Here's something you might be interested in.
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Mexican maid in San Diego writes for Harper's Magazine
Plus – websites dedicated to Lescaux caves, urinals, Russian brides, Hunter Thompson, Esperanto, Ayn Rand, Ridout Plastics
Navigating the Cave of Lascaux website must be something like exploring the cave itself. What else should we expect from the French?
Friday's Weekend Read on the life of a Mexican maid by Ana Maria Corona is another feature with a background plot.
Corona said she was a maid and gave a credible story. We ran it on the cover of the Reader January 21, 1993. And Harper's Magazine asked for permission to re-print and we said sure. This was the Harper's that included that year John Lukacs, Edward Said, William F. Buckley, David Foster Wallace, Maureen Dowd, Camille Paglia, Umberto Eco.
Mexican maid over, Jan. 1993
But after Harper's re-printed it, we began to have doubts. The writing just didn't sound like a Mexican woman born in rural poverty.
There was another story of Ana Corona's we had run that began to sound fishy. It was a first-person account of a Mexican gigolo from Rosarito.
There were hints that the stories had been written by a local writer who lived south of the border named Linton Robinson. We got Robinson on the phone and he denied the writing was his.
Some 30 years later, Reader editor Jim Holman was riding the trolley southbound from La Jolla. An older man – well, same age as Holman – started up a conversation. Living south of the border. But then when he found about about the Reader connection, he identified himself as Robinson. Nothing was said about Ana Maria Corona.
^^^^^^^^^^
Tomorrow's Midweek Read is a cornucopia. Justin Wolff comes from a literary family. His father Tobias Wolff had written for the Reader. Justin took on the assignment of digging up websites that were very noteworthy.
Partial list here (see tomorrow's duct tape story for more)
Explore Lescaux caves with your mouse
What else should we expect from the French? The site tells a complex narrative in a wonderfully modern and abstruse way. At the same time, it’s told with pride and elegance. The story itself, like the cave paintings, is a beautiful one, and the site, wisely, lets it unfold slowly and somewhat randomly. But the browser, like a teenager eager to get to the next level, moves fast and so stumbles across the stunning images.
By Justin Wolff, Mar. 22, 2001 | Read full article
The jagged blue line’s surges and plunges read like the electrocardiogram of a manic patient. But the line tells an innocuous story. It’s the wave report for San Diego County as described by the “swell height plot” at Scripps Coastal Data Information Program, a site I accessed not through a science query but from the Surfline Surf Report (www.surfline.com/sur-fusa2.html). The data found here belies the myth that surfing is an insular activity situated outside society.
By Justin Wolff, October 15, 1998 Read full article
Esperanto — no irregular verbs
Most people are perfectly happy with their own language, and those very few who have the luxury to learn another prefer one that allows them to read Italo Calvino, Thomas Mann, or Li Po untranslated. To be blunt, no good literature has been written in Esperanto, and as Fernando de Diego, a Venezuelan who writes in Esperanto, admitted, “Fifty percent of Esperanto translations are lousy translations of useless works."
By Justin Wolff, June 14, 2001 | Read full article
The beauty of urinals
Urinal.net attempts to recover some of the enchantment once associated with urinals. Ever since Marcel Duchamp “recovered” a urinal (on view at the site) from the street and displayed it at a Dadaist exhibition, the porcelain receptacles have been the butt of jokes. But Duchamp's “ready-mades” or “brain facts” were serious testaments to banality, to the futility of defining art as anything other than a philosophical decision.
By Justin Wolff, July 19, 2001 | Read full article
Hunter Thompson just copied Annie Leibowitz
But just because Thompson is up to date technologically doesn’t mean that he’s in step. He may be a sports buff (he began his career as a sportswriter in Florida), but in his inaugural “Hey, Rube!” column, he proposed several ways to shorten baseball games, a sport he abhors. “Not even the New Rules would drag me back to the Ballpark,” he wrote.
By Justin Wolff, Aug. 9, 2001 | Read full article
Find brides on the Volga
Begin by selecting a number of Russian women that interest you from our Main Photo Gallery. Our search engine can be quite helpful in narrowing your preferred criteria. The women profiled here are quite adept at judging character and frequently hold substance of character in higher regard than age.
By Justin Wolff, Aug. 23, 2001| Read full article
A place for Padres fans
The off-season is a tricky time. Those of us who cheer for teams besides the Yankees need a respite from our unrequited love, but at the same time, the winter is about prospects. It’s about every connotation of the word: rookies, new acquisitions, rising averages, the meaning of last year’s late-season surge, dreaming about surveying those below you from the top of the field. First place. Winning. Winning the World Series.
By Justin Wolff, Apr. 13, 2000 | Read full article
Anarchy on the web
Emma Goldman grew up in a “petit-bourgeois ”Jewish family in the Baltic region of Russia. After emigrating to the United States when she was 16, she worked in a Rochester, New York, garment factory before settling in New York City in 1889. Already influenced in her youth by the radical culture of St. Petersburg, she soon joined the anarchist movement and advocated violence; she helped Alexander Berkman plot to assassinate Henry Clay Frick.
