My employer, a huge private university, almost never closes for bad weather. However, in advance of the supposedly big snowstorm heading our way, New York City public schools have already announced a citywide shutdown for tomorrow. Now I can't get out of my head a vision of myself sipping coffee in my PJs tomorrow morning when I'd ordinarily be making my way in to Manhattan from Queens. Most likely reality will find me fighting my way through the whiteout, snarling, coughing, sniffling, cursing. Still, a girl can dream, can't she?
In that dreamy mode, there's this from that font of intellectual inquiry, Marie Claire magazine: reading is a great cure for stress.
What do New York subway riders, a fairly stressed-out group of people, read? Here's a kind of cool site where "a team of publishing nerds" reports on books spotted on the subway. Today it's an interesting mix, from Edwidge Danticat's Brother, I'm Dying to some kind of dragon-y thing called Eldest.
Speaking of New Yorkers and reading, yesterday I was at an old neighborhood diner and sitting in the booth next to me was the actor Isabella Rossellini. I've confessed here often enough that it should come as no surprise to anyone that I partake fairly fully in various aspects of pop culture, and I find these star sightings that happen frequently here in NYC as much fun as the next shnook. In fact, this one made me wonder how many of this specific sort--sitting next to actors at cheap old restaurants--I've had. I came up with six others that I can remember. Anyway, Rossellini had on a pair of those trendy big black eyeglasses and was reading a book. I got to wondering about her and what she's working on nowadays, especially because she's mostly taken on some pretty quirky projects in recent years, so later I got online to check. Turns out she's into the second season of writing and acting in a series for the Sundance Channel. Each brief episode focuses on some non-mammalian species and its sex and reproductive practices--and Rossellini plays the creature. Delightful! Here she is as an earthworm.
