Limited Contingent

From Svetlana Alexievich, Zinky Boys: Soviet Voices from the Afghanistan War (not sure why I have just spent a beautiful afternoon at a tropical island beach hotel lying in bed in air-conditioning reading an incredibly grim book - but it is a very good book!):

Sometimes I want to write down everything I saw. Like, in hospital, the lad who'd lost his arms, his legs and his mate. I remember sitting on his bed writing a letter for him to his mother. Or the little Afghan girl who pinched a sweet from a Soviet soldier and had both her hands hacked off by her own people. I'd like to write it all down exactly as it was and without any comments. If it rained I'd say it rained, just that, without a lot of talk about whether it was a good or bad thing that it was raining.

Morning linkage

The last few days have been a little frustrating from the point of view of exercise: in short, I haven't done any, as I continued to feel completely knackered! (Didn't help that it was ninety degrees yesterday - after a morning spent doing interesting but demanding student meetings, and trekking around town all afternoon for a couple doctor's appointments [annual physical, allergist, nothing stressful], I realized I was due to go home and collapse rather than making it downtown for an evening spin class.) But I had a long sleep last night and now feel pretty much back to normal - looking forward to midday spin at Chelsea Piers.

Fascinating piece about similarities and differences between working at a tech start-up and a chocolate start-up. (Via BoingBoing.)

Rooms transformed into large-scale camera obscuras.

Photographic backdrops in prison waiting rooms.

Why Jordan Ellenberg has a quarter of a million friends of friends on Facebook.

The art of Houghton Hall comes home.

Closing tabs

Feeling a sense of moderate but pronounced well-being I haven't had since probably early November or so.  End of the school year in sight! 

A few links:

Why Kevin Hartnett started writing by hand.

Amanda Hesser's advice to aspiring food writers.  This piece is a must-read for anyone hoping to make a living as a professional journalist: the financial underpinnings of that sort of work have changed radically in the last fifteen years, and almost everything she says here is equally apt for other kinds of journalism as well, including arts journalism.

More on Teju Cole's small fates.

New Haven trip tomorrow.

Closing tabs

Very glad to be home again, but so tired that I really do not know what to do with myself!  (But probably it would be a good idea to get off the computer!)  Assignments to mark and letters of recommendation to write, but cannot face them quite yet...

Closing tabs:

Caroline Dworin's lovely and poignant piece about growing up inside of a stage set.

An interesting piece by Colleen Mondor about her book The Map of My Dead Pilots.