Posts tagged New York Times Magazine
Good Airs, Good Reads
Karina Argentina
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Poor Mexico,” its former president Porfirio Díaz is said to have remarked. “So far from God and so close to the United States.
Cocaine Incorporated
Because: I’ve been around my dad, who was born in raised in Mexico, where the majority of his family still lives, a few times when the conversation has turned to the drug war. He’s always said, “It’s a U.S. problem being fought on Mexican soil.” This article validates and brings that point home. It’s an interesting way to research and report the problem, as well. I think the amount of bloodshed associated with the trade was a bit downplayed, but at the same time I do think it’s too heavy a point of focus in much of the mainstream media, painting Mexico as some entirely anarchic, hopeless land.
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(Click the photo for New York Times Magazine’s Rules for an Honorable Nightcap)
Because: I’ve only had a nightcap once, and it was whiskey on a Flecha bus from Buenos Aires to Mendoza with my dad. (Bus travel is a popular and, in the case of this trip, often very comfortable mode of transportation in South America.) It was classy, and I slept well. I don’t think I’m near mature enough to start capping off my nights with regularity, though maybe one day I’ll feel worthy of the ritual.
Have you ever read a compilation of centenarians’ advice for living to 100? One person will say, “always have a nightcap” and the next person claims to have never touched alcohol in her/her life. It confuses me even though I know none of it has any real bearing.
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The first time I visited, in 2006, a Uruguayan woman was offering vials of crushed whale bones, which she billed as aphrodisiacs. I stayed on that year after my friends left, to revise my novel “Flower Children.” After a three-day rainstorm, I emerged from my cabin to find the sky a loopy pink, a whale washed up on the beach and penguins wandering around in the grass. “It’s because of an eclipse,” someone in town said. “The animals lose all sense of direction.
The Coast of Utopia
Because: Last December, I spent a couple days in the Uruguayan fishing village of Punta del Diablo, neighboring the featured Cabo Polonio. This perfectly captures in both pictures and prose, the beauty and simplicity of Uruguay’s tranquil beach towns.
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My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant
By Jose Antonio Vargas in the New York Times Magazine
Because: Wow, what a story. I deeply respect Vargas’ courage and the work he is doing, especially with Define American, to generate thought-provoking, productive conversation about illegal immigration and to encourage policy reform. I’m anxious to see how everything unfolds, from Vargas’s personal situation, to the DREAM Act. I can only hope for the best, which in my opinion would be that in whatever the case, humane, compassionate decisions are be made.
Additional Stories
The Illegal Among Us: A Journalist Outs Himself (Time)
Of note is the inclusion of this quote from James Baldwin:
I don’t like people who like me because I’m a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one’s own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done. I want to be an honest man and a good writer.
My (Legal) Editor’s Dream The 6th Floor, New York Times
Post responds to ex-reporter Vargas’s revelation that he’s an illegal immigrant (The Washington Post)
