Recommended Articles

I've been making an effort to read a lot more this year: a goal of 50 books, a subscription to The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and generally checking Google News for interesting articles. Sometimes all you need for a change of perspective or a quick refresher is a good article. 

Here are snippets from a few that have caught my eye recently and one of my favorite travel articles from a few years ago:

1. Perrottet, Tony. "O’Keeffe’s Hawaii." The New York Times 30 Nov. 2012

Then there were the coastal hikes. “Georgia did like to walk!” Patricia had told me. And she memorialized what she found in her work. O’Keeffe painted two lava bridges — natural arches formed over the crashing waves of the ocean below. Finding the first was not hard: it’s visible from the parking lot on the cliffs of Waianapanapa Beach. But to find the second, I set off on the Coastal Trail south of Hana township, where I was whipped by sea spray as I traversed several farms where cows stared at me and dogs yapped at my heels. After about 45 minutes, I spotted the lava bridge. A Hawaiian family was camping next to it, with teenage boys casting fishing lines from precarious rocks nearby.

2. Nussbaum, Emily. "Snowbound." The New Yorker 23 Jun. 2014

Maybe I’m burned out on bloodbaths. But “Fargo,” FX’s adaptation of the great film by the Coen brothers, created and written by Noah Hawley, left me feeling a thousand miles away, despite its strong cast and shrewd beauty. It also raised a question that’s become a cable-drama default: How good does a violent drama need to be to make the pain of watching worth it? “Breaking Bad,” thumbs up; the brilliantly nightmarish “Hannibal,” too. Other shows—“The Walking Dead,” say—have seemed like a bad bet. As the critic James Poniewozik tweeted recently, “TV’s not a chili-pepper-eating contest.”

3.  Esfahani Smith, Emily. "Masters of Love." The Atlantic 12 Jun. 2014

There are two ways to think about kindness. You can think about it as a fixed trait: either you have it or you don’t. Or you could think of kindness as a muscle. In some people, that muscle is naturally stronger than in others, but it can grow stronger in everyone with exercise. Masters tend to think about kindness as a muscle. They know that they have to exercise it to keep it in shape. They know, in other words, that a good relationship requires sustained hard work. 

“If your partner expresses a need,” explained Julie Gottman, “and you are tired, stressed, or distracted, then the generous spirit comes in when a partner makes a bid, and you still turn toward your partner.”