DECEMBER 25, 2011
A Very Merry Un-Christmas to You
The New York Times Sunday Styles
By JESSICA BRUDER
IN the backyard, revelers gathered around a vat of boiling oil and counted down from 10. All eyes were on the 12-pound turkey, suspended by a rope. At “One!” the bird plunged into the fryer and everyone cheered.
It was Dec. 25, 2010, and we were at Project Parlor, the bar my sister opened two years ago in Brooklyn. She had prepared a nondenominational feast for anti-holiday castaways and orphans with nowhere else to be. We ended up slouched around a battered piano like ne’er-do-wells in a Wild West honky-tonk, singing hoarse, half-drunken carols.
It wasn’t Christmas, per se, but why should that matter? My sister and I are what we call “cashews” (half Catholic, half Jewish), with few spiritual allegiances apart from family and food.
Folks like us are a tiny minority, according to a Gallup/USA Today poll conducted Dec. 10 to 12, 2010, with a sample of 1,019 adults. It found that 95 percent of Americans (including 80 percent of non-Christians) celebrate Christmas. Here are some tales about how our tribe — the other 5 percent — spends that day. (continues...)
OCTOBER 16, 2011
Illustration by Jim Kay
It Takes a Monster to Learn How to Grieve
Facing His Fears
The New York Times Book Review
"A Monster Calls" by Patrick Ness
Reviewed by Jessica Bruder
When I opened the envelope on my doorstep containing this book, I immediately had to sit down. “A Monster Calls” is about coming to terms with grief. And it is based on the last story idea from my first mentor: brassy, big-hearted Siobhan Dowd, then a human rights campaigner, who was kind — or crazy — enough to hire me as an intern in 1997 when I was 18 years old. She died four years ago from breast cancer at the age of 47.
Along with my sadness and guilt — I learned of her death only by opening that envelope and, yes, I cried — came memories. There was Dowd’s big desk at the PEN American Center. Her brilliant letters on behalf of authors imprisoned around the world. Her favorite places for dumplings in Chinatown. Her funny stories about busking in the London Tube for pub money, belting out a pop parody she called “House of the Writhing Nun.” Both of us bent double with laughter. She was the kind of person who could turn a kid into a colleague. (continues...)
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OCTOBER 15, 2011
Should the Rich Pay More?
The Christian Science Monitor (cover)
By Jessica Bruder
NEW YORK
Brennan McFarlane had never been to a protest before. On Sept. 17, the former Navy seaman from Mahwah, N.J., packed his rucksack with sheets and a blanket, unsure if he'd return home that night. Then he rode the train into Manhattan's financial district.
Activists from around the country were converging on Zuccotti Park for the first day of "Occupy Wall Street," a multiweek rally against greed. They brandished signs: "Democracy not plutocracy," "No war but the class war," and "I can't afford a lobbyist." Hundreds chanted, marched, and danced along Broadway. One woman in a birthday cake costume distributed anti-global warming fliers. A skateboarder in sunglasses and a pin-striped suit with a noose in place of a tie clattered along the park's southern edge.
Mr. McFarlane stood in the midst of it all with a neatly hand-lettered sign: "TAX THE RICH." (continues)
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AUGUST 28, 2011
photo: Ron Lewis/San Mateo County Times, via Associated Press
The Changing Face of the Burning Man Festival
The New York Times, Sunday Business
by Jessica Bruder
Tens of thousands of volunteers are gathering to build a city in a Nevada desert that is notorious for triple-digit temperatures, high winds and blinding plumes of dust.
Their organizer is a for-profit company that has collected millions in revenue over the last decade, largely because of this donated labor. At a distance, it’s easy to wonder: why are these people working so hard — in the blazing heat, no less — for a company they don’t own?
That’s one of the paradoxes of Burning Man, the annual arts festival whose attractions include colossal art installations, all-night dance parties, marathon kite-flying sessions, off-kilter fashion shows, and classes where revelers can learn things that range from Hula Hooping to playing the ukulele to making absinthe.
