In a post-Katrina New Orleans, a few months prior to the city’s legendary Mardi Gras parades, the directors of three youth bands are preparing their students for two grueling weeks of musical celebration. It wasn’t that long ago that these directors stood where their kids do — and they know how to push their young charges to achieve at levels they never dreamed possible. This is where the documentary The Whole Gritty City begins, plunging viewers into the trials, tribulations, and accomplishments of a small community determined to deliver an important musical legacy to each new generation. If that doesn’t convince you to see this film, their project video will. Check it out — it’s our Project of the Day.
Life
tetw:
A Tetw reading list
The Force That Drives the Flower by Annie Dillard - “I don’t know what it is about fecundity that so appalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that life is so astonishingly cheap.”
Phoning It In by Stanley Bing - If it all gets too much, phone it in!
How To Be a Person by Lindy West - A Guide to Life for the Recent Graduate
Running After Your Hat by G. K. Chesterton - “A man running after a hat is not half so ridiculous as a man running after a wife.”
What Makes Us Happy? by Joshua Wolf Shenk - Is there a formula, some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation, for a good life?
The Busy Trap by Tim Kreider - “If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are…”
This is Emo by Chuck Klosterman - How John Cusack (or Johnny Depp, if you are under 30) ruined all our lives.This is the Life by Annie Dillard - “You enjoy work and will love your grandchildren, and somewhere in there you die.”
“When I was young there were beatniks. Hippies. Punks. Gangsters. Now you’re a hacktivist. Which I would probably be if I was 20. Shuttin’ down MasterCard. But there’s no look to that lifestyle! Besides just wearing a bad outfit with bad posture. Has WikiLeaks caused a look? No! I’m mad about that. If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.”
- John Waters on the sorry style of today’s rebels (emphasis mine)
Movie Illustrations
by Massimo Carnevale
Now you can get your #realtalk fix over at the Columbia Journalism Review! Send your questions, conundrums, and requests to editorrealtalk@gmail.com.
Just need this gif to appear on every single one of my blogs.
St. Pete Beach was half its usual width this weekend because of Tropical Storm Debbie. And curiously, the water was filled with these things.
David Rees on pencil sharpening.