By Justin Wolff, Oct. 4, 2001 | Read full article
Ridout Plastics — beyond Preisendorfer surfboards
One of Easton’s primary lessons is that “content” is not the kiss of death. So long as a site provides a clearly stated service, it can load up on content and still succeed. Ridout.com serves as a fine example of this precept. A client can visit the site to order a custom-made skateboard or an oddly shaped piece of plastic tubing and receive as a bonus an education in the expansion and contraction properties of Plexiglas (acrylic).
By Justin Wolff, Nov. 29, 2001 | Read full article
Prison penpals
Unless you’re a relative, I imagine it would take a big and courageous heart to reach out to the likes of Anthony “Two Guns” Fletcher. According to Two Guns’s site at the Inmate Home Pages, the state of Pennsylvania convicted him of first-degree murder by such unjust means as destroying “exculpatory medical evidence and manufacturing autopsy reports.” Though Two Guns’s bragging about his life before his conviction might scare away some sympathizers, it probably wins more over.
By Justin Wolff, July 2, 1998 | Read full article
Loneliest towns in the U.S.
Of a ghost town in Imperial County, California, he writes: “Twenty-five miles from Yuma, Arizona, north of Highway 80, is the ghost town of Tumco, California. A track walker whose last name was Hedges made a find in the early 1880s that created some excitement (and) that eventually lured as many as 3000 persons to the site."
By Justin Wolff, Oct. 29, 1998 | Read full article
Extreme rabbit lovers
The site gives vivid descriptions of how rabbits might fight, nip, and mount each other in territorial disputes right in your living room. “Fighting is usually an instantly, purposely vicious attack. Rabbits sometimes attack the other rabbit’s face, underside, and genital area.” Notwithstanding their fierce resistance to domestication and socialization, the San Diego House Rabbit Society does its best to sell rabbits.
By Justin Wolff, Sept. 30, 1999 | Read full article
The dangerous Ayn Rand
It’s not Rand’s idealization of machismo and corporate tactics that appeal to me (though I must say that the best testament to the androgyny of Rand’s credo is Rand herself, an ambitious, calculating, and very successful intellectual), it’s her unwavering Objectivism, her consistent dedication to a philosophy other than religion that I admire.
By Justin Wolff, Jan. 13, 2000 | Read full article
Two other very good stories by Wolff:
Does the Yukon tempt divers to death?
Leave me alone: San Diego Goths
Here's something you might be interested in.
Mexican maid in San Diego writes for Harper's Magazine
Plus – websites dedicated to Lescaux caves, urinals, Russian brides, Hunter Thompson, Esperanto, Ayn Rand, Ridout Plastics
Mexican maid in San Diego writes for Harper's Magazine
Plus – websites dedicated to Lescaux caves, urinals, Russian brides, Hunter Thompson, Esperanto, Ayn Rand, Ridout Plastics
Navigating the Cave of Lascaux website must be something like exploring the cave itself. What else should we expect from the French?
Friday's Weekend Read on the life of a Mexican maid by Ana Maria Corona is another feature with a background plot.
Corona said she was a maid and gave a credible story. We ran it on the cover of the Reader January 21, 1993. And Harper's Magazine asked for permission to re-print and we said sure. This was the Harper's that included that year John Lukacs, Edward Said, William F. Buckley, David Foster Wallace, Maureen Dowd, Camille Paglia, Umberto Eco.
Mexican maid over, Jan. 1993
But after Harper's re-printed it, we began to have doubts. The writing just didn't sound like a Mexican woman born in rural poverty.
There was another story of Ana Corona's we had run that began to sound fishy. It was a first-person account of a Mexican gigolo from Rosarito.
There were hints that the stories had been written by a local writer who lived south of the border named Linton Robinson. We got Robinson on the phone and he denied the writing was his.
Some 30 years later, Reader editor Jim Holman was riding the trolley southbound from La Jolla. An older man – well, same age as Holman – started up a conversation. Living south of the border. But then when he found about about the Reader connection, he identified himself as Robinson. Nothing was said about Ana Maria Corona.
^^^^^^^^^^
Tomorrow's Midweek Read is a cornucopia. Justin Wolff comes from a literary family. His father Tobias Wolff had written for the Reader. Justin took on the assignment of digging up websites that were very noteworthy.
Partial list here (see tomorrow's duct tape story for more)
Explore Lescaux caves with your mouse
What else should we expect from the French? The site tells a complex narrative in a wonderfully modern and abstruse way. At the same time, it’s told with pride and elegance. The story itself, like the cave paintings, is a beautiful one, and the site, wisely, lets it unfold slowly and somewhat randomly. But the browser, like a teenager eager to get to the next level, moves fast and so stumbles across the stunning images.
By Justin Wolff, Mar. 22, 2001 | Read full article
The jagged blue line’s surges and plunges read like the electrocardiogram of a manic patient. But the line tells an innocuous story. It’s the wave report for San Diego County as described by the “swell height plot” at Scripps Coastal Data Information Program, a site I accessed not through a science query but from the Surfline Surf Report (www.surfline.com/sur-fusa2.html). The data found here belies the myth that surfing is an insular activity situated outside society.
