I’ve admired the big-brain, big-hearted writing of Ta-Nehisi Coates on The Atlantic blog for years. But it wasn’t until last week, when he went to Europe for the first time, that my admiration turned to something like awe. Raised in Baltimore, where he says “my first language was violence,” he now shares a travel diary that starts with race and moves rapidly beyond; it will challenge you, touch you, and, like the best writing, will make you want to read him on any topic. When you have some time to think and feel, start here, then here and here and here.

I was a panelist at a Luxury Marketing event at Bloomberg last week, and I began my remarks with an apology: “There’s a jerk on every panel. I’m it.” I went on to say 1) social media is not media, it’s something else, and not nearly as important as some people think. 2) “Content is king” is a lie. Media companies hate content made by people. They want content made by bots for bots. 3) Authenticity is the highest value, and it’s costly and made by cranky people. To my total surprise, one panelist agreed with me — and went further. Judging on appearances is shallow, but a stylish blonde from Connecticut as a crusader for authenticity? I would have bet against. But Kim-Marie Evans is one of the most grounded people I’ve met in years. Her husband works long hours, she has four kids, she loves to travel. Solution: She launched Luxury Travel Mom, a site that gets her and her kids to great places, often for free or close to it, with the understanding that she’s not going to sugarcoat her reviews and that her kids, who consider all travel free, are certain to tell the truth. How is she as a writer? So not a bot.

… but the clarity of the video makes me wanna scream and shout and let it all out.

Anywhere you look, people are filling in their brackets — it’s all basketball all the time now, as the NCAA marches toward the college championship. Bookreporter.com came up with a neat variation: literary match-ups between authors from American colleges. (Like Harvard — that Ralph Waldo Emerson, known for his essays, has powered his team to an early, unlikely victory.) You can follow the action here. 

The drums. The xylophone. Signature Stevie Wonder, yes? No. "Nah Nah Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye" was recorded by a one-hit wonder called Steam. As for the classic refrain, it was added by the writer to make the song too longer for DJs to play — the other side of the 45 rpm record was supposed to be the hit. Now, in every ballpark…. 

Robin Roberts said she was warned that “at one point I would feel like dying.” Shortly after the transplant, that came true, she said: “I was in a pain I had never experienced before, physically and mentally. I was in a coma-like state. I truly felt like I was slipping away. Then I kept hearing, ‘Robin! Robin!’” The voice belonged to a nurse, who Ms. Roberts said was “pleading for me to stay here. And thankfully I did. I came back.”

You surely remember Laura Munson, author of the New York Times best-seller, This Is Not The Story You Think It Is — the marriage memoir in which her husband unilaterally declares their marriage over and she responds with “I don’t buy it. What can we do to give you the distance you need, without hurting the family?”

Now she leads writing retreats in Whitefish, Montana. What are they like? Well, they’re not just for “writers.” Here’s Laura:

My creative life has always been my safe haven. Usually it’s quite the other way. People say, “I’m afraid to be that vulnerable” or "I’m not good enough, anyway,” which means that their inner critic holds court in their minds and they have learned to bow to it, supplicant.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We can find profound freedom in our creativity. That’s why I lead my Haven Writing Retreats. I want to help people in their creative expression through writing, no matter where they are on the page. I have written my entire adult life, mostly in the mythic trenches of “failure” and recently from the lofty altitude of “success.” In it all, I have learned that it’s about one thing: doing the work. And that can be daunting.

While the wilderness of Montana holds the space for inspiration, I hold the space for my retreaters to step into the wilderness of their creativity — in a nurturing, safe, challenging setting. I designed a retreat that I would want to attend. In other words, it’s not about criticism or hero worship or reinforcing the tortured artist paradigm. It’s quite the opposite.

At Haven, we do a variety of writing exercises that nimble the mind, free the muse, breathe our words alive. When does life offer that? Rarely. Stepping into our creativity is often about stepping into our discomfort. It is my commitment to make that process as rich as possible. I hold the torch, maybe just a bit braver but not by much, and we enter that wilderness together. Over and over, I see people leave re-fueled, ready to create what they want to create whether it’s a book or a letter to their grandchild.

