive oil. Let it sit for 10 minutes or once or twice to coat,
as the oven
2. Transfer the yams to a foil-lined,
baking sheet, season with salt an
pepper and then bake until they a
caramelized around the edges an
when pierced with a fork at their t
part, approximately 30 to 35 minu
3. As the yams roast, combine the
lime juice and remaining tablespo
oil in a small bowl, and whisk to co
then season with salt and pepper
Set aside.
4. When the yams are done, trans
to a serving platter, drizzle the yogu
and garnish with the remaining Es
pepper or red-pepper flakes, the s
some flaky sea salt i f you have any
Serves 3-6. Adapted from ‘‘Gjelina: CooVenice,
California.’’
Travis Lett is a bearded, hippie-chic chef
who runs a trio of popular restaurantsin the beachside community
of Venice,Calif. The flagship is Gjelina, a loud, fash-ionable and
vegetable-centric neighbor-hood spot as well known for the
attrac-tiveness of its clientele as for its pizzasand salads,
slathered toasts and smokypastas. The restaurant is an
aspirationallifestyle camp, replete with fire pit andsloe-eyed
waiters.
Thankfully, little of that scene is docu-mented in ‘‘Gjelina:
Cooking From Ven-ice, California,’’ Lett’s excellent cook-book,
which came out in the fall. The
restaurant’s dining room and patrons arelargely omitted from its
pages. Instead,the food dominates. There are dozens anddozens of
recipes set alongside luxuriousportraits of simple ingredients,
simplyprepared, though in riots of contrast:sweet against salty;
spicy against sour;crunchy against smooth.
I have spent the last few months cook-ing from the book,
bringing a little Cal-ifornia warmth and brio into my chillyEast
Coast kitchen, along with a lot lessmeat. ‘‘I wanted the restaurant
to off ersomething that didn’t demand too much
attention but at the same time had theability to inspire if you
paused and trulylooked,’’ Lett writes in the introduction.The same
goal animates his recipes.Cooking them carefully can lead a
homecook down fascinating paths.
Grilled king oyster mushrooms withtarragon butter could be
luscious accom-paniments to a massive steak (indeed,they are). But
served on their own, theyare even more singular: steaklike
them-selves beneath their gleam of herb-scent-ed butter, perfect
with a glass of wineand roasted potatoes. Charred brusselssprouts
with dates and bacon? Likewise.You could serve them with pork chops
orturkey cutlets. But maybe don’t, and watchas a double batch of
the recipe goes downas successfully as a full-throttle
meat-and-side dinner. More room for dessert.
Lett has fine instructions for roasted
cauliflower with garlic, parsley and vin-egar; so, too, for
pizza with Castelvetra-no olives, a wee bit of guanciale and
themild heat of Fresno chiles. Come spring,I’ll grill his jumbo
asparagus with saucegribiche and bottarga; in summer, I’llmake the
most of ricotta gnocchi witha cherry-tomato pomodoro. Cookingthis
way takes on its own satisfactionsand makes the decision to cook a
greathaunch of meat all the more special whenwe come to it not as a
matter of expecta-tion but as an occasional treat.
Again and again this winter, I have
made Gjelina’s roasted yams with honey,Espelette pepper and lime
yogurt. Theseare a marvelous accompaniment to aroast chicken. They
are as good or betteras a platter served alongside a salad ofwinter
greens, cheese and nuts. ‘‘Yamsare abundant and cheap in the
wintermonths,’’ Lett writes, ‘‘and customersfind them
soul-satisfying and delicious.’’ Which is true. But what gets
them thereis technique: tossing the tubers in honeybefore roasting
them intensifies theircaramelization. That crisp,
near-burnedsweetness works beautifully against the
heat of the pepper and the acidic cream-iness of the yogurt you
dab onto the dishat the end.