By Justin Wolff, October 15, 1998 Read full article
Esperanto — no irregular verbs
Most people are perfectly happy with their own language, and those very few who have the luxury to learn another prefer one that allows them to read Italo Calvino, Thomas Mann, or Li Po untranslated. To be blunt, no good literature has been written in Esperanto, and as Fernando de Diego, a Venezuelan who writes in Esperanto, admitted, “Fifty percent of Esperanto translations are lousy translations of useless works."
By Justin Wolff, June 14, 2001 | Read full article
The beauty of urinals
Urinal.net attempts to recover some of the enchantment once associated with urinals. Ever since Marcel Duchamp “recovered” a urinal (on view at the site) from the street and displayed it at a Dadaist exhibition, the porcelain receptacles have been the butt of jokes. But Duchamp's “ready-mades” or “brain facts” were serious testaments to banality, to the futility of defining art as anything other than a philosophical decision.
By Justin Wolff, July 19, 2001 | Read full article
Hunter Thompson just copied Annie Leibowitz
But just because Thompson is up to date technologically doesn’t mean that he’s in step. He may be a sports buff (he began his career as a sportswriter in Florida), but in his inaugural “Hey, Rube!” column, he proposed several ways to shorten baseball games, a sport he abhors. “Not even the New Rules would drag me back to the Ballpark,” he wrote.
By Justin Wolff, Aug. 9, 2001 | Read full article
Find brides on the Volga
Begin by selecting a number of Russian women that interest you from our Main Photo Gallery. Our search engine can be quite helpful in narrowing your preferred criteria. The women profiled here are quite adept at judging character and frequently hold substance of character in higher regard than age.
By Justin Wolff, Aug. 23, 2001| Read full article
A place for Padres fans
The off-season is a tricky time. Those of us who cheer for teams besides the Yankees need a respite from our unrequited love, but at the same time, the winter is about prospects. It’s about every connotation of the word: rookies, new acquisitions, rising averages, the meaning of last year’s late-season surge, dreaming about surveying those below you from the top of the field. First place. Winning. Winning the World Series.
By Justin Wolff, Apr. 13, 2000 | Read full article
Anarchy on the web
Emma Goldman grew up in a “petit-bourgeois ”Jewish family in the Baltic region of Russia. After emigrating to the United States when she was 16, she worked in a Rochester, New York, garment factory before settling in New York City in 1889. Already influenced in her youth by the radical culture of St. Petersburg, she soon joined the anarchist movement and advocated violence; she helped Alexander Berkman plot to assassinate Henry Clay Frick.
By Justin Wolff, Oct. 4, 2001 | Read full article
Ridout Plastics — beyond Preisendorfer surfboards
One of Easton’s primary lessons is that “content” is not the kiss of death. So long as a site provides a clearly stated service, it can load up on content and still succeed. Ridout.com serves as a fine example of this precept. A client can visit the site to order a custom-made skateboard or an oddly shaped piece of plastic tubing and receive as a bonus an education in the expansion and contraction properties of Plexiglas (acrylic).
By Justin Wolff, Nov. 29, 2001 | Read full article
Prison penpals
Unless you’re a relative, I imagine it would take a big and courageous heart to reach out to the likes of Anthony “Two Guns” Fletcher. According to Two Guns’s site at the Inmate Home Pages, the state of Pennsylvania convicted him of first-degree murder by such unjust means as destroying “exculpatory medical evidence and manufacturing autopsy reports.” Though Two Guns’s bragging about his life before his conviction might scare away some sympathizers, it probably wins more over.
By Justin Wolff, July 2, 1998 | Read full article
Loneliest towns in the U.S.
Of a ghost town in Imperial County, California, he writes: “Twenty-five miles from Yuma, Arizona, north of Highway 80, is the ghost town of Tumco, California. A track walker whose last name was Hedges made a find in the early 1880s that created some excitement (and) that eventually lured as many as 3000 persons to the site."
By Justin Wolff, Oct. 29, 1998 | Read full article
Extreme rabbit lovers
The site gives vivid descriptions of how rabbits might fight, nip, and mount each other in territorial disputes right in your living room. “Fighting is usually an instantly, purposely vicious attack. Rabbits sometimes attack the other rabbit’s face, underside, and genital area.” Notwithstanding their fierce resistance to domestication and socialization, the San Diego House Rabbit Society does its best to sell rabbits.
By Justin Wolff, Sept. 30, 1999 | Read full article
The dangerous Ayn Rand
It’s not Rand’s idealization of machismo and corporate tactics that appeal to me (though I must say that the best testament to the androgyny of Rand’s credo is Rand herself, an ambitious, calculating, and very successful intellectual), it’s her unwavering Objectivism, her consistent dedication to a philosophy other than religion that I admire.
By Justin Wolff, Jan. 13, 2000 | Read full article
Two other very good stories by Wolff:
Does the Yukon tempt divers to death?
Leave me alone: San Diego Goths