For more information, email Laura@lauramunsonauthor.com

Marianne Faithfull. ‘Broken English.’ 1979. Just slightly ahead of her time.

Great visuals. Attention-getting music. But whose?

The Lumineers.  

from Susan Braudy:

Nora and I were part of a small group of women writing for the Times Magazine who in the spirit of the late 1970′s gathered to petition the Times editors to hire more female freelancers.

We met for one strategy session at Nora and her then husband Dan Greenberg’s posh east side duplex.

As we were sorting out our coats piled on the marital bed, somebody asked, “Is that a gun under there?”

Nora pulled out a shotgun and said casually, “It’s not loaded.”

To demonstrate that fact she pulled the trigger, narrowly missing fellow writer Martha Lear.

Martha grabbed my arm and whispered, “Just walk me out of here, fast.”

I held her up, and we hit the sidewalk running.

Paradise Found! Lakefront Mediterranean-style stucco home with every imaginable amenity. Firefly Pond Farm is located on 10.83 acres in prestigious Dublin Downs on beautiful and very private Lake Belmont. 7600 Bradfordville Road Tallahassee, FL 32309 Beds: 4 Baths: 3.5 Sqft: 3,562. $799,000 for sale by owner. Randiedenker@gmail.com

Charles Pierce, in Esquire, about Bradley Manning: "We are to believe through this ruling that Manning was treated more rigorously than was necessary and that his treatment was more excessive than legitimate government interests demanded, but that nobody in authority ordered it, nobody in authority countenanced it, and that nobody in authority will be called to account for it. It just happened, like a power outage, or a problem with the plumbing and, if there was somebody ordering it, or countenancing it, or in authority over it, it was all for Manning’s good, anyway. Both things cannot be true. If Manning’s treatment was more rigorous than was necessary and that it exceeded what was required to meet legitimate government interests, then it cannot have been done for Manning’s benefit, and somebody ordered the excesses and somebody countenanced them and somebody carried them out."

Garland Jeffreys and his band deliver a seriously satisfying high-octane show, with stops at reggae, new wave and actual rock. He’ll be at the Highline Ballroom on Friday, 1/18, early enough (8 PM) for kids. Holler if we’ll see you there.

If you hated "Tree of Life" — and most of you did — you’ll probably be  equally appalled by "To the Wonder." But consider the preview…

I am a huge fan of Sonia Taitz’s novel, In the King’s Arms, the story of a young New York City woman who heads off to England — the obvious destination of any English grad student whose parents are Holocaust survivors — and has memorable romantic entanglements. Using much of the same material, she’s now written a memoir, “The Watchmaker’s Daughter.” My parents didn’t come here after surviving the concentration camps, but they were children of the Depression, which carried its own trauma. Which is to say: This story has hooks for a great many readers. Including the hook of gifted writing. Like the opening: “You could say that my father was a watchmaker by trade, but that would be like saying that Nijinsky liked to dance. Fixing watches was not only his livelihood but his life. This skill saved him when he had been imprisoned at the death camp of Dachau, during the Second World War, and he continued to fix watches until the day he died. Simon Taitz was nothing less than a restorer of time. And I was his daughter, born to continue his life work — restoration and repair.” [To buy the paperback from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]

Two years ago, on tour in Canada, Josh Ritter got a phone call from his wife. Marriage over. After 14 months. Okay, so at the lowest moments of our lives it’s music that gives us comfort. But what if you’re a musician whose life gets flattened — whose music do you turn to? After you’ve played Bach and the Blues, I suspect you take out your notebook and guitar and…. bleed. Which Josh did. And then made a CD, “The Beast in Its Tracks” (to be released on March 5). Are these songs howls of unfiltered, primal pain? Not possible. Josh is one of the best singer/songwriters we’ve got. Emotion may hit him hard, but it leaves him changed. Filtered. Transformed. Listen to Joy to You Baby, which I hear as an unlikely but completely Joshlike good wish to his ex — and a reminder that a beating heart can’t help but seek love, joy, transcendence.