Author: nell-boeschenstein

There’s a type of dream that certain city folk have. For some, it’s a Canadian backwoods scenario. For others, it’s an Appalachia vibe they’re looking for. For a lot of people, it’s a California escape (Route 1, anyone?) But that quintessential American dream of riding off into the sunset involves a notion of the Wild West. Cowboys, tumbleweeds, covered wagons, that kind of thing.

The true-life stories of that journey in today’s day and age are few and far between. But Daily Coyote is the ideal virtual portal through which to vicariously live out this fantasy. The author describes her trajectory as follows, “I live in a town of 300 people, where it’s a 60 mile trip to the nearest grocery store and not uncommon to swing by the post office (or bar) on horseback. Two years ago, I had plans to move from San Francisco back to New York City—plans that were derailed when I rode through Wyoming and fell in love with this place.”

The fairy tale got even more fairy tale-like when a newborn coyote orphan pup landed on this woman’s doorstep and she decided to raise him as a member of her domesticated menagerie. The resulting blog is a chronicle of the coyote’s growth and how he fits into her life, as both a pet and a wild animal. Some of the photographs are amazing, and the human-animal dynamic is, of course, endlessly heartwarming and fascinating.

I remember the first time I ever heard about the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, the annual four-day gathering in Long Beach, California, of the world’s foremost thinkers in the aforementioned areas. It was two years ago, and a friend told me not only that she had gone, but that it was the most amazing thing, like, ever! It sounded kinda cool to my ignorant ears, but I had yet to realize just how cool: Think talks and presentations by everyone from Jane Goodall (my hero!) to Al Gore (another hero!) to Dave Eggers to Isabel Allende to Bono. In short, it’s a meeting for the best and the brightest.

TED started out in 1984 as the California Conference, but has now expanded into a virtual franchise (the TED Conference, TEDGlobal, TEDAfrica, the TED Prize) and the best of the talks given at the various TED events are now online at the TED website. See, because TED is so hip, it’s an invite-only situation, and only really cool kids get invited. To compensate for what might be perceived as elitism, the website attempts to democratize the talks so that everyone interested can have some access, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. In the case of TED, some access inevitably means you want more access. But I’m going to look at that dilemma as a glass-half-full situation, an inspiration to somehow, some day, find the keys to this castle of cool.

National Geographic made headlines recently for winning a National Magazine Award in reporting. The win was considered something of a coup, given that National Geographic is famous for its photography, but not necessarily for its prose, yet it beat out heavyweights including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and Vanity Fair. (Another shout-out should be given to local heroes Ted Genoways and the staff of the Virginia Quarterly Review for their win in the Single-Topic Issue category, and their nominations in the Photojournalism and General Excellence categories.)

But I would like to turn your attention to National Geographic’s online excellence. The ASMEs are all well and good, but the Webby Awards were also recently announced; while National Geographic did not win in the People’s Voice category for which it was nominated for its “Your Shot” feature, it should have. The “Your Shot” element of the site invites anyone—amateur photographer, professional, beginner—to submit a favorite photograph online. The magazine’s photo editor then selects 12 photographs each day (“The Daily Dozen”) and publishes them on the website, while the best of the Daily Dozen is published each month in the print magazine. Going back through the Daily Dozen archives is like traveling around the world with a multiplicity of traveling companions, each with a perspective that can teach you something. Moreover, none of these people are Bill Allard-style pros (go here), so it’s a perspective that really puts the “Hey, I could do that” impulse within healthy, inspiring reach.

Moms are sometimes an underappreciated species. We live in their stomachs for nine months, get born, suck on their breasts for a few months, grow up, move out, and then never call to thank them. Mother’s Day is as good an opportunity as any to remember these facts, feel guilty about them and maybe do a little something to alleviate the guilt: a card, perhaps? If one single day a year, however, seems ungenerous when it comes to appreciating the woman who gave you life, regular visits to Postcards from Yo Momma may remind you to be nicer to your mother more often than just on the day that Hallmark tells you to.

