Photo: Valeria Mongelli/AFP via Getty Images
[T]housands of Georgians took to the streets of the countryโs capital Tbilisi for two days of protests, waving EU flags andย facing down riot policeย armed with water cannons and tear gas. The contentious [now withdrawn] legislation would have required all organizations that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad to register as foreign agents. The Georgian law was widely viewed as inspired by Vladimir Putinโฆ
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SING IT.
Georgia, Georgia
The whole day through
As you march toward
Your place in the EU
I said Georgia
Georgia, what joy I find
Freedomโs old sweet song
Keeps Georgia on my mind
Other arms reach out to you
Other eyes lie viciously
Still in peaceful crowds I see
The road leads back to you
Our stories this week cover why socializing becomes more of an effort as we get older (and why it shouldnโt), the volunteers in Ukraine who are genuinely motivated by the cause, the life of a gambler, soul-saving runs with a dog named Hank, and the Buy Nothing movement. We hope that you enjoy spending time with all of these topics.
Dan Kois | Slate | February 15, 2023 | 2,753 words
Raising a young daughter and feeling socially disconnected as an adult, I constantly think about where I want to live, but alsoย howย Iโd like to live. Iย wrote recentlyย about seeking โcommunity,โ but Iโm unsure what that even means. So this piece, which explores why Americans spend less time these days hanging out with people, really speaks to me. Perhaps what I long for isnโt some kind of mythical tight-knit tribe to be part of, but something far simpler: more opportunities for casual hangouts. Butย isย this simple? Dan Kois reaches out to Sheila Liming, author ofย Hanging Out: The Radical Power of Killing Time, and asks if he can fly to Vermont to spend time with her, a total stranger, for a day. The piece that emerges from the visit is delightful and relatable. I canโt help but recall my college years and my 20s: wandering over to friendsโ dorm rooms to see what they were up to, piling onto couches in someoneโs living room to sit and chat and laugh for hours, frequenting the dive bars and weekly club nights where I knew Iโd run into familiar faces. To borrow Limingโs words, these were โeffortlessly socialโ times โ and they seem so long ago. Social media, over-scheduled lives, and the pandemic have all made hanging out harder. While I also attribute my isolation to age, Kois notes how young people, including his teenage daughters, still find it hard to put themselves out there or carve out time for casual socializing. While I may not be brave enough after reading this to knock on my upstairs neighborsโ door and sit on their couch to shoot the shit, Iโm inspired by Koisโ openness and curiosity. โCLR
Matt Gallagherย |ย Esquireย |ย February 23, 2023ย |ย 6,935 words
Matt Gallagher is no stranger to warfare. His Army deployment in Iraq became the basis of the memoirย Kaboom, and (after publishing two novels) he visited western Ukraine with other combat veterans to train civilians. His return to Ukraine for thisย Esquireย feature, however, is to chronicle the โvolunteer ecosystemโ that has taken root: the men and women who have converged upon the country from both sides of its borders to defend it against prolonged Russian aggression. These arenโt cosplayers or U.S. extremists trying to get militia cred โ โall those bitches got weeded out quick,โ says one volunteer, an Air Force vet whoโs training Ukrainian recruits โ but theyโre not all mercenaries, either. Over the course of nearly 7,000 words, Gallagher meets a wide swath of people who have moved by the nobility of the cause, from a Ukrainian woman who coordinates medical training to a one-time Clinton administration staffer who travels through Ukraine writing checks and chipping in. This is wartime reporting I never thought Iโd read, a reminder that in an age of geopolitical deceit and oil greed, there still exist people willing to take up arms in service of a democratic ideal. Add in the rich vignettes threaded throughout, and youโve got a piece youโll not likely forget anytime soon. โPR
Marina Benjamin | Granta | February 9, 2023 | 4,596 words
Thereโs the thrill of the doing, but before that comes the anticipation, which for some is richer, offering everything the imagination can conjure, without the limits placed by the actual experience. When Marina Benjamin talks about ditching Ph.D. studies to hit the road as a professional gambler, you want to jump in the passenger seat of the hired convertible and burn rubber, right along with her. But what happens when gambling isnโt about winning so much as a way to quantify all that youโve lost? Benjamin writes: โI now think it more likely that I was toying with loss itself โ as one might toy with fire! โ trying to figure out at a time of profound change in my life, my entry into the adult world, just how much, and what kind of loss I could comfortably tolerate.โ โKS
Caleb Daniloff | Runnerโs World | February 22, 2023 | 3,324 words
This essay is about addiction โ and a dog called Hank. Hank couldnโt help his 25-year-old owner, Shea, overcome her struggles with heroin and fentanyl, but he could help her father, Caleb Daniloff, who looks after him when Shea cannot. In this beautiful essay, Daniloff describes how running the Fells outside Boston, with Hank, helps ease his torment over Shea and draws him into the present, even if only briefly. He is searingly honest, not shying away from what he views as his failings, making it clear why occasionally pulling himself out of the punishment of his own mind is so important. Weaving between his time on the Fells and a narrative of Sheaโs addiction and eventual recovery, Daniloff shows the complexities of his life against the straightforward pleasure of watching Hank bounding after a squirrel. A reminder that simple things can be oh-so-important. โCW
Vauhini Vara | WIRED | February 23, 2023 | 7,267 words
Itโs a worthy concept: hyper-local Facebook community groups connecting those in need of gently used items with their owners, a practice that offers environmental benefits in reducing waste with reuse, as well as a chance to thumb your nose at capitalism. But what happened to the Buy Nothing movement founded by Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller, which by 2022 had expanded to 6 million members in 60 countries? Vauhini Vara discovers that to be able to propagate your values, sometimes you need to accept the compromises of free community access at scale or risk the wrath of the community you created. โThe truth was that turning Buy Nothing into a business had come with far more expenses than revenues,โ Vara writes. โIf Facebook profited from Buy Nothing membersโ activities, it also covered many of their costs. With the launch of the app, the resources that came for free with Facebook โ software development, computing power, visibility โ were suddenly Clark and Rockefellerโs responsibility.โ โKS
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Virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness โ which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness. Like many others I saw, I drifted up the aisle and onto the street unable to stop smiling.
