On rare occasions I’ll feel a bit sad that my days of being a stupid kid are coming to a close. When that happens, I tend to envision myself doing something like smoking one of these Sobranie cigarettes––kinda kitschy, but undeniably glamorous. I can probably have one a year or so even now that I’m a grown-up, right?
We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for a moment of unadulterated showing off: I knew that William Powell, author of The Anarchist Cookbook, passed away, it appears, before the Times did. Last year, I reached out to his wife to ask if I could interview him about his conversion to Anglicanism. I was sorry to hear he had died, as it sounds like although he was a bit of an angry young man, and his writings had unfortunate repercussions (the perpetrators Columbine and the Oklahoma City bombing were said to be partially inspired by the Cookbook) he really had turned his life around by devoting it to education. RIP William Powell.
Find out fun things about your personality this Monday morning!
From a NYRB review of the biography of Angela Carter:
“Psychologists have suggested that there are two classic early fears, both deftly portrayed in the folktale ‘Hansel and Gretel’: the fear of being abandoned and the fear of being consumed. For most of us, one of these anxieties is dominant.”
Which one are you?!
ID: 
[My former boss] used to talk about this all the time
How the midgets were always having orgies on set
KM: What the fuck?
I need to know more
How did Phil know?
ID: Liza Minnelli told him
They had a fling
KM: Whoa, both of those sentences are amazing
On behalf of the International Association of All Museums (Whether They Signed Up Or Not), we’d like to announce that the first Wednesday of every month will be official NO PHONE DAY at every museum in the world. On this hallowed day, all museum visitors will be asked to arrive sans phone, or will be asked to check their phones at the doors. No exceptions will be made. Visitors will be encouraged to look at the art using simply their eyes and nothing else. The museums will be returned to their original states as places of contemplation and reverence, rather than as spots in which one might frame the perfect selfie in front of a Van Gogh. Sketching will be encouraged, as will quiet and thoughtful conversation on the nature of art and the lives of the great artists of history.
Rules will be strictly enforced, but we also know that some individuals are so attached to their devices that we will perhaps miss a few. If you are considering sneaking in your iPhone, please consider that you have around more than 300 days in the year to be a narcissistic douche bag. As difficult as it may be, why not attempt to be considerate of the small amount of time that those who are sensitive to watching your insufferably self-centered behavior have for themselves?
I was thinking of entering a writing contest I briefly read about, and then I visited the judge’s website, and his bio is so bizarrely and poorly written that I decided, um, no. It reads as if perhaps someone else––someone who isn’t a native English speaker––wrote it, and then Clare just never edited it? Or a bot wrote it? In any case, it’s not a crime against humanity or anything, just very bizarre to see an “award-winning author” allow such a shoddily written summation of his credentials to be out there. I was going to redact the name but that was just too much damn trouble. Disclaimer: he does seem to be a good writer and also accomplished. It’s not him I object to; it’s this Google Translate bio!
Horatio Clare is not only an excellent multi award-winning author but a radio producer and journalist too. He was born in London in 1973. He spent his childhood on a hill farm in the Black Mountains of south Wales with his brother Alexander. They both grew up there.
Before reading the English at the University of York, he attended the United World College of the Atlantic and Malvern College.
He worked as a producer on Front Row, Night Waves and The Verb at the BBC. He is the writer of two memoirs, Truant and Running for the hills.
A Single Swallow and Down to the Sea Ships are the pieces of his writing that he wrote about travel and nature.
He is the writer and editor of Sicily through Writer’s Eyes. A book named “Orison for a curlew” was an excellent piece of his writings that was published in 2015, in which he combined the travel and nature topic altogether. Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot an acclaimed children’s book was also published in 2015.
The experiences of his childhood are described in his first book, “Running for the Hills” (The best seller).
His second book Truant was published in 2008. His third book “A Single Swallow” (Following an epic journey from South Africa to South Wales) was published in 2009.
His first children book,” Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot” was published in 2015 by Firefly.
Clare wrote and edited “Sicily through Writer’s Eyes”, which was an anthology of writings about Sicily, and it played the role of a contributor to the collections Red City: Meeting with Remarkable Muslims and Marrakech through Writer’s Eyes.
The Sunday times, Financial Times, The Observer and Vogue, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and the Sunday Times are the platforms where his Journalism appeared.
He won the Somerset Maugham Award his best-selling masterpiece “Running for the Hills” in 2007. He was also shortlisted for another award named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in the same year for the same masterpiece.