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AUGUST 21, 2011
photo: Andrew Moore for The New York Times
Paper Chase
The New York Times Magazine
Look
By Jessica Bruder
One July afternoon, a truck full of paper cranes arrived at the Brooklyn studio of Vik Muniz, a Brazilian-born artist known for building images from unconventional materials like diamonds, spaghetti and dust. “I was like, ‘Where are you going to put all these?’” he says. The birds had traveled a long way. After the Japanese earthquake in March, the nonprofit Bezos Family Foundation invited children to mail origami cranes to the Seattle headquarters of its Students Rebuild program. Each would trigger a $2 donation, up to $200,000. The group received more than 2 million and doubled the donation. Last week, Muniz made a mosaic of a giant crane from smaller ones, for a fund-raising poster. “It’s alchemic,” he said. “The idea worked because everyone wanted to help.”
Nations of Origin: 38, including Turkey, Iran, South Korea, Romania and Haiti, and all 50 U.S. states
Smallest / Largest Cranes: Size of a thumbnail / Size of a pterodactyl
Unexpected Media That Children Folded into Cranes: Math homework, hall passes, vocabulary lessons, love letters, Saran wrap, Kleenex, candy wrappers, aluminum foil, restaurant menus
Size of Vik Muniz’s Crane Mosaic: 36 by 40 feet
[link]
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JULY 18, 2011
The New Gold Rush
With its value surging -- up fivefold in the past decade -- the metal shows its allure as a refuge amid global instability.
The Christian Science Monitor (cover)
By Jessica Bruder
ITALIAN BAR CAMP, CALIF.
Lee Mace knelt on a sun-dappled riverbank in the heart of California's mother lode. For two hours, he'd been taking turns with his wife and their three children, shoveling dirt into a home-built oak box, pouring buckets of water over the top, and rocking it back and forth like a cradle. Gravity carried the heaviest particles through a series of screens to a trap at the bottom, where Mr. Mace removed them to cull by hand in a shallow prospector's pan.
He tilted the pan gently. He squinted into the black silt, as if reading tea leaves. "Look," he said. And then they appeared: a constellation of glowing flecks, none larger than the head of a pin.
It's hard to believe that crumbs like these have obsessed humankind through the ages, but such is the history of gold. (continues)
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JULY 3, 2011
photo: Peter van Agtmael/Magnum, for The New York Times
A Show of Faith, Ann Arbor, Mich.
The New York Times Magazine
What They Were Thinking
Interview by Jessica Bruder
Sister Mary Kate, 18: We pray the rosary at the same time every day at the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist — always after lunch. You’re basically repeating the words that Archangel Gabriel said to Our Lady. These are the most important words in history, so to say them over and over again doesn’t make them in the least bit old.Distraction is normal. You have to have a way to fight it. God, our father, is so merciful to us. As soon as I know that I’m distracted, I say, ‘‘Oh, I’m sorry!’’ and come back to him, because I know he understands that we’re his children and we’re weak. That’s what the beads are for, they help. When I was little, praying the rosary every night with my family helped me get into the habit of fighting distraction. You’re a kid, you wanted to be doing other things, but I always wanted to be the one to lead the prayer. And that set good habits for the future. Praying the rosary also teaches you to be silent. You’re really quiet and in front of what’s really true for a few minutes.
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JUNE 26, 2011
photo: 20th Century Fox
Most Likely to Succeed, Someday
The New York Times Book Review
"The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth" by Alexandra Robbins
Reviewed by Jessica Bruder
For the modern adult, nothing signifies self-confidence, street credibility and authenticity like one simple confession: “I was such a nerd in high school.” (Emphasize “such” with a dramatic sigh. Then roll your eyes.) It’s pretty easy now to gaze upon the past with rose-colored — and thick-framed — glasses. It’s popular to have been unpopular. A new world order has unfolded, with nerds ascendant.