Does UD wish sheโd been there? Sure. (She tried for a ticket long after it sold out.) Is she sure she would have stayed in her seat (well, there were intermissions) for all four and a half hours? Hm.
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The ravished NYT reviewer offers some nice writing:
[H]er prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didnโt feel like eating five slices of chocolate cake in a rowโฆ
Her pillowy chords at the close of the Second Concertoโs middle movement floated quietly into placeโฆ
This handful of measures painted a whole situation and personality: vulnerable, strong, searching but not lost...
A shivering hush in the first movement of the Third Concerto was like a snow in which Wang made soft footsteps with the palest chords.
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Gevalt. Financial Times:
[T]icketless crowds โฆ congregated on 7th Avenue, many bearing placards โ โI need just one! Iโll pay anything!โ โฆ
The audience staggered out into the Manhattan dusk, as one, all changed; all humbled; all grateful for that ticket.
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Update: Further thoughts on the Wang phenomenon. For what itโs worth. And Iโm only a reasonably informed amateur pianist. And more self-deprecating stuff like that.
I want to suggest that, counterintuitively, itโs Yuja Wangโs LACK of sensibility that lifts her above other pianists, who donโt typically produce crowds of people begging for tickets outside their venues.
When I watched my first Wang YouTube, I relaxed immediately into the knowledge that she simply would never hit a wrong key. Never. Not that I could hear.
I also relaxed in the face of her TOTAL absence of neurotic ego, as in Glenn Gould or V. Horowitzโฆ With Horowitz, for instance, his immense sadness โhis ashen features as he played even the most exuberant music โ for me, itโs a one-note emotional experience, hearing him. Heโs in it too much. Muddies the music.
And itโs not even fair, mentioning Gould.
But consider another, contemporary performer, a great pianist, and one with whom Wang has played duets: Khatia Buniatishvili. Close to the same technical virtuosity, to my ear. And I listen to her a lot. Howsomeverโฆ
Thereโs still the sense she conveys of what a heavy-weight experience it is, playing this stuff. Her features are usually squinched in a private angst as she plays. Which is okayโฆ I mean, of course itโs authentic, and it conveys the poignancy of the sound and the challenge of generating it, etc. But it disallows the thing that allows the NYT critic to note not only Wangโs effortless production of many hours of difficult playing (plus encores); just as importantly, it allows him to say this:
[H]er prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didnโt feel like eating five slices of chocolate cake in a rowโฆ Virtuosity on this level, in material this ravishing, is elevating to witness โ which is why, even after so many hours, I was left at the end feeling an exhilarated lightness. Like many others I saw, I drifted up the aisle and onto the street unable to stop smiling.
Ungluttonous, elevating, light, driftingโฆ Here is a pianist who generates in her audience, and I donโt want to get too-too about it, transcendence. She literally made an enormous roomful of people transcend the weight of being human (โItโs hard to be human,โ as Tommy Raskin put it.), and they naturally craved that and stayed for that and drifted into the streets retaining that for as long as one can in the middle of Manhattan.
And just how does Yuja Wang take them there? She herself transcends the dull stupid particularity of being the human being she is while she plays. She is in the transcendent realm of beautiful complete expressivity and sheโs simply really happy and grateful to be there. No complex sensibility at all; just delight. Michael Tilson Thomas
ย liken[s] her to a racehorse.
โShe wants to run; she wants to show everything she can do.โ
People wept when Secretariat pulled away; and yes of course great artists arenโt in competition yadda yadda โฆ But the reality is that the relaxation I felt in the first seconds of encountering Wang is about this insanely rare capacity she has to stand aside and let me inside too.
I like the way she puts that. Have his way with the government.