Later on, he was shortlisted for Dolman Best Travel Book Award for “A Single Swallow” in 2010. And in the same year, he won the Foreign Press Association Award for his travel feature 2010 “Rock of Ages – Ethiopian Highlands”
In 2015 he won the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year award for Down to the Sea in Ships.
In 2016 he wrote a book for Children name “Aubrey and the Terrible Yoot”, which later on was announced to be the best book of the year and which made him win the Branford Boase Award.
These are the achievement that made him become the excellent author of the era. And he’s an inspiration for the present writers.
where you are waiting for a table at Russ and Daughters in the Jewish Museum and, bored, you go to take out Portnoy’s Complaint but stop yourself by thinking, “Now this is just a step too far, even for me.”
KM: I’m at [redacted], which is usually a good place to work. But right now [name of famous writer, redacted] is standing three feet away from me, trying to take a selfie in front of the library. It’s been going on for almost five minutes. I’m like, “Can you stop being both annoying and incredibly successful RIGHT next to me???”
ID: Ugh!
ID: I think I would have a hard time [at said redacted location] just for being surrounded by people so successful.
ID: #3 on my list of “neuroses to shed in 2017”
KM: No joke. She’s still doing it. I think it must be for Snapchat or a video because she keeps saying “books are magic.”
ID: HAHA
KM: She is remarkably not embarrassed by this. She’s said it easily 20 times.
KM: Just chipping away at this proposal while this bestseller Snapchats next to me.
***
ID: I straight up don’t believe in [redacted]
AL: Nope. Fake news!
ID: HAHAHAH
ID: From now on whenever anything I disapprove of comes up I’m just going to yell, “Fake news!”
AL: My friend said her 11-year-old now just yells that at her whenever he doesn’t want to do stuff.
I think my new favorite hobby is reading “Testimonies of Healing” from the Christian Science Sentinel.
Diagnosed Dental Problem Healed
As I sat in the dentist’s chair for my yearly checkup, I once again heard how important it was that I make an appointment to have a root canal procedure. I had heard this urging before at the previous appointment and the supposedly dire consequences of doing nothing. But I had been doing something: I had been praying. I had been affirming that my true substance was spiritual and that God was the source of my entire identity and being.
I knew that a decayed tooth was not a spiritual reality but an illusion, a false image of mortal mind. A material operation would not dispel this illusion, and it was important to me not to simply go along with the seeming reality of matter’s illusive nature. Now was the time to defeat this lie and to know that God was working out His purpose in me. I left the dentist’s office, knowing I could lean on God, but I also felt I was at odds with the dentist who was urging a medical procedure.
Moving ahead a year,just before Christmas, I suddenly began to experience pain in the area of my mouth where the dentist had warned me about. Over the next few hours the pain increased, and the side of my face became swollen. I prayed the Lord’s Prayer right away and declared: “… as in heaven, so on earth, –– God is omnipotent, supreme” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 17).
Encouraged, yet still in pain, I called a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful treatment. Today, I don’t remember our conversation, but the love and confidence the practitioner expressed calmed my fear and strengthened my expectation of healing. Immediately I felt the pain subside, and within a couple of hours the swelling decreased. By the next day there was no sensation or evidence of the difficulty.
All was well until a couple of weeks later when the pain and swelling returned. My first impulse was to call the practitioner back, requesting further treatment. While preparing to make the phone call, I recalled the memory of the dentist standing over me and describing the troubled material picture. At that point, however, I turned from pondering the memory of this diagnosis and listened instead to hear what divine Mind was communicating to me.
What suddenly and strongly came to thought was that the belief that I had a decayed tooth was a lie. The disease had always been a mortal belief; my real substance as Spirit’s idea had never lapsed from the harmonious perfection of Mind’s creating. Whatever diagnosis I’d received, based on the testimony of the material senses, was not the truth about my real substance or identity.
In that moment my realization of the truth was so profound that all fear quickly left and the pain with it. Within an hour the swelling also disappeared. It has been more than eight years since that experience, and all continues to be well.
An important lesson I learned from this experience is to be more prompt in rejecting false claims and to affirm all discordant conditions to be a lie. As our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, tells us, “When the first symptoms of disease appear, dispute the testimony of the material senses with divine Science” (Science and Health, p. 390).
At the time of the dentist’s examination and warning, I had been confident that any problem could be in healed in Christian Science, but I had not been immediately vehement in my rejection of the medical claim that was presented to me. However, through this experience I have learned that it is never too late to stop and listen to the truth that is always present to meet our need immediately.
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