Colleen Taylor

I'm a little behind on this, but all of this New York Times Op-Ed based on Jonathan Franzen's commencement address to Kenyon College's Class of 2011 is worth reading. I particularly wanted to share one bit about the difference between "the world of liking" things on Facebook, and loving things and people in real life.

Franzen's speech isn't pertinent only to today's new college grads-- those supposedly super distracted kids that grew up with Facebook, texting, sexting, and all the rest. People of all generations are now tempted to spend more free time in the shiny, simple world of online social networks. We're all busy, and maintaining real life relationships can be much more hassle than keeping up with the hundreds of electronic connections we have online.

But in the end, loving someone in the flesh is much more rewarding than "liking" things online-- or really, anything else that we can do in this life.

"The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you’re going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you’ll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don’t like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you’re having an actual life.

...When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, 'Oh, I’ll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s' is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer."

I came across a clip from a recent Oprah Show dedicated to the "greatest lessons" she's learned over the course of her on-air career. I'm not the biggest Oprah fan, but I really liked her anecdote about why she stayed in Chicago, where her show still airs in its original 9 A.M time slot, for so long. Essentially, it's a version of "dance with the one that brung ya," an adage to which I personally try to adhere for as long as practicable.

"Years ago... I was gonna get paid a lot more money to move to Channel 2. They wanted me to move to Channel 2 at four in the afternoon to help out their news, and they were gonna pay me a bunch more money to do it. Like, millions of dollars.

And I said to [producer] Roger King, 'I'm not gonna do that.' He was like, 'Are you crazy? Did you not understand what I said? How many zeros are on the check?' And I said, 'No, because the 9 o'clock Chicago audience was where I started.' And he said, 'Do you think those people are still sitting there watching TV?' And no, I didn't.

But I did feel that there was something energetically right about staying where you were, and being loyal to the people who helped you get started. So I'm grateful to Chicago."

“I attribute the longevity of my career to the fact I didn’t have to carry that [sex symbol] mantle. I was never beautiful so I’m not unbeautiful. I may not have been a leading lady, but I had great clothes and funny lines. I think I had more flexibility.”

-Christine Baranski in the NYT's new monthly feature, "Main Course"


I've always loved the simple, direct, yet sensitive writing of the NYT's fashion journalist Cathy Horyn (think Steve Jobs' memos, but on the topic of runway fashion rather than consumer technology.) But I haven't read as much of her as I'd like, since her beat often isn't of very much interest to me.

Sure, I like to read a monthly women's fashion magazine or two (Elle is my favorite), but that's more for the pop culture than for the clothing spreads. I'm not interested in keeping up with the constant treadmill of multi-city, multi-season "fashion weeks" that Cathy Horyn writes about for a living.

That's why I was happy to see that the Times has given Horyn a new monthly column called "Main Course," which is billed as "a conversation over lunch with a notable public figure." For the column's debut, Horyn sat down with the actress Christine Baranski at storied Manhattan media power lunch spot Michael's (Horyn notes that during their lunch Barbara Walters was naturally sitting one table away, and, just as naturally, Baranski didn't notice.) Needless to say, I thought the whole article was fantastic.

P.S. Although I'd beg to differ on Baranski's assertion that she's not beautiful, I get what she's trying to say. I'd take great clothes and funny lines over youthful sex symbol status any day.

"Spend the day outside communing with nature. Seriously. It's like pushing a reset button on your mind and wiping out the crazy."

-Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin in the Skinny Bitch series (which I picked up at the library but don't exactly recommend, although it has its moments.)


I'm a firm believer in the crazy-erasing effect of spending any decent amount of time outside, whether it's a day-long hike in the rainforest or a 20 minute walk down a tree-lined street (which is how I came to take this photo.)