But someone forgot to post the memo in high school cafeterias and locker rooms across America, where the shift has barely dented teenagers’ rigid social hierarchies. The results are disjunctive: while adolescent geekiness is something to brag about in hindsight, it’s much harder to embrace when you’re living through it, day after day, in the crucible of high school. (continues)
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JUNE 11, 2011
photo: Tony Avelar/The Christian Science Monitor
The Last Company Town
Empire, Nev. is turning off the lights
The Christian Science Monitor
By Jessica Bruder
EMPIRE, NEV.
This mining town of 300 people clings like a burr to the back of the Black Rock Desert. For years, it was marked on state Highway 447 by a two-story sign reading, "Welcome to Nowhere."
On June 20, that tongue-in-cheek greeting will become a fact. Empire, Nev., will transform into a ghost town. An eight-foot chain-link fence crowned with barbed wire will seal off the 136-acre plot. Even the local ZIP Code, 89405, will be discontinued.
Many towns have been scarred by the recession, but Empire will be the first to completely disappear. For only a few days more it will remain the last intact example of an American icon: the company town. (continues)
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JUNE 5, 2011
Hotwinds and Hellwurms
Teens After the Apocalypse
The New York Times Book Review
"Blood Red Road" by Moira Young
Reviewed by Jessica Bruder
How many times can the world come to an end? For Saba, the fatalistic 18-year-old heroine of “Blood Red Road,” quite a few. She lives long after Earth’s last major civilization, the Wreckers, went extinct. Her mother died nine years earlier, giving birth to Saba’s sister, Emmi. The lake beside her family’s shack is drying up, replaced by a wasteland of dust storms and heat.
It soon gets worse: Saba’s father is shot dead by a band of four horsemen. (If they arrived to ring in the apocalypse, they’re too late; this place has been in ruins for as long as anyone can remember.) They gallop off with the one thing that still matters to Saba: her twin brother, Lugh, her “golden heart.” (continues)
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MAY 20, 2011
photo: Jessica Bruder
Treading Lightly in the Simanjiro Plains of Tanzania
The New York Times, Sunday Travel
by Jessica Bruder
We'd been hiking for a half-hour when Mark Thornton raised his hand and drew us to a halt. Tracing a circle in the air with his index finger, he whispered, “They’re all around us.”
About 50 yards off, in every possible direction, were zebras. Dozens of them. The night before, sitting by our campfire, we’d heard distant hoof beats rumbling across the savanna. Now we had found the source. They milled around stubby acacia trees, black tails swishing against striped hindquarters, noses down in the grass.
Our group grew silent. Mr. Thornton waved us together, nine khaki-clad travelers and a local Masai guide in a traditional red-checkered shuka cloak. The closer we stood to one another, he explained, the less threatening we’d appear. We fell into a tight line behind him and paced ahead slowly toward the herd. (continues)
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APRIL 24, 2011
photo: Yana Paskova for The New York Times
All the World’s a Stage, Even the Back of a Truck
Lost Horizon Night Market, Brooklyn's Theater of the Bizarre
The New York Times, Sunday Arts & Leisure
by Jessica Bruder
One recent Saturday night, two Brooklyn roommates were driving home when they passed something odd: an unmarked box truck parked on a desolate block in Greenpoint, spewing strobe-lit, milky fog.
“We just saw these people in costumes and there’s smoke pouring out of this truck, and Axel said, ‘Stop, drive back,’ ” recalled Jon Ernsberger, 28, a landscape designer. After they pulled over, a pair of alien figures — one sporting a colossal, turnip-shaped wicker headdress, another swaddled in bubble wrap — ushered them into the truck’s fog-filled interior, where they were accosted by astronauts in white Tyvek suits. A recorded voice interrogated them: “Do you take a moment every day to consider your insignificance? What dust of what stars created you?” And the most pressing question of all: “Where are you standing at this moment?” (continues)
***
Thanks to Scott Beale of Laughing Squid, who caught me committing an act of journalism at the Lost Horizon Night Market and gave the story a shout-out.
photo: Scott Beale/Laughing Squid
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MARCH 30, 2011
photos: Marcus Yam for The New York Times
Click, Clack, Ding! Sigh...