Forty years ago, SkateBoarder mag-azine published a series of
articles onthe skate scene along Venice Beach,near where Gjelina
now operates, aworld that would later be captured inthe documentary
film ‘‘Dogtown andZ-Boys’’ in 2001. The magazines land-ed with
force in cities far from Cali-fornia, where they were passed
aroundwith reverence, like dispatches from apromised land. The
tricks depicted inthe photographs and described in thetext —
graceful turns on steep concrete,one hand trailing behind as if
throughthe curl of an ocean wave — had animmediate and
transformative effecton skateboarding across the nation.
‘‘Gjelina’’ could have some
eff ect on the subset of Ameriested in cooking well and hin
laying down beautiful fooaccustomed to a diff erent soris
simple cooking. It results meals. You don’t need to go texperience
it.
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30/792.21.16 Illustration by Melinda Josie
es
After I moved to Bern, Switzerland, fromJaibling,
Germany, some time ago, I wasvery careful to adapt to Swiss ways,
when-ever I could make them out. I paid partic-ular attention to
the garbage, dividing itinto various containers to be recycled,
aswas required of all citizens. There wereglass, metal, compost,
unidentified mixedwaste, cardboard and of course paper. It
was quite simple, except the paper part.I didn’t find any bins,
and there were nospecial bags to be bought as for othertypes of
trash. So I asked my friend andlandlord how to go about it.
‘‘You simply bundle it,” he said. ‘‘Onlyhemp string is allowed,
though, no plasticor wire.’’
‘‘How am I supposed to ‘bundle’ this?”I asked, pointing to my
collection of scrappaper and bits of cardboard, every smallpiece of
paper material I had gatheredover the past few weeks and put in a
box.He glanced at it and chuckled. ‘‘Well, thatyou just throw in
with the mixed trash.’’
‘‘Throw it out?’’ I snorted. ‘‘Not in ahundred years!’’ I am a
committed envi-ronmentalist, and I had already envisioneda bright
new future for my little scraps ofpaper. I was not going to let
them wasteaway. I was not going to let these perfectlygood scraps
of recycling material suff o-cate amid other unworthy
junk!
‘‘Well, they’re not going to collectit with the paper like
that,’’ my friendadvised me. ‘‘If you must recycle it, youcan take
it to the garbage center.’’
I put that on my long list of things todo. After all, it was
paper, not the kind ofsmelly waste I urgently needed to get rid
of.
A few days later, walking through thecourtyard of my
building, I finally saw howthe paper was done. At first, it seemed
outof place: Everything in Switzerland is soperfect that I had
developed the urge tomake things right when they were not inorder —
even clearing twigs from the side-walk. But upon closer inspection,
I sawthat these were very nicely tied bundles.(Somehow attracted by
those neat-looking
bundles, I found some treasures amongthem: original newspapers
from 1945 andcentury-old cookbooks.)
Then, a little in the back, I spottedsome brown paper bags, and
peeking intothem I saw pieces and shreds of rippedpaper like my
own. So there was a way todispose of paper shreds with
dignity! Iwas delighted and went home to gener-ate a nice full
paper bag myself, which I
then triumphantly set out withsaluting it with satisfaction.
One day about a week lateinto my mailbox, I saw a colorflooking
envelope with a red-abear printed on it. I don’t get anymore, but I
still have a fewith whom I exchange letterexcited. A little
surprised, too
remember giving my addressyet — I had just moved a few weI
ripped it open, still stand
hallway. What I found was ana friendly note! ‘‘A fine of 1,0were
the first words I read, prily in the center of an otherwempty page.
A thousand franstumbled backward to sit dosteps and examined the
lettedetail. ‘‘You have been identiauthor of an act of illegal
andabandonment of personal was‘‘and are therefore subject tup to
1,000 francs.’’ Me, of I thought: unorderly abandopersonal waste?
Truly, I wouldsuch a thing.
Later I found out that thercial task force of “garbage dthat
goes around examining wplaced or suspicious-looking tactually go
through the stuff , lsomething that will reveal therightful
owner, and then educher by way of a hefty fine. I athat those
bundles I’d found
the apartment of a 90-year-owho had died, but it’s still nme
whether garbage regulatdiff erently to the deceased.
Once I got over the shock ounfairly fined, I decided to aclot of
phone calls. Finally onebeing put off many times, I goto
the administrator in charge.it was your trash,’’ he said.
