Sunday, it’s a Sunday. The Sunday after Thanksgiving and Black Friday, although every Sunday these days feels like it’s the Sunday after yet another Black Friday. Even so, it’s time for some Sunday Morning Reading. This week’s edition contains some somber writing, fitting for the onset of a winter of discontent and reflection, along with some thinking on the tech scene and vaccines. For good measure, there’s a history of dive bars at the end. Enjoy.
Leading off, David Todd McCarty’s piece I Was F*cking Wendy Under The Stars, The Night Elvis Died, reflects on the risks we take, and perhaps don’t take, in building a life.
Promises and Scars by Kelly Gawitt is an excellent piece of writing on second chances. We all need them.
Joan Westenberg says We’re Dying. Here’s How to Make Better Decisions. Joan’s Mortality Matrix is something to see.
Sam Roberts gives us a look back at a real heroine in Madeline Riffaud, ‘The Girl Who Saved Paris,’ Dies at 100. I’m thinking we might need some Madeline’s going forward.
Patrick Fealey offers a harrowing and personal inside look at homelessness in America in The Invisible Man.
Tim Berners-Lee, who conceived the World Wide Web is taking a crack at a new way our digital lives are stored online with a new venture called Solid. Harry McCracken takes a crack at explaining it all in The Man Who Gave Us The Web Is Building A Better Digital Wallet. Hope it works.
Christopher Mims says that Googling Is For Old People. That’s A Problem For Google. The lede is fantastic:
If Google were a ship, it would be the Titanic in the hours before it struck an iceberg—riding high, supposedly unsinkable, and about to encounter a force of nature that could make its name synonymous with catastrophe.
Vaccines. Who in their right mind thought we’d ever be debating anything about the miracle of vaccines? Donald G. McNeil Jr. says that Vaccines Will Have To Prove Themselves Again. The Hard Way. Warning: the “hard way” isn’t a pretty way.
And after all of that if you need a drink or two or three, check out Linze Rice’s piece on The History of Chicago’s Dive Bars, Once Called ‘The Vilest Holes In The City.’ Bottoms up.
If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.
Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3 