The Digital Generation Rediscovers the Magic of Manual Typewriters
The New York Times, Sunday Styles (cover)
by Jessica Bruder
Even by Brooklyn standards, it was a curious spectacle: a dozen mechanical contraptions sat on a white tablecloth, emitting occasional clacks and dings. Shoppers peered at the display, excited but hesitant, as if they’d stumbled upon a trove of strange inventions from a Jules Verne fantasy. Some snapped pictures with their iPhones.
“Can I touch it?” a young woman asked. Permission granted, she poked two buttons at once. The machine jammed. She recoiled as if it had bitten her.
“I’m in love with all of them,” said Louis Smith, 28, a lanky drummer from Williamsburg. Five minutes later, he had bought a dark blue 1968 Smith Corona Galaxie II for $150. “It’s about permanence, not being able to hit delete,” he explained. “You have to have some conviction in your thoughts. And that’s my whole philosophy of typewriters.”
Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Smith had joined a growing movement. Manual typewriters aren’t going gently into the good night of the digital era. The machines have been attracting fresh converts, many too young to be nostalgic for spooled ribbons, ink-smudged fingers and corrective fluid. And unlike the typists of yore, these folks aren’t clacking away in solitude. (continues)
For more vintage typewriter goodness, check out the slideshow that accompanied this story, jam-packed with pics from the talented Marcus Yam.
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MARCH 27, 2011
photo: Sarah Caron/Polaris for The New York Times
Burmese Nights
The New York Times Magazine
by Jessica Bruder
More than 2,000 young Burmese gathered on the lawn of the Mya Yeik Nyo Hotel in Yangon last month for a Valentine’s Day hip-hop concert. In many places, the scene would have been unremarkable. But Myanmar has been ruled by a military junta for decades; its anti-Western, conservative culture is marked by political and sexual repression. In 2005, the government drew international criticism when it suspended the magazine Han Thit (New Style) for running a Valentine’s Day celebration advertisement. But on this occasion, among the young at least, the mood was uninhibited. Boys kissed girls. Girls kissed girls.
They chanted aloud, dressed in jeans and sneakers and miniskirts, fueled by whiskey and beer. “I want to change things, but here, if you say something, you’re either dead or in prison for 200 years,” one participant, the son of a retired colonel, said. “So what do you do besides take advantage of this life?”
Median Age in Myanmar: 28.2
Cost in Dollars of Admission to Valentine’s Day Concert: $5.78
Number of Journalists Imprisoned in Myanmar: 13
Hip-Hop Lyric Banned by Junta: "Hey hey, how are you?"
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MARCH 10, 2011
photo: Greg Matthews for The New York Times
In Groupon's $6 Billion Wake, a Fleet of Start-ups
The New York Times, Thursday Business (cover)
by Jessica Bruder
Is there no limit to the passion of American shoppers for online daily-deal discounts?
Hundreds of start-up companies — imitators of Groupon, the group-buying Web site that offers daily deals on knitting supplies, skydiving lessons, barbecued ribs, pole-dancing classes and a smorgasbord of other stuff you may (or may not) want — are racing to find out.
Groupon’s competitors have been called groupies, copycats and clones. But who can blame them? In just over two years, Groupon has accumulated 60 million subscribers, more than $1 billion in venture capital and $760 million in annual revenue to become the fastest-growing Web company ever. In December, it declined a $6 billion buyout offer from Google. (continues)
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MAY 16, 2010
Inside, Looking Out
The New York Times Sunday Book Review
by Jessica Bruder
New novels by Walter Dean Myers and Paul Volponi ask unsettling questions about the consequences of putting kids in jail. (Full story here.)
{More coming...In the meantime, you can download a copy of my digital portfolio -- clips, CV, the works -- by clicking here.}