The emergency beacon of a fishing boat loaded with crab traps in the storm-tossed, icy Bering Sea goes off. Other ships in the immediate vicinity find little debris, no bodies. What happened? Stories like this absolutely fascinate me. This long read pushes the prose into the purple a few times, but ultimately it’s a riveting read about the inquiry into what might have happened to the Destination and its crew.

There’s certainly a little bit of “Well, in my day” to this article, but it’s funny and does touch on a larger point that kids not riding bikes is as much their parents’ fault as it is the kids. Look, I’m not a parent, but rather than disqualifying me from this conversation, I’d argue it gives me something of a objective perspective. When crime in this country is at an all-time low why are we so terrified about the bogeyman who is is – statistically speaking – a figment of our over-active imaginations?

To twist Martin Niemöller’s famous quote about the Holocaust, “First they came for the tanbark, and I did not speak out — because I hated tanbark. Then they came for the lawn darts, and I did not speak out — because I so wasn’t into family games by that point. Then they came for kids on bikes…” 

I don’t live in a place with capital-W “Winter,” though it does dip low enough around here for black ice to be a frightening possibility. This is seriously sweaty-palm inducing but so well-written that you won’t want to stop reading. 

Tremé

Facebook has been reminding me that three years ago this week was the last time I was in New Orleans. If any of you remember seeing those pictures back in 2005 and thinking, “Man, he’s mean putting all those pictures of food and having fun,” no worries — I think it’s mean now. *Ugh* I’m missing it terribly so I’ve started watching the wonderful David Simon (he of “The Wire”) HBO series, Tremé. It’s available on Amazon Prime currently (or, of course, HBO) — I don’t have a link I’m afraid. I’ll leave you with one last testimony to Tremé from a review for Paste Magazine: “[…]it managed to capture the place, and its peculiar position in the American imagination, with unmatched precision and unconditional love, attuned to the grief and joy of an epochal moment in the city’s history. If I ever leave, I will watch Tremé to remind me what it was like to live here at a time of profound transformation, and to feel anew the series’ clarion call: ‘Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?’ I’m not sure there’s higher praise for a work of art than that.”

Podcast

One of the podcasts I’ve been listening to the longest. It’s may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it scratches an itch for me, which is why it’s an immediate listen as soon as it drops on Wednesdays and Fridays. There’s a certain amount of this list that is drawn from the Friday show’s “What’s Making Us Happy This Week.” Check it out!