‘‘Youaddress was on some of the iteconceding this, I explained
myanything, I pleaded, I had been
in my attempts to recycle. In tlet me off with a
warning.
It turns out that we have a pmy workplace. So now I cycle toa
load of pieces of paper stuffbackpack, and although it’s alegal, I
make sure there isn’t anymy name on it. As a Swiss friend‘‘If you
have to commit a garbdon’t leave any personal trace
Unorderly Conducthe treacherous process ofarning to recycle in
Switzerland.
me:
harina Heinrich
e: 36
ation:
n, Switzerland
Heinrich teaches
gardening at a center
for developmentally
challenged adults.
She told her story
in German.
told to Laura Bauerlein
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When one didn’t exist,Dana-Farber
created a pathwayto treat children withrare brain cancers.
Researchers at Dana-Farber have been studying some of the rarest
and most dangerous childhood brain cancers, hoping
to develop new, more effective approaches to treatment. Our work
with cancers like DIPG, a brain stem glioma that affects
only 200 children each year and AT/RT, a lethal brain tumor that
affects 100 annually, is creating a better understanding
of how to attack these diseases. Taking on rare childhood
cancers has helped us open new pathways in the study of
many adult cancers as well, including ovarian, breast, colon and
possibly pancreatic cancer. While the biology of cancerremains
complex, we believe even small steps can lead to giant leaps
forward toward a brighter future for our children,
and for everyone.
See videos, whitepapers and more at
DiscoverCareBelieve.org/DIPG.
© 2015 Dana-Farb
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W o m a n
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Dana Spiotta’squietly subversive
American fictions.
When Dana Spiotta was workingon her fourth novel,
‘‘Innocents andOthers,’’ she sat beneath a huge bul-letin board
pinned with her stickynotes and research materials: listsof
relevant words (passion, trans-formation, intimacy) and
‘‘seeing’’devices (zoetrope, stereoscope,camera obscura), and
photographs
of Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godardand the Maysles brothers. ‘‘It’s
likewalking into the book,’’ Spiotta toldme. ‘‘You feel it all
around you.’’
We were standing in the roomwhere she writes at her house
in Syr-acuse. She opened a closet, reachingfor something on a low
shelf. ‘‘Thisis awesome,’’ she said, ‘‘This is aSwatch phone from
the ’80s.’’ Thephone was made of translucent redplastic with orange
piping and wasnarrow, like a tie from the same era.‘‘Looking at the
things that are dis-
carded tells you something aboutthe present,’’ she said. What
part ofus was ignited by this machine, andwhy did we move on from
it?
Spiotta writes radiant, concen-trated books that, as she has put
it,consider ‘‘the way things external tous shape us: money,
technology, art,place, history.’’ Her three previousnovels were
critically acclaimed; ‘‘Eatthe Document’’ (2006) was a Nation-al
Book Award finalist, cited for itsevocation of ‘‘30 years of
Americanlife in a miniature panorama at oncenuanced, culturally
authoritative anddevastatingly intimate.’’ But her workisn’t as
well known as it should be,and this may have something to dowith
its deep and uncategorizableambition: Her books are simultane-ously
vast and local, exploring great American themes
(self-invention,historical amnesia) within idiosyn-cratic worlds
(phone phreaks, ’80sLos Angeles adolescence). She hasbeen compared
with Don DeLilloand Joan Didion, but her tone andmood are
distinctly her own: She’sfascinated, not alienated.
‘‘Her gaze is very smart and witty,’’George Saunders wrote to me
in anemail, ‘‘but doesn’t have any of thatempty, snarky irony you
sometimessee in writing about contemporaryculture, that sense that
America isrotten, past its prime, capable ofnothing good. On the
contrary, Ithink her main stance is that mostdiffi cult one:
She who praises.’’
‘‘Innocents and Others,’’ which will
By Susan Burton
Photographs by Erik Madigan Heck
M a
c h i
n e
V s .
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published in March, is in part theory of two women: a
documentarymmaker and her subject. Like all of
piotta’s work, it takes up questionsidentity and transformation.
