We’ve already noted the commendable choice of Alex Ross as one of this year’s MacArthur Fellows; Chimamanda Adichie is also a winner, and I’m so glad. Here’s the MacArthur website’s description of a third accomplished and deserving recipient, Regina Benjamin:

Regina Benjamin is a rural family physician forging an inspiring model of compassionate and effective medical care in one of the most underserved regions of the United States. In 1990, she founded the Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic to serve the Gulf Coast fishing community of Bayou La Batre, Alabama, a village of approximately 2,500 residents devastated twice in the past decade by Hurricanes Georges, in 1998, and Katrina, in 2005. Despite scarce resources, Benjamin has painstakingly rebuilt her clinic after each disaster and set up networks to maintain contact with patients scattered across multiple evacuation sites. She has established a family practice that allows her to treat all incoming patients, many of whom are uninsured, and frequently travels by pickup truck to care for the most isolated and immobile in her region.

This immediately brought to mind “Children of the Bayou,” Katherine Boo’s outstanding 2006 piece about Louisiana nurses who travel to help young mothers learn to care for their babies. I find myself recommending it every few months. Boo has a satisfyingly long interview with Matt Dellinger on the New Yorker website; read it, and find the piece. It’ll slay you.
Speaking of noble professions, I was moved to tears by a comment from a social worker about how Suzanne Vega’s song “Luka” helped child advocates do their jobs by raising awareness about abuse and taking a little of the fear out of reporting it. The comment is on Vega’s absolutely terrific essay for the New York Times about writing the song and listeners’ many (and sometimes surprising) reactions. I was also struck by Vega’s description of what having a hit song feels like: “‘Hit’ is a good name for it — a feeling of intense communication with a huge amount of people at the same time. As with a baseball and a bat, a cracking, quick connection. As with drugs, a sudden alteration of reality. You could get used to it.”
I was led to all this by Clive Thompson’s post about Vega’s “Tom’s Diner,” a song close to many hearts, but particularly those graduates of Barnard and Columbia who have also listened to the cathedral bells and thought of a long-lost midnight voice, over sodden fries and (deliciously) gluey gravy. Vega writes stirringly about that song for the Times, too.
I love these shots of futuristic World’s Fair bus shelters left over from the 1964 World’s Fair, from my friend Paul Lukas, who discovered the far-out shelters northwest of Shea Stadium after last night’s thrilling Mets game.
Very funny: Things that upset Ricky Gervais.
The website Baby New Yorker has some very cute stuff, and is also a natural choice for the New Yorker-minded. The Baby Talk onesie has a New Yorker cartoon feel to it, to be sure, and you’ve got to see the Dog New Yorker Shirt for yourself: “Our Comical Canine Version of the Original Eustace Tilley by Rea Irvin, Cover illustration for The New Yorker, 1925.” A small image is below, but you’ll want to click inside the Baby Talk website to see all the very funny detail. Yes, this is unsolicited endorsement; it’s good for the soul.

I am interviewed.
Meanwhile, Tom Perrotta writes in Slate:

Caribou hunting aside, Sarah Palin represents the state-of-the-art version of a particular type of woman–let’s call her the Sexy Puritan–that’s become a familiar and potent figure in the culture war in recent years.
…
I didn’t think too much about Sexy Puritans as a type until I began looking into the abstinence-only sex-education movement while researching my novel, The Abstinence Teacher. I expected to encounter a lot of stern James Dobson-style scolds warning teenagers about the dangers of premarital sex–and there were a few of those–but what I found over and over again were thoughtful, attractive, downright sexy young women talking about their personal decision to remain pure until marriage. Erika Harold, Miss America of 2003 (the right sure loves beauty queens), is probably the best-known to the wider public, but no abstinence rally is complete without the testimony of a very pretty virgin in her early- to mid-20s. At a Silver Ring Thing event I attended in New Jersey in 2007, a slender young blond woman in tight jeans and a form-fitting T-shirt–she wouldn’t have looked out of place at a frat kegger–bragged about all the college boys who’d tried and failed to talk her into their beds. She reveled in her ability to resist them, to stand alone until she’d found the perfect guy, the fiancé with whom she would soon share a lifetime full of amazing sex. While her explicit message was forceful and empowering–virginity is a form of strength and self-sufficiency–the implicit one was clear as well: Abstinence isn’t just sour grapes for losers, a consolation prize for girls who can’t get a date anyway.

Doesn’t that make you think of those wonderful, ardent, chaste, and slightly self-contradictory Strawberry Queens from Plant City, Florida, the subjects of that terrific New Yorker story by Anne Hull a month or so ago? Here’s a slide show from that piece; Brian Finke did the riveting portraits of the shortcakes and their long gowns.
Next week, know what it is? The New Yorker Festival, the high point of the Emdashes year, in all sincerity (we are, in fact, card-carrying members of The New Sincerity, and also, for crying out loud, The Corduroy Appreciation Club.) For the fourth straight year, we will be attending events, racing to the Starbucks/McDonald’s/Bryant Park/office, and posting our impressions. We’ll even be Twittering. Later, after videos are released of some of the events, we’ll post links to those, too. Gee baby, ain’t I good to you?

This summer, three interns–Sarah Arkebauer, Taylor House, and Adam Shoemaker (whose smarts and first initials have led me to think of them, collectively, as S.A.T.)–will be contributing to Emdashes in many ways, some of which you’ll see as soon as this Friday. I’m delighted and honored to welcome them to the project. Without further ado, I’ll let them introduce themselves. On Friday, we’ll publish their first reports. They’ll be involved all summer long, and it’s going to be wonderful getting to know them. Note two themes so far: cartoons and the law.
Sarah Arkebauer: I’m a student at the University of Pennsylvania, from Lincoln, Nebraska. I’m tentatively majoring in History, but might switch to English. I enjoy reading (both books and blogs), using retro slang, and StumbleUpon. I also play the violin.
I spent my childhood reading Roz Chast‘s New Yorker cartoons, which helped foster my love of the magazine. Now, I flip to the table of contents and look for any articles by David Sedaris or (perhaps in vain) Jonathan Franzen. I also really enjoy Haruki Murakami’s fiction pieces, and I always check out the cinema reviews and John Updike’s book reviews. I cut out the best articles, pictures, and cartoons and paste them into my commonplace book. Its size is becoming quite unwieldy. I still read all the cartoons.
Taylor House: I recently graduated from the University of Arizona with a B.A. in creative writing. I’m currently in the process of moving to L.A. and becoming “hep” like those hoodlums out in Silverlake. I write, bike, and nap daily. Will one day go to law school and become important. I read The New Yorker on the web or in the bathroom, a page at a time. I like the cartoons, though usually at least one per issue is over my head. I’m working on it.
Adam Shoemaker: I graduated from Harvard Law School in June, where I focused on Legal History and writing about Medieval Iceland. Before that, I studied History and Art at Williams College, with a particular fondness for trumeaus and misericords. I am excited to have the chance to become Emdashes’ first Icelandic corespondent in September, when I head to Reykjavik on a Fulbright. My summer reading includes a biography of Jane Goodall, the novels of Marilynne Robinson and Halldór Laxness, and a box of dog-eared New Yorkers.

A brand-new New Yorker blog has debuted: It’s called The Cartoon Lounge, and, further, “A guided tour inside the brains of New Yorker cartoonists.” There’s already a post from Drew Dernavich and a reply from Zach/Zachary Kanin. Drew writes:

What will we be posting here? Words, pictures, drawings, videos, interviews, and links to other Web sites. We’ll have guest cartoonists, and we’ll even have guest editors from time to time who will share their humorous ramblings, such as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

We’d also like to make this interactive, so we’ve got an e-mail address for your feedback which is absolutely free, if you can believe it. We’ll also have contests and quizzes and other ways to elicit the best of what our viewers have to offer. It should be fun. Stay tuned.

Aside from the fact that it’s high time for The New Yorker to start closing up and lowercasing “website,” I’m very excited about this virtual lounge, and am looking forward to lounging in it.

Do a writerly imitation of David Sedaris, in a mere 100 to 400 words, and you might win a copy of his new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames, which, along with Sedaris’s previous work, has attracted its share of debate. (You don’t want me to “take a stand,” right? Must a person have an equally strong opinion about everything? Really, I want to know what you think about that.) Entries are being posted in Asylum’s comments box, which makes the contest much more fun to follow.
Thank you, kind reader Colin, for the tip!
Some time ago, Emdashes published an exclusive outtake from Marty Rosen’s in-depth and enjoyable interview with Sedaris in the Louisville Courier-Journal; it continues to make regular appearances on our stats page, and we were glad to use it. Print reporters, please feel free to send us material you can’t use in that bloodied but unbowed medium.

It’s very fancy on old Delancey Street, you know. From the New York Post via I Want Media:

A new battle for New York is underway, as the well-financed Modern Luxury operation invades the city with a new magazine, to be called Manhattan.

Richard Martin, who is currently the editor of Modern Luxury’s recently launched Miami magazine, will be heading to New York to be the editor of Manhattan.

The first issue of the bi-monthly is set to debut in September, around Fashion Week, with free circulation of 65,000 mailed to the most affluent households in New York.

What’s the income cutoff for those 65,000, I wonder? And what shall the households of Brooklyn Heights look forward to?

Nick Paumgarten, April 28, on New York Rangers player Sean Avery: “Not for Avery the typical prairie-boy self-effacement of the hockey man. He has said that he finds sports, and athletes, boring, and that he’d like to be an editor of a fashion magazine. (He’s planning to do a summer internship at Vogue.)” He started Monday. WWD: “Observers say he’s involved in all sections of the magazine, including features and accessories, and attends edit meetings.” (Via The Morning Newsfeed.) Keep an eye out in the cafeteria for Avery and Ben McGrath reliving the 1927-28 Rangers’ bedeviled but victorious away game against the Montreal Maroons.

New Yorker letters: a batch you can buy!
Sublimely ridiculous scene: Family Guy.
The New Yorker Conference has been blazing all day!
Able Martin is on it—I’m closing away.
Walt Kelly in Madison, posing with Pogo;
Crazed MFA humor—Shouts & Murmurs take note.
That last, loosely rhymed item refers to a piece by Tom Hopkins, who has concocted something for everyone—wailing fiction writers, gnashing poets, and everyone in between.
And thanks to the all-seeing B.K. for the Pogo and eBay links above. Anyone have $995 they can lend me? If yes, after I read all the letters in this batch (“In one, Harold Ross declines the suggestion for a feature on Washington affairs, but suggests writing for other departments; ‘You could put a lot of things in there with a slight sarcastic touch'”), I think they should be given a proper home with their true friends in the New York Public Library, where they will be loved, enfolded in calm, cool boxes, and available to visit whenever we begin to miss them.

Salon’s Carol Lloyd considers the portion of Jill Lepore’s recent piece “Just the Facts, Ma’am” that addresses the often divergent reading tastes of women and men.
I once went on a date with a man who insisted, indignantly, that men did too read novels (of course, I didn’t claim that no men read novels—that would be absurd coming from someone whose father has a yearly Pride and Prejudice bacchanal—only that the men I know tend to prefer nonfiction), and called his best friend from the car (he had a car, which was strange in itself) to gather further irrefutable evidence of this truth. Anyway, he was vindicated, but I didn’t much like his pugilistic need (coincidentally, he was a lawyer) to be right on every point he brought up. So, that was the beginning and end of our romance, and that is more history than literature.

The editors of the good-looking blog More Intelligent Life have picked James Wood as one of their favorite book critics; my erudite former employer Ron Rosenbaum also gets the nod, and commenters grump about the exclusion of John Updike.
On their corresponding film-critic list, Anthony Lane gets the honor of the first spot. David Denby would be on my list, as would Salon’s superlative Stephanie Zacharek, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Charles Taylor, Gene Seymour, and The Nation‘s prizewinning Stuart Klawans.
Also, Kevin Zacher has been shooting some cool photos of parkour people doing their climbing and jumping; if you go to his agent’s site (under “Projects”) and let the view scroll like a filmstrip, it’s almost like watching parkouring in person, and it’s quite beautiful. If you liked Alec Wilkinson’s New Yorker piece, you’ll really like this. (There’s also a video of parkour master David Belle and friends from this past year’s New Yorker Festival.)