~ Silver Linings: The pandemic obliged—or enabled—many women to go gray. They’re still reckoning with the transformation.
~ Every song of the summer from the past 45 years: Every year, there's a battle to see which song can claim the title of "the song of the summer."... The jury is still out on which song will be this year's biggest hit, but we used Billboard's charts to choose the highest-ranking summer song for each year. Whether or not you agree with the top song, here are the No. 1 summer songs from 1975 to 2020.
~ Victoria's Secret is overhauling its image. Is it enough to regain relevance? Less than two years after Victoria's Secret pulled the plug on its star-studded annual fashion show, known for runway looks that combined strappy lingerie with enormous wings, the brand is retiring its supermodel "Angels" for good.
~ Victoria's Secret is overhauling its image. Is it enough to regain relevance? Less than two years after Victoria's Secret pulled the plug on its star-studded annual fashion show, known for runway looks that combined strappy lingerie with enormous wings, the brand is retiring its supermodel "Angels" for good.
~ Summer reading: the 50 hottest new books everyone should read: From missing lighthouse keepers to the healing power of trees ... 50 new fiction and nonfiction books to enjoy. Plus recent paperbacks to pack and the best children’s stories (thanks to SandyA for the heads-up!)
~ Why Won’t Anyone Help Me in This Sex Shop? At 83, and legally blind, I could use some assistance.
BOOK: Little Kids First Big Book of Why by Amy Shields
POEM: Why by Robert Funge
You could call me obsessed
or a fool. There’s no future
turning your insides out
arranging words until they’re
comfortable with each other.
And the pay! Just this morning
a check arrived in the mail
for fifteen dollars, for a poem
it took forty years to write.
Standing on the corner
looking hungry and tired, the
Veteran of a Thousand Wars
does better on a bad day.
I show you
how I feel inside, how my daughter
whores for drug money, and my son
ransoms his future for a soul.
I tell you how my father
forgot my name, and my mother
went to the electric table
to have her mind rearranged.
I tell you how I prayed for grace
and was given pain, to show
that all prayers are answered.
I’ve shown you how I died
three times, yet here I am,
Lazarus and Buddha, my
victim and savior. All this
for fifteen dollars and a year’s
subscription. If I didn’t have a job
at the factory, sweeping floors
on the graveyard shift …
And I’ve shown
where I buried myself, covered
my walls with books and paintings,
how I talk to them and they say
This is what you’ve always wanted.
I am my prisoner and my warden.
I tell you how a passing image
makes me rise, and how love
leaves me cold. I sleep alone
in a king-size bed
and spill myself. I confess
in public. I publish my shame.
I don’t judge anymore.
I’ve forgotten how to pray, unless
this is a prayer.
And now I arrange my life
in code, knowing you decipher
more than I show.
They can keep
their fifteen dollars. They insult me!
All I want from life
is sainthood and some poems
that will last. I lied early:
the future is all there is. My gift
is my present to myself, this day’s
condensation of memory.
It saves my life.
[Robert Funge: “I live alone in a library. I’m retired and busier than ever. I write poems to make sense of the past, and because it’s fun. Always both. These poems reflect his life, his imagination and his idiocrasy.”]
QUOTE: "The more often we see the things around us - even the beautiful and wonderful things - the more they become invisible to us. That is why we often take for granted the beauty of this world: the flowers, the trees, the birds, the clouds - even those we love. Because we see things so often, we see them less and less." ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin
