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IT’S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chairI
We’ve hand-picked the week’s best reads for you to savour.
1. I drove my Merc to pick up food stamps
When Darlene Cunha wrote about her experience of life on foodstamps, her story received as much criticism as it did praise. Here’s the original piece – what do you think?
(Washington Post, approx 8 minutes reading time, 1799 words)
I didn’t feel animosity coming from them, more wonderment, maybe a bit of resentment. The most embarrassing part was how I felt about myself.How I had so internalized the message of what poor people should or should not have that I felt ashamed to be there, with that car, getting food. As if I were not allowed the food because of the car. As if I were a bad person.
2. Giving my daughter my last name
[image alt="shutterstock_129290474 (1)" src="http://cdn.thejournal.ie/media/2014/07/shutterstock_129290474-1-630x418.jpg" width="630" height="418" title="" class="alignnone" /end]
Molly Caro has always wanted to give her daughter her last name. So when she and her husband did just that, she was blown away by the response.
(The Hairpin, approx 8 minutes reading time, 1789 words)
We drove around her neighborhood and she showed me the street art she photographs. At some point, I told her about my baby’s last name. She lifted her hands off the steering wheel and yelled, “What?!” as if in prayer, as if the earth had shuddered.
3. I was captured by the Taliban
Filmmaker Sean Langan crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan illegally in order to secretly film Taliban and al-Qaeda training camps. But he was caught, and arrested. yet when he was eventually released, life got even tougher.
(The Australian, approx 14 minutes reading time, 2802 words)
My second mistake was agreeing to go on Richard & Judy [a TV chat show]. One minute I’m sitting in a dark room, waiting to have my head chopped off by the Taliban, and the next thing I know I’m sitting next to my fellow guest, Henry Winkler, who played the Fonz in Happy Days. Even before I opened my mouth, Judy’s eyes welled up and she started blubbing. Looking back, if you were to ask me to plot the development of my post-traumatic stress disorder on a chart, I would pinpoint that precise moment as the start.
Baseball has taken off hugely in Japan over the past few decades – so much so that some of the world’s best players come from the country. But is the regimented approach to learning actually harming some young men?
(Wall Street Journal, approx 26 minutes reading time, 5288 words)
Japanese pitcher Satoru Komiyama, who played for the New York Mets, believes that players like Shota should sacrifice for the team. That act of preservation is a major act of defiance. By refusing to take the mound at every opportunity, Shota is challenging the orthodoxy of Japanese high-school baseball, where sacrifice for the team, obedience to coaches, and endless throwing are sacrosanct.
Source: ©Arroyo-OConnor/AFF-USA.com
We've all heard the phrase 'manic pixie dream girl' - and seen it used in many movie reviews. But the man who invited the phrase in 2007, Nathan Rabin, regrets it - and says it's sexist.
(Salon, approx 8 minutes reading time, 1509 words)
It’s an archetype, I realized, that taps into a particular male fantasy: of being saved from depression and ennui by a fantasy woman who sweeps in like a glittery breeze to save you from yourself, then disappears once her work is done.
Artur Gasparyan (24), from Armenia, was recruited in Moscow in May to fight in eastern Ukraine. He spoke to Mumin Shakirov about what happened after he became a separatist fighter.
(Radio Free Europe, approx 15 minutes reading time, 3148 words)
They taught us to communicate using gestures and signs in order to recognize each other, to communicate silently at night, to give commands like back, forward, stop, get down, danger, and so on. Now I can speak with my hands like a deaf person. All this was taught by an instructor in civilian clothes.
....AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES...
David Foster Wallace died in 2011. John Jeremiah Sullivan looks at his final piece of work - the unfinished The Pale King - and considers his legacy.
(GQ, approx 36 minutes reading time, 7242 words)
Here's a thing that is hard to imagine: being so inventive a writer that when you die, the language is impoverished. That's what Wallace's suicide did, two and a half years ago. It wasn't just a sad thing, it was a blow.
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I am stuck in the middle when it comes to capital punishment. The argument for and against it doesn’t answer the internal struggle I have about it.
@Arya: I’d be the same, but I wonder how I’d feel if he murdered someone who was close to me or a family member.
@Arya: put it this way,
Statistically the US Government has murdered innocent people via the death penalty.
Are you ok with innocent people being murdered by a government?
@Arya: I don’t think about it at all…. an internal struggle, really?
@Barry Somers: Jesus, Barry, we almost had an honest conversation going there without aggro and accusations and aggression. Thank God you stepped in.
@Barry Somers: no but in cases, such as this, where there is a confession or strong evidence and conviction that the person committed the crime is capital punishment ok? That is what I am referring to. If you read what I wrote properly, I am not for or against the death penalty.
@aidan mccormack: that is also my thinking. If I was affected directly, would I want the person to live? But then even if he dies does it reduce the hurt of my own loss? This could be a philosophical question. Any philosophers in the house?
@Arya: I’m not saying you are for or against the death penalty.
My point is merely the death penalty is flawed as it can and statistically has murdered incoocent people.
Confessions have and will be forced, its better to lock a person up for life even if they were video evidence of them murdering 10 people.
@Arya: I am against the Death Penalty, Obviously I feel sorry for the people he has killed and their families. I even feel sorry for his family, I even feel sorry for him that he chose to be a nasty piece of work when he could have done a lot of good in life.
I believe people can change, but after killing four people, I would say his ability to rehabilitate would have been a struggle for him. My opinion is that the authorities, or a penal system, does not rehabilitate a person. I believe rehabilitation comes from within.
