Megan Westerby

SARAH JANE SPEAKS THE TRUTH. 

simulacrumb:

I’m fascinated by the addition of wood chips (or bark bits, tree shreds, whatever they might be called) to the short stretch of Logan Boulevard greenspace that plays host to the Logan Square Farmers’s Market on Sundays. I can’t stop thinking about trails.

The little reading I’ve done on the history of Logan Square reveals an emphasis on the role of Milwaukee and Elston Avenues as commercial conduits that grew from so-called Indian trails. In the mid-nineteenth century these routes were paved with wood, becoming the plank roads that ferried goods into the emerging Chicago metropolis (in this case the North West Plank Road). The plank roads were reported to be notoriously dangerous, the wood rotting after only a few seasons of traffic. As the story goes, they were upgraded to more durable surfaces, then came the railways, expressways, and airways (if you take account for the endless chain of flights between O’Hare and New York). These arrived in sequence, all along the same northwesterly corridor.

Logan Boulevard itself is part of, or was incorporated into, the (awe-inspiringly grand) ‘Emerald Necklace’ designed by Daniel Burnham for the master plan of Chicago. The wide boulevards with flanking streets and wide medians are a beautiful vision of never-quite-realized urban ideals. Walking around at twilight I can sometimes glimpse the ghostly image of a phaeton on its leisurely weekend ride. One of these days I want to bike every extant (and unrealized/non-extant) yard of the boulevards, camera (and maybe voice recorder?) in hand.

Today we have the phenomenon of the farmer’s market. What I’m fixated on is the idea of recursivity. The market pops up every weekend (late May to October) at the juncture of Logan Boulevard and Milwaukee Avenue, the meeting place of these two historical threads. If the farmer’s market creedo is about (re)introducing local produce and goods into urban markets (or, alternatively, food deserts), then the use of Logan Boulevard’s wide greenspace is an imaginative hack of Burnham’s plan, a creative subterfuge of early twentieth-century notions of leisure. It also loops back to the former uses of Milwaukee Avenue as a route for the transport of local goods.

But beyond that I see something poetic in the foot-worn trail that kills the short green grass. The footsteps of market goers who’s flip-flops and strollers tame the manicured lawns of master plan-Chicago. One hundred years of concrete and iron infrastructure peeled away to the sinews of (so-called Indian) trails. While I adore the idea or recursivity, there is something more tangible at play, and the addition of wood chips seems to make it all the more real.

I love it when my brother blogs. 

I made Jamie rewind so we could watch this again. 

My Medical Choice - NYTimes.com

Angelina Jolie is BRCA-1 positive.

I’ve been adjacent to this world for a couple of years now. My father tested positive for the gene mutation, and told my sister and I we needed to be tested. I was negative. But Dana tested positive. 

She elected to have the surgeries. They were long and torturous but she’s come through the other side.  She now does a lot of work with the advocacy group FORCE.  My father also does work with them, fundraising and about genealogical research.

The thing you need to know, that is of the essence, is that last month the Supreme Court heard a case about the right of the lab that developed the test for the BRCA-1 mutation to hold a patent on the gene and charge whatever they want. The test can cost anywhere from $300 to $3000.

When Dana first found out, we all did a lot of research and reading. These were the ones I found most helpful:

In The Family, a documentary by Joanna Rudnick.

Pretty is What Changes, by Jessica Queller.

(via jaybushman)

Angelina Jolie’s op-ed will reach a lot of people and I’m very thankful for that, because it will make the choices so many women and men will have to face much less alien — but no less expensive. 

citysleep:

micropolisnyc:

Carry on.

…great!

Remember when New York used to randomly smell like maple syrup and everyone thought it was a wind pattern test for something like this?

People Magazine’s review on ‘The Great Gatsby’

(via brucewaynes)

READ A BOOK

(via lexcanroar)

Is this quote in print only? I’ve been trying to verify it and haven’t been able to. I’m all for the meta narrative of the reviews playing out like a first impression of the book after reading it too quickly but, y’know, I also want it to be true. 

damsel-with-a-dulcimer:

And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne: You’re not a REAL Gatsby fan unless you’ve read the book. Unless…

gatzzby:

You’re not a REAL Gatsby fan unless you’ve read the book. Unless you’ve read every Fitzgerald book. Unless you’ve read their early drafts,…

• Me as I take a bag of Trader Joe's roasted corn out of the freezer: This corn is not going to be good to eat, I've used it to ice my foot a few times.
• Jamie: You should write on it. So we don't eat it.
• Me: Foot corn?
• Jamie: That sounds gross.
• Me: Good, no one will eat it!

nerdsworth:

node-studios:

We’re counting down to our first annual Video Game Olympics with Smosh Games. ARE YOU?!?!

Guys! In 3 days! NODE Studios Vs Smosh Games in  the video game Olympics! That’s me behind Nico ;)

kateoplis:

“A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image.”

—Joan Didion

Rainy day jury duty selfie.

ACM Web Science talk, as written | Quinn Said (via iamdanw)

THIS!

factsarenothing:

michellereneepaul:

brooklynstoopbooks:

juxtaposition

so, a couple of months ago, this happened on twitter: 

@fuzzydinosaur: this pair of stoop books makes me a little nervous. [see above photo]

@factsarenot: Is “stoop books” a thing? That could be a tumblr.

since “stoop books” are TOTALLY a thing in brooklyn — i listened to jess and made it a tumblr. scroll through brooklynstoopbooks.tumblr.com and you’ll see what i’ve come upon in the last few months… though i don’t think any surpass this original amazingness seen above.

YAY.

LOVE IT!

spyscribe:

In my head canon now, Clark Kent has a grown sister who remembers when the family lived in Iowa… and that one summer her father plowed under his crop to build a baseball diamond.

stockholmbloodbath:

Where’s my cool rider?

I’m recovering from surgery and have bronchitis (but yay not pneumonia!) and I need a root canal and I had to skip seeing Iron Man 3 tonight and the rewards for a job well done are four more jobs to do ASAP but Chris and I just watched the second half of Grease 2 together and sang along and talked about performative gender stuff so life is pretty good.