Inat the Document,’’ a 1970s radical
oes underground and surfaces as aburban mother. In ‘‘Stone
Arabia’’011), an amateur musician docu-
ents his fantasy life as a rock starif it were ‘‘real.’’ In
‘‘Innocents and
thers,’’ a lonely woman in upstateew York pretends to be
someonese with the powerful Hollywooden she seduces over the phone.
‘‘Iuld be myself on the phone,’’ sheys. ‘‘The self I really was or
oughthave been.’’ Spiotta is drawn to theoment when you realize
that theory you’ve told yourself about whou are is false.‘‘Do you
want me to show you the
ouse?’’ she asked on a recent morn-
g when I visited her in Syracuse,here she teaches writing
alongth Saunders and Mary Karr. She
ves near the university, in a bun-low from the 1930s. ‘‘My
spirit
me, aesthetically,’’ she told me. Wealked through the rooms,
whichere calm and spare, the heels of ouroots knocking on the wood
floors.
Spiotta, who is 50, wears elegant,avy-framed eyeglasses
without
hich she is unfamiliar to herself.er voice is rich and
low-pitched,d it is exciting to be around her
hen she talks; she has a committedtelligence and a warm,
energeticmeanor. Her hands are often inotion. She crashed them
togetheren spread them apart, like billiard
alls, describing the structure sheanted for ‘‘Innocents and
Oth-s’’: The two strands of the storyeet and then separate. The
book’sventiveness is characteristic of
piotta’s novels, incorporatingts, autobiographical essays writ-n
by the characters and precisescriptions of both real and imag-
ary films. In Spiotta’s work, con-ctions with movies and music
areofound. She writes not only aboutt itself but about the
experience of‘‘how you really love a song afteru’ve heard it over
and over, how
our body feels almost desperater the next part’’; about the
rerunwell as the family room: ‘‘The
usty haze of sun coming in streamsrough the drapes in the midst
ofy afternoon solitude.’’
In the kitchen, Spiotta pouredus coff ee from a percolator,
whichshe likes because it makes enoughfor two and keeps the
coff ee reallyhot. (Spiotta lives with the novelistJonathan
Dee and her daughter, Agnes, 12, from whose father she
isdivorced.) The percolator also hap-pens to be evocative of the
recent
past, which, broadly speaking, is theera in which Spiotta likes
to write:‘‘Everything is slightly outdated andoff -kilter and
somehow more visible.’’
‘‘Innocents and Others’’ takesplace mostly in the 1980s and
’90s.It’s a compassionate, unsparingbook, full of provocative
ideasabout art, ethics and the formationof sensibility. Meadow, the
docu-mentary filmmaker, trades on thehuman ‘‘compulsion to
confess.’’Jelly, the mysterious woman whocalls powerful men on the
phone,
also understands that we all wantto reveal ourselves. She does
notseduce with sex; she beguiles bylistening. Eventually, she,
too,wants to tell ‘‘a true story that shehad never told anyone
before.’’ Thebook’s two strands meet whenMeadow makes a film about
Jelly.
Technology, for Spiotta, bothinhibits and invokes emotion:
‘‘Iwould say it creates a distortion ofsome kind,’’ she said. ‘‘The
phoneputs one sense in isolation. Once youintroduce a visual
element, every-
thing else falls away. What we seeoverrides what we hear.’’ She
added:‘‘The primacy of visual informationis what I was interested
in exploringin fiction. Which is sort of perverse, Iguess, using
prose to describe film.’’
Spiotta is acutely attuned to‘‘what happens in our minds andour
bodies’’ when we see or hear.
While writing the new book, sheplugged old phones into
wall jacksand listened to their tones. ‘‘Withthe phone, I really
want to talk aboutwhat that feels like when it’s on your
cheek,’’ Spiotta said. ‘‘It has a soundthat it makes. It talks
to you. We tendto think of machines as abstractions,but they are
actually things.’’ Spiot-ta captures a once-familiar
auditoryexperience — those ‘‘long-belledrings to say, ‘Answer,’
rude blasts ofa busy signal to say, ‘No’ ’’ — and sheregisters the
emotion we attachedto those noises, too: ‘‘The ring ofanother
person’s phone sounded sohopeful, and then it grew lonelier. It
piotta was bor1966 in New JerBy the time she14, she had
alrelived in seven
urbs. Her father worked for MOil, but he was not a tycoon: son
of Italian immigrants, he gup with little money and workedway up.