The site has gotten a lot of press recently (one of the daughters responsible for it is a former Gawker writer; a book version is slated for the spring of 2009), but the press is not unwarranted. The site is basically a repository of e-mails from mothers to their children, and the collective voice that the letters create captures both that special mother-child relationship, as well as an elusive sense of generation gapage. There is a certain way that mothers of a certain age approach e-mail; they have an endearing strangeness to the way they tend to phrase things via e-mail, as if they are using a language they did not grow up with, but are trying their best to conquer. The important thing to remember, however, is that the language is universal: No matter what she’s writing, all your mother really wants to know is if you’re going to call her on Sunday afternoon like you said you would in your last e-mail.

Science writing tends to fall into three categories: incomprehensible (a la textbooks and academic journals), middle-aged (Bill Bryson, Mary Oliver), and alpha-manly (Sebastian Junger, Jon Krakauer). And yet, what of all the other writers out there with a flair for the written word and a weakness for the scientific method? They tend to get the shaft when it comes to the bestseller list, but a little website called The Science Creative Quarterly (the editors claim to be as baffled by the website’s name as you) has popped up to cater to this subset of the literary-minded.

I think an apt comparison would be that The Science Creative Quarterly is McSweeney’s Internet Tendency with Bunsen burners and plastic goggles instead of nerd glasses and a copy of the latest Lethem under the arm. Even the site’s design is similar to that of McSweeney’s: Both utilize a somewhat twee aesthetic. Not that there is anything wrong with twee! And regardless of whether you like science or not (just as a fondness for hipsters is irrelevant when it comes to reading McSweeney’s), the writing here is good, often funny, and sometimes even a tad informative. For example, was everyone aware that “Evolutionary Perspective=1/Creationist Vision”? I did not. See? That is good, funny and informative all at the same time! We all win!

First Oprah’s Sophie, now Martha’s Paw Paw—what’s a rich and powerful woman to do? Blog, apparently. At least that’s what Martha Stewart has done a lot of since Paw Paw, her “beloved dog Kublai Khan Paw Paw Chow Chow Chow” (Damn, that’s a mouthful. Does it even make sense?) died on Saturday, April 12. Martha is given a lot of flack for being—if you want to put it kindly—a ball buster. Many of the terms thrown in her direction are far worse, and I rarely hear a compliment on the grapevine when it comes to the domestic goddess’ personality. In the wake of Paw Paw’s death, however, Martha has bared a bit of her soul on the Internet, posting an extensive tribute to the fluffy, pudgy animal on her blog. If this doesn’t do something to thaw her ice queen reputation, I don’t know what will.

While I, being a dog lover, actually have always had a soft spot for Martha, it was word of this tribute that was the impetus for me checking out her blog. And what an amazing tribute it is. She has posted a photo montage of Paw Paw’s last day, narrated in Paw Paw’s, er, voice. It includes quotable Paw Paw moments such as “Martha got up really early to check on me, again. She took a picture of the beautiful morning”; “I went outside for one last pee”; and “I really don’t want to eat anymore.” Towards the end of the montage, there is a photo of Martha’s two French bulldogs nuzzling what appears to be an elegantly wrapped wedding present. Really, this is just Paw Paw’s corpse, wrapped like an elegant wedding present. Oh, Martha! You are so…so…

Sometimes it’s fun to just peek into the minds of cool people and see what the hell is going on in there. If there were a King of Cool election, I might just cast my vote for former Talking Heads frontman, musician, artist, designer, filmmaker, writer, general creative-type and genius, David Byrne. And if that election got down and dirty—a contest, say, of who could write the best conceptual song around the word “chair”—and the public was still having difficulty picking a favorite, and if I were David Byrne’s campaign manager, I might suggest he direct the public to his blog for the last word in coolness. That’s a lot of “ifs,” but I am confident that, should this strategy be employed, David Byrne would indeed win his rightful crown.

