Odds ‘n’ ends.
I’ve had two deadlines in my cross-hairs, hence the less personal postings. A few random bits:
* I’m a sucker for a rambling rose. Stevie Nicks, my aunt Jerdine (3 husbands, 5 boys, and countless jobs later), Sula (the Toni Morrison character), any woman who has lived it and lived it well. I’ll sit and listen to the details of their lives any day of the week. So of course I found this New York Times article on writer and Fort Greene resident Susanna Moore engrossing. I just wish they’d shown more of her apartment!
* Two local musts for the hot, hot summer: The cucumber lime juice at Urban Spring on DeKalb Avenue, and the fatoosh salad at Zaytoons on Myrtle Avenue.
* I have very little time to read, and yet I have subscriptions to the New Yorker, Granta, Wax Poetics, and The Economist. (Yeah, I’m crazy.) But I’ve been putting them aside to read Shirley Chisholm’s Unbought & Unbossed, the true story of a Brooklyn-raised Barbadian woman’s political ascent. Chisholm, who died in 2005, was plainspoken and hard-headed and had the stones to run for president in 1972 (I’ll have to pick up a copy of The Good Fight, too) — and 35 years later, that’s still a stunning thing. (Which says a lot about how far we haven’t come.) If you have a chance, check out Shola Lynch’s documentary about Chisholm or dig up a copy of the books.