The frequent moves mSpiotta a perpetual new kid, ater of
experimental selves. She
close to her older sister and youer brother, and her favorite
bomovies and records sustained These were not just
interestspassions. It was ‘‘different tbeing a fan,’’ she wrote to
me. ‘‘Itdeeper. It was finding somethworthy of your attention’’ —
JaMason, the Beach Boys — ‘then devoting attention to it unyielded
things that could nevediscovered by casual engageme
Spiotta’s parents met in collat Hofstra University, playing
S
ley and Stella in a production oStreetcar Named Desire,’’ direby
a fellow student, Francis FCoppola. In 1979, when Spiotta13, her
father left Mobil Oil toCoppola’s studio, Zoetrope. Spta’s Los
Angeles adolescence wimprint upon her deeply: Theis a setting in
all of her books, film reels through her work, as formal influence
and subject. ‘living in a great city after so m
lost possibility, and you could almostsee the sound in an empty
house.’’
‘‘There’s a weird aggressivityto listening,’’ Spiotta said as we
satwith our coff ee at her dining-roomtable. ‘‘My silence is
going to makeyou speak, so that’s interesting to me.I’m also really
hard of hearing; I wearhearing aids. So I think that’s why
Ifetishize sound so much. When youwear hearing aids, your sounds
aren’tin the same relationship they would
be. Sometimes you hear this sound’’— Spiotta rubbed her palm on
herpants — ‘‘or a sound over there, andyou have to mentally put
them intheir proper place.’’ The hearing aidswere new to Spiotta
when she start-ed writing about ‘‘Jelly and sound.
What she notices, the informationshe gets from paying
attention.’’ Sheadded: ‘‘That’s seductive, being paidattention to.
That’s almost all youhave to do to win someone over, isjust to see
them.’’
Spiotta returned to the idea of
‘‘attending’’ in our talks and emailcorrespondence this winter.
Whatshe called ‘‘codas, afterthoughts,parentheticals, digressions,
qualifi-cations’’ were often attempts to get atsaying something the
exact right way.
‘‘ ‘Attend’ comes from ‘ attende-re,’ which means ‘to
stretch,’ ’’ sheemailed one morning. ‘‘That is sointeresting, as if
attending meansyou have to stretch your mindtoward another.’’
Spiotta at home in Syracuse, where she teaches writing at the
university
S
2.21.16
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years of suburbs transformed meand my sensibility,’’ she wrote
to me.‘‘I also felt for the first t ime the senseof a secret
history waiting to be readin the architecture and geography.This is
not something you feel in thesuburbs. Suburbs are designed forthe
opposite: no history to be read,no complications.’’
Spiotta attended the progressive,arty Crossroads School and went
onto Columbia University. But at theend of her sophomore year of
col-lege, she dropped out. Her parentswere splitting up ‘‘but that
was onlypart of the chaos,’’ she wrote to me.‘‘My father, who had
left Zoetrope toform his own production company,lost everything,’’
including the fam-ily’s house. ‘‘It gave me the abilityto
understand being privileged aswell as being dead broke.’’ Fromage
19, Spiotta supported herself.She made her way to Seattle, ‘‘a
citythat seemed very friendly to thelost young person,’’ got a job
at arecord store and eventually enrolled
at Evergreen State College, whereshe studied labor history and
cre-ative writing. Reading ‘‘The Dead’’in a cafe, she began to
weep.
