MY LIFE AND THOUGHTS

Eco-conscious readers! I am happy to relate that “Natural Histories,” my profile of conservationist Çağan Şekercioğlu and his badass Kars-based NGO, is on newsstands now in the October 24 issue of the New Yorker, with photography by superstar Carolyn Drake.

I think Çağan was not super-happy with the above photo, because the bird had started to fly away before he had completely released it, and apparently it might look to a bird professional as if he had been holding it wrong. In fact he was holding it fine and nobody’s leg got broken, least of all that of the bird.

The cotton candy didn’t even try to fly away:

Click here for an outtake from the story, plus another very beautiful photograph.

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By guest-blogger Peli Grietzer

Just give it to us straight, Ezra Koenig. Are you saying rich girls deserve their money, or are you saying rich girls are dumb whores? Do you taunt the 57% of America that can’t take real summer vacations, or do you mock the 43% that go on holidays? Was “Mansard Roof” an endorsement of roofs or an anti-roof satire?

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My first two guest posts, CSI Pushkin’s House and Pushkin Reloaded, are currently up at the New Yorker Book Bench.  Many many thanks to super book-blogger Macy Halford for her kind endorsement of my hardest-working intern!  Thanks also to Gideon Lewis-Kraus and the unstoppable Dave Lull for alerting me to the unfolding story of Pushkin’s sofa.

Coming up very soon: a stirring defense of weekends by my own guest-blogger, Peli Grietzer.  A nous deux, Slate—history will decide which of us made the right call on this one.

Pushkin’s sofa	Pushkin sofa

Many thanks to all who ordered The Possessed,which has, at the time of writing, edged ahead of the greatest novel ever written to #1 on the Amazon Russian bestsellers list! After a long, hard week, my interns are finally enjoying some R&R.

Enjoy, guys—you deserve it!

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I am really happy and honored to report that Vampire Weekend and I are featured in a joint profile in today’s issue of Sabah (Morning): the Istanbul publication recently determined by a Nielsen survey to be Turkey’s “most recognized newspaper brand.” (The most recognized brands overall were Arçelik, manufacturer of “wardrobe-style refrigerators” and other appliances; and Ülker, manufacturer of Cola Turka, and also of something called Badem Kraker (Almond Crackers), which as a child I used to feed to the swans in Ankara’s Swan Park. The thing that made a big impression on me at the time is that the almond crackers didn’t actually contain any almonds at all—rather, they were shaped like almonds. This was my first introduction to metaphor versus metonymy.

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