From the Kennedy Center, @Cloris_Leachman twitpics a photo with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and our day is made.
Longreads Guest Pick: Baxter Holmes on ‘The Prophets of Oak Ridge’
Baxter covers the Celtics for The Boston Globe, which he joined in 2013 after spending three and a half years as a sports reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in 2009. He’s a proud Oklahoman from a no-stoplight town where humans are outnumbered by cow and buffalo:
“A nun. A super-secure nuclear-weapons facility. A break-in. Click-bait, all of that. All ingredients succinct enough for an enticing tweet, which these days count. But Dan Zak, one of the best in this racket, has far more than a wild premise; he also wrote the hell out of his piece, ‘The Prophets of Oak Ridge,’ in the Washington Post. It’s my favorite longread of the week. Exquisite reporting, beautiful pacing (and writing), but no overwriting—a key. The online layout is ‘Snow Fall’ sexy, and the illustrations set it apart. The story itself bounces chronologically off their suspenseful B&E, keeping you in real time while divulging just enough history—but not enough to bore you. Some stories are as fulfilling as a top-dollar steak, medium rare, with nice fixings on the side. This is one of them. (But no spoilers.) Well done, Zak. You took a gripping narrative and turned it topical by showing how much the U.S. doles out per year on nuclear weapons. You also made me care about these servants of God, especially Sister Megan. I now give a damn about their trial. In all, this is newspapers at their finest. Long live print—and print will live on with stories like this.”
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"For heaven’s sake, what kind of question is that? Would you want to be friends with Humbert Humbert? Would you want to be friends with Mickey Sabbath? Saleem Sinai? Hamlet? Krapp? Oedipus? Oscar Wao? Antigone? Raskolnikov? Any of the characters in ‘The Corrections’? Any of the characters in ‘Infinite Jest’? Any of the characters in anything Pynchon has ever written? Or Martin Amis? Or Orhan Pamuk? Or Alice Munro, for that matter? If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble. We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t ‘is this a potential friend for me?’ but ‘is this character alive?’"
— novelist Claire Messud, when asked by Publisher’s Weekly if she would want to be friends with the “unbearably grim” main character of her new book.
We asked Washington Post reporter Dan Zak how he stumbled upon “The Prophets of Oak Ridge.” Here’s his account:
“This story happened because a generous colleague, Dana Priest, pitched it downstairs to my area of the newsroom. She had finished a series on the country’s aging nuclear…
No, Dan does not wear a tux to work every day.
That one time an 82-year-old nun broke into a nuclear facility in Tennessee.
Illustrations by Jeffrey Smith
Please watch this gorgeous video of a washcloth being wrung out in space.
The question 'Who should run for president in 2016?' was posed by New York magazine at a White House Correspondents' Dinner pre-party yesterday...
- Amy Poehler: Prince.
- Brad Hall: That’s a great answer.
- Julia Louis-Dreyfus: And Sly and the Family Stone.
- Hall: The Family Stone would be the VP.
- Louis-Dreyfus: That would be good.
- New York magazine: The Family Stone would be the cabinet, Sly would be the VP.
- Poehler: You know, with Prince and Sly and the Family Stone, wouldn't we get more done around here?
- Hall: Man. That is a funky field right there.
- Louis-Dreyfus: You would definitely get funky with it. That’s for sure.
- Poehler: Whoever runs, that should be their motto. Whoever runs, it should be, "Let’s get funky with it."
- Louis-Dreyfus: Oh my God. Wouldn't that be so good?
- Poehler: That would be so good no matter who it is.
- Louis-Dreyfus: You would give all your life savings to that campaign.
- Poehler: If a candidate was like, “Come on guys: Let’s get funky with it.”
- New York magazine: Maybe you should do it.
- Louis-Dreyfus: All right, should those two candidates decide to run, Amy and I are going to run their campaign, or we’ll be a part of the branding of the campaign.
- Poehler: We’ll be like Peaches and uh...
- Louis-Dreyfus: Diamond and Pearl.
- Hall: Peaches and Herb. Oh no, sorry.
- Poehler: Peaches and Cream! The dancers that used to perform with Prince.
- Louis-Dreyfus: That’s right. [Ed. note: It was Diamond and Pearl.]
- Poehler: Prince always has some beautiful, like, 16-year-old dancers.
- Louis-Dreyfus: We’re not 16, but we could totally dance with him, you know, while he campaigns.
- Poehler: Well, it’s going to be a different kind of dancing. It has to be serious dancing. Because it’s a political campaign.
- Louis-Dreyfus: There are issues and we feel strongly about the issues. So it will be a serious kind of dance.
- Poehler: Once again, I know Prince reads your magazine. I know he reads these little interviews. Julia and I are ready to dance behind him when he runs for president in 2016.
- Louis-Dreyfus: Please take this seriously.
