{"id":37,"date":"2008-01-16T18:32:14","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T18:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2008-01-16T20:02:48","modified_gmt":"2008-01-16T20:02:48","slug":"thinking-about-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"thinking about things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night I went with my friend, A., to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colsonwhitehead.com\/\">Colson Whitehead<\/a> talk, sponsored by a really wonderful local non-profit, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.literary-arts.org\/\">Literary Arts<\/a>.  This winter our book group read Whitehead&#8217;s latest, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.powells.com\/biblio\/62-9781400031269-0\">Apex Hides the Hurt<\/a>.  It was thin on plot, but there was some brilliant writing, just brilliant, and interesting commentary on race.<\/p>\n<p>My thoughts in reflection of the evening:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"bulleted\">\n<li>After the talk, A. and I saw Whitehead in the restaurant next door.  He was shorter than I thought he looked from where we sitting in the balcony.<\/li>\n<li>Whitehead is a very entertaining speaker.  His talk was accompanied by lots of laughter.  He began with quoting the beginning of Steve martin&#8217;s &#8216;The Jerk&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>Looking around the audience I couldn&#8217;t help but be reminded I live in one of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2006\/06\/18\/AR2006061800605.html\">whitest cities<\/a> in the US (I hate this fact).  Later I wondered if the ease of laughter in response to Whitehead&#8217;s race related jokes was because there were less than a handful of African American&#8217;s in the crowd and thus no reason for all us whities to feel self-conscious.<\/li>\n<li>A. and I sat behind a group of about 7 women who&#8217;d I&#8217;d guess were in their mid to late 60&#8217;s, maybe 70&#8217;s.  At least 3 of them were futzing around with their iPhones before the talk.  I would love to make something a 70 year old could use without thinking about it.<\/li>\n<li>I don&#8217;t much like riding my bike in this cold weather, but I&#8217;m rocking on my clipless shoes, even if I look like a complete dork when I&#8217;m at a restaurant, passing Colson Whitehead in the hallway and saying  &#8216;wonderful talk&#8217;.<\/li>\n<li>I really wish Portland were much more intellectually stimulating and\/or I could meet more New York transplants who are bored by the sleepy and outdoorsy nature of the city&#8217;s populace.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night I went with my friend, A., to a Colson Whitehead talk, sponsored by a really wonderful local non-profit, Literary Arts. This winter our book group read Whitehead&#8217;s latest, Apex Hides the Hurt. It was thin on plot, but there was some brilliant writing, just brilliant, and interesting commentary on race. My thoughts in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-culture","category-insights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.proteanme.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}