In saying all that, he wont be missed, by all accounts his been in prison since 1979 for killing 3 people killed a fellow inmate in 1985 , so he had a long life on death row.
@Arya: the question might be whether you believe the law should be about inflicting retribution, punishment, rehabilitation or some part of all of the above. A victim or their family might always feel aggrieved and I guess is a measure of a society as to whether its citizens decide that there should be an eye for an eye. However as mentioned by another commentator convictions are not always sound and especially in the US it has been later proved that many people who have been executed were in fact innocent. What retribution does the family of that victim of state murder then deserve. I think we as a people should always hope to be evolving and execution feels like it should be part of our past less evolved societies.
@Arya: I don’t see much argument for it, it’s not a deterrent and it doesn’t have any economic or social benefits over a long prison sentence. It’s more performative than anything else.
@Barry Somers: you would then have to extend that argument… statistically they have imprisoned innocent people..are you ok with innocent people in prison? Should we then ban prisons?
@SFAnkleTapper: well if someone has been wrongfully imprisoned (which has happened countless times) they can be freed if evidence of their innocence is found. Not so if they’re dead.
@Arya: it’s an interesting question. My views on this has always been that I avoid the “what if it was one of your family” questions. When you are in a jury or are a judge etc you have to be able to view the facts of the case on evidence alone, without emotion. That’s why you can’t serve on a jury if you know the person or have voiced strong views on a particular type of crime etc. So using a version the “reasonable man” tort in law then no I don’t agree with the death sentence. Nor do I agree with life without parole for crimes committed when the offender was in his teens.
@Brendan Gordon: I see where you are coming from but I don’t think it’s performative in the strictest meaning of the word.
@Barry Somers: Can you name any of these stastically innocent people?
@aidan mccormack: that’s exactly why relatives can’t serve on the jury. It’s fairly obvious that if your general opinion is altered by it happening to someone you know that the first opinion was the right one.
I’m surprised that the private prisons in the US don’t oppose the death penalty, simply because their working model means that the more people in their prisons the more money theyre making.
Aside from that I dont think any state should have the power to execute, I’d imagine that life in an American prison is an awful lot worse than being put to sleep.
@Veronica: Agreed. Always shocks me that society itself can show vindictive levels of depravity. Being in prison for 30 yrs before being executed is like going to hell before you die.
@Ger Healy: But what else would a quadruple murderer deserve?
I cannot understand why someone is Executed after spending 30 years in Prison on Death row. This man, just like several others, has now been punished TWICE for his crimes, — 30 years in Jail, and now Execution. Is that not classed as Double Jeopardy ? If he was sentenced to Death 30 years ago who leave him in jail for 30 years?? This is the regular occurrence in America.
@Eugene Comaskey: 100%agree with you. I can never understand the length of time a person has to serve only to be executed at the end of it. From what I read he should have had his sentence reduced from death penalty to life without parole
@Eugene Comaskey: Most probably because he murdered while already in prison and had to go through a trial for that. Then all the appeals and stays of executions in the past.
@Eugene Comaskey: It’s his own choice to keep appealing and drag it out.
@Eugene Comaskey: Well, he was a quadruple murderer, so being punished only twice is not too unfair…
@Eugene Comaskey: 4 people he killed even showed the cops where they were. 30 years.? 30 more than his victims got. Deserved his sentence.
…long time..Death Row…gives them something to think about and their past. actions…
He was a better prisoner than he was a free man. That’s no good. Good riddamce to him
@Aoife Kally Bolamba: In all fairness now, that is hardly good enough. He served two Sentences. Death Sentence for murder, or 4 murders as this was, but on the spot, not 30 years later. They were hardly waiting for further evidence to say Innocent? , I don’t think so.
The death penalty isn’t justice, it’s revenge. How can a system condemn the taking of a life on the one hand and condone it with the other? People should be punished for their crimes, of that there is no doubt. However, the death penalty is barbaric and cruel and any society that revels in it are themselves barbaric and cruel. Prisons in the US are awful places, they foster a culture of rape, gangs and abuse. And after 30 years of that they kill you. How can any decent person justify that?
I Blame it all on Brexit
@Noel Donohue: Brilliant Noel, I’d say you’re the ‘funniest guy’ at work?!
Doesn’t the Bible say an eye for an eye and in the USA isn’t the bible King.
Search it and you’ll find justification for anything.
Thou shalt not kill….
Not ok for anyone to take another life in any circumstance!
I would rather see hard labour sentences where the inmates, convicted overwhelmingly by a unanimous jury of heinous crimes ( Rape, murder, child porn and insest) serve a number of years in a real hard environment. No TV, no luxuries. Presently the deterrents are just not working.
I have less problem with death penalty after a trial than with police executing people before trial. If you include police executions without trial the US has a far higher death penalty rate than even China or Saudi Arabia.
Killing is terrible, that’s why we have harsh penalties. But killing is just as terrible when the state does it in cold blood. How can the state have moral authority when it takes the same actions as murderers?
Decent civilisations take the death penalty off their statute books.
I wonder what he ordered for his last meal? I would order unicorn for mine. I could wait all day for them to kill it and cook it.
@Kenneth Finnerty: According to the Sky News homepage, he had roast pork tenderloin and fries, followed by peaches and cream – all consumed three and a half hours before his Grand Finale date with “Ole Sparky” at midnight (ET).
How come the Joker was not executed in the Movie?
Should have been fried years ago.
have your say