One day she and a friend called anumber on the back cover of the
lit-erary journal Quarterly. The phonewas answered by the journal’s
edi-tor, Gordon Lish, who invited Spi-otta and her friend to come
workfor him in New York. They did, as
t was early on a frigid dayin January. Spiotta and Isat in a
diner in Cooper-stown, a road atlas openon the apple-print oil-
cloth. We were about to embark ona trip. ‘‘This map: In all of
my books,except ‘Lightning Field,’ stuff hap-pens right
here,’’ Spiotta said. The
Mohawk River, the Erie Canal, andI-90 hung in a triple strand
acrossthe open pages. The Erie Canal’svelocity changed the
transmissionof goods and ideas; and it ‘‘meantidentity could be
changed, too,because you could take off and goto the
next place,’’ Spiotta said, as awaitress refilled our mugs.
Spiotta had circled our destina-tions on the map in ballpoint
pen.This region has a multiplicity —off -the-gridders,
declining factorytowns, a shrine to the first Native
American saint — analogous toher books. ‘‘It almost feels
as if itworks the way a novel works here,because there are these
disparatethings that seem unconnected, butbecause they have the
same geog-raphy, they are connected,’’ shesaid. ‘‘You wonder, How
did theyall come to be here?’’
Spiotta drove. We were on a roadthat cut through rolling
farmland,and even though we were in a val-ley, it felt as if we
were up high. We were approaching Stone Ara-bia, the place
that gave Spiotta thetitle for her third book. She lovedthe town’s
‘‘solid and exotic’’ nameand the landscape’s austere beauty.
An Amish man rode behind horseson a wagon. The Amish
approachto technology appeals to Spiotta:‘‘They don’t reject; they
‘doubt’ it.’’
My phone was in my lap on topof the atlas. We were using
thepaper map as well as GPS, and thetechnology was helping us
navigate(sort of). There was something itwas doing to our
interaction too.
‘‘I’m going to try it on Waze,’’ I
said. ‘‘It’s smarter.’’‘‘What’s going on with this?’’ Spi-
otta said, looking at her own phone.‘‘Did I turn
off data?’’
‘‘It doesn’t like that address,’’I said, talking to myself. We
hadbeen driving in circles looking fora Mohawk community crafts
store.‘‘I’m going to copy and paste.’’
The Waze app told us: ‘‘We areall set. Drive safely.’’
managing editors. ‘‘Whatever you’retrying to hide is what you
need towrite from,’’ Spiotta recalls him say-ing. ‘‘Whatever you’re
trying to hideis what makes you an interestingwriter.’’ Lish
introduced Spiotta toDon DeLillo, who became a mentorand a
friend.
While Spiotta was working on
her first novel, ‘‘Lightning Field,’’she supported herself by
waitress-ing. The book was published in2001, when she was 35. She
wroteher next novel in secret, while work-ing at a restaurant she
owned withher former husband in upstate NewYork. ‘‘Eat the
Document’’ broughther new attention, and she joinedSaunders and
Karr at the highlyregarded creative-writing programat Syracuse.
‘‘As a colleague, sheis a dream,’’ Karr told me. ‘‘Whipsmart and
tirelessly generous, but
she doesn’t pander to student egos.She knows how to deliver bad
newsto a young writer: ruthlessly butalso with an underpinning of
cheerthat’s infectious.’’
Spiotta’s work has been citedin discussions about whether
theculture properly values the work offemale novelists,
particularly thosewhose books are ‘‘ambitious, polit-ical and
engaged with the big worldof ideas,’’ as Katha Pollitt wrote
ofSpiotta and others in 2010. ‘‘DonDeLillo with a vagina,’’ one
writ-er called Spiotta (it was meant asa compliment); ‘‘a woman’s
bookwrapped in a man’s book,’’ suggest-ed a participant in an
online discus-sion of ‘‘Stone Arabia.’’ A Booklistreview of
‘‘Innocents and Others’’advises that it is for readers of Jen-nifer
Egan, Siri Hustvedt, RachelKushner and Claire Messud. Thesewriters
are comparable with Spiottain ways that have nothing to do
withgender — Egan, formally inventive;Kushner, influenced by film —
andthe list is meant to contextualize thenovel for librarians. But
it hints at
a ‘‘smart woman’’ algorithm: If youlike this woman who is
‘‘serious,’’you’ll like Spiotta too. Spiotta flatout rejects this
way