Reading through Byrne’s journal, you see his thoughts move from an appreciation of standard Disney tunes a la Snow White and Cinderella to his interest in the work of David Hanson, a Dallas, Texas-based maker of humanistic robots, with whom Byrne is collaborating to create a singing robot for an upcoming exhibition in Madrid, and whom he recently visited in Texas. The blog recounts the visit in detail, complete with creepy photographs of the face of one robot, half removed and the internal wiring—literally—revealed. Click away from the blog and you’ll find links to Byrne’s various art projects, books, films and purchasable paraphernalia.

For me, the definition of “cool” is a mind that is constantly thinking up new things and exploring where those things take it, and I can’t say that I have ever come across a more active mind than Byrne’s.

I love YouTube as much as the next person, but when I really think about what I use it for when I’m left to my own devices (meaning if I’m just browsing and haven’t gone there to look at something specific someone recommended to me), I would be lying if I didn’t just say, “Well, I use it to look at funny videos of animals.” The problem with using YouTube to browse funny animal videos (those otters in love, the lion that hugs the little boy, panda footage in general), however, is that it takes a lot of looking. I guess someone else out there had these same time concerns and was kind enough to take the animal videos that are out there on the Internet, making the world a better place, and dumped a large portion of them onto the single, aptly named site, FunnyAnimalVideos.com. It’s about all an animal video lover could ask for and more!

If you’re one of those people who doesn’t like all animals, just some animals, even better! The site lets you browse by animal. For someone like me, all the panda videos are in one place, as are the dog videos and the monkey videos. For someone with whom I probably have nothing in common, all the snake videos, the rat videos, and the crab videos each have their own section of this virtual video store as well. It’s kind of like porn for G-rated souls.

Truth be told, Women on Web is not a beautiful site. And by “beautiful” I’m talking well-designed, easy to read or easy to use. It is none of these things. And yet it is to-the-point, it does a job that needs doing, and having it out there in cyberspace is a beautiful thing, indeed. Using the Internet to circumvent anti-abortion laws in anti-abortion countries from Afghanistan to Haiti to Hong Kong to Poland to the United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe, Women on Web helps women all over the world gain access to medical abortion. Women with unwanted pregnancies can visit the site and, via e-mail, receive a medical consultation with a licensed doctor who, if the patient so wishes, will then prescribe and have sent Mifepristone and Misoprostol, medications intended for other ailments but that also induce abortion. Everything done online and anonymously.

The site is the project of the Dutch non-profit Women on Waves (www.womenonwaves.org), headed by Dr. Rebecca Gomperts. The organization has developed a mobile clinic that makes the most of international law by taking advantage of international waters; since it was founded in 1999, the boat and its crews have sailed all over the globe to numerous countries where abortion is illegal. Once there, the crews dock offshore and offer abortion services (and ferry rides from shore to the boat and back) for those in need. If you don’t need an abortion, don’t turn the page: The Women on Waves site is where you lend your support by giving your money. Hint, hint.

Just like The Economist is kind of one-stop shopping for the thinking person who doesn’t have time to read The Wall Street Journal every day, More Intelligent Life is one-stop shopping for those poor, busy souls who don’t have time to religiously read The Economist, Salon, ArtForum, The New York Times’ Style Section, etc. The More Intelligent Life blog is a spin-off of the quarterly Intelligent Life Magazine, which is in turn the cultural spin-off of the aforementioned Economist magazine, and it’s a nice looking site (the layout is clean and the images are well-chosen) with plenty of that yummy food for thought I always hear people talking about.

The blog posts original material as well as articles culled from the Intelligent Life quarterly and The Economist; a scroll through the site sends your thoughts darting from global warming to European football to Chinese art to the eternal question, “What Do People Do in Antarctica?” (Answer: Look at it through the window of an airplane.) Regardless, what I’m trying to say is simply that if you read this today, you’ll be primed for your cocktail party tonight. And if you cram correctly, my Magic Eight Ball says the “outlook is good” for you to actually enjoy yourself this evening…maybe even have a stimulating conversation or two about, like, why Anthony Lane is a far superior movie critic to Manhola Dargis, or something. Oh, Anthony Lane. Swoon.