| How Natural Disasters Harm the Poor More Than the Rich |
[28 Aug 2015|09:45am] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/08/katrina_and_other_disasters_they_almost_always_make_the_poor_poorer_and.html Adolph Hitler visited Paris just once, in June 1940, in an entourage that included his architect, Albert Speer, and Arno Becker, the official state sculptor. He saw all the usual tourist spots, stopping to look around landmark buildings and monuments. He came just a week or so after the army of the Third Reich had occupied the city, a Paris that was by then all but empty of Parisians. But in the anxious weeks after the fall of the French army, most people hadn’t known whether they should leave or stay. Some had even wanted to believe the Germans would not come to Paris at all.
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| Rental Car Retirement |
[28 Aug 2015|12:35pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/life/travel_explainer/2015/08/rental_cars_get_old_what_happens_to_them_next.html There are rental cars, and then there are kind of old rental cars—the ones where, during the initial walk-around with the agent, you carefully point out a scratch on the back door or a small dent in the hood, just to be clear that the blemish predated your term of use. But what happens to a rental car when it gets actually too old—when the days and miles and scratches accumulate past an acceptable point—and it can’t be rented out anymore?
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| Z for Zachariah |
[28 Aug 2015|03:42pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2015/08/z_for_zachariah_starring_margot_robbie_chiwetel_ejiofor_chris_pine_reviewed.html In Z for Zachariah, newly acquainted Ann (Margot Robbie) and John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) sit on the front porch of her old family house, discussing the natural disaster that has decimated most of civilization, save for them. John suggests that something unusual in the weather patterns has protected the valley from the toxins and radiation that have crippled life everywhere else. “Crazy it’s still here,” he says in wonderment at the lush, thriving farmland around them. Ann describes her father’s words prior to his leaving with her brother to search for survivors (they never returned): “God was looking out for them.” “Nothing crazy about that,” she says matter-of-factly in her plucky Southern accent, a small smile on her face.
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| The Second Mother |
[28 Aug 2015|07:46pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2015/08/brazilian_film_the_second_mother_reviewed.html For two summers in the early ’90s, I lived in the beautiful, foliage-shaded house of a well-off Brazilian family in Rio de Janeiro, the family of my then-boyfriend. Along with his three younger brothers, he had been brought up in large part by a live-in nanny and housekeeper whom they called Teda—not her real name but an affectionate nickname that, if I remember right, my boyfriend had given her as a baby. I didn’t know much about Teda’s life outside her employers’ house, because she seldom mentioned it, but I know she had no children of her own. Still, she showed a mother’s willingness to haul out pictures of my beloved as a chubby, long-lashed baby and to enumerate his many merits before embarking on a list of my own.
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| “I Have Made It Though the Winds and Waters” |
[28 Aug 2015|09:41pm] |
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http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/users/2015/08/please_forward_how_blogging_reconnected_new_orleans_after_katrina_reviewed.html Joshua Cousin called himself Katrina’s “first known Blogging Survivor.” Fresh out of high school when the hurricane hit New Orleans, Cousin spent four days holed up at home with his family and their red-nosed beagle, Cheddar, as the waterline rose. They finally escaped past floating corpses to a dry stretch of interstate, sat on the scorched pavement for two days, and—after authorities forced them to leave Cheddar stranded on the road—loaded onto a bus headed for wherever. Cousin surfaced at the Houston Astrodome, where he found a computer set up to help evacuees locate scattered family members and friends. He logged into his blog, “Note From the Book,” and wrote:
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