Flight
A shot out the window over California on a recent flight. Follow me on Instagram for more of my photographs.
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Filtering by Tag: TRAVEL
Data Baby Reading at Book Passage
I’ll be reading from Data Baby: My Life in a Psychological Experiment at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA, on Sunday, January 28, 2024, at 1 pm. [This event has been rescheduled for April 27, at 11 am.] There’s more information here, and you can buy Data Baby here.
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5 Years Ago
Five years ago, I attended a storytelling conference at Yale University; visited the “China: Through the Looking Glass” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and stayed at The Algonquin Hotel, where I met Matlida, the cat who worked the front desk. I miss those adventures. Hopefully there’ll be more someday soon.
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Cloud
A fake cloud from my Instagram feed.
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A Public Service Message
20 Likes, 7 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "🤬"
A public service message from my Instagram feed.
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How Journalists Can Think Like Scientists
6 Likes, 1 Comments - Susannah Breslin (@susannahbreslin) on Instagram: "#philipjohnson"
Recently, I had the opportunity to attend the Russell Sage Foundation’s Social Science Summer Institute for Journalists. Helmed by Nicholas Lemann and Tali Woodward, it’s an intimate seminar that teaches journalists how to write about the social sciences and think like social scientists. Guests speakers included Andrea Elliott and Shamus Khan. It’s held in a Philip Johnson building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. I’m already using the tools I acquired there. I highly recommend it for everyone: from graduate students to veteran reporters.
[Image via my Instagram]
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The Year in Review
Image via Thrillist
On my Forbes blog, I did a fun roundup of the year in vice. For some reason, Memphis was a standout for me. Was it the fried chicken, the strip club money wars, the faded grandeur of Graceland? Looking back, it's hard to say, but sometimes you find joy in unlikely places, and in this case that was Bluff City.
When the Writer Wanders
See this Instagram photo by @susannahbreslin * 16 likes
In the last few years, I've undertaken some trips that revolve around writing. An investigative journalism conference in New Orleans. A storytelling conference at Yale. A month-long writing residency at the Carey Institute for Global Good. And another residency on Martha's Vineyard. There were pluses and minuses for all of them, but here are a few reflective thoughts.
Just go. I spent a fair amount of time trying to talk myself out of all these adventures. Because that's what they are: adventures. Here's what writers do too much of: think, talk themselves out of things, and sit at a desk. Whenever you're doing pretty much anything that isn't what you usually do but is in service of you, you're doing the right thing. You will concern yourself with real concerns: money, time, guilt, etc. But there are ways to manage all of these things. Once you start executing your plan, and, better yet, once you find yourself there, you will sense on some level, hopefully, that you're doing the right thing. Why it's the right thing may not be clear right away.
You take the bad. There were things I deeply didn't like at some point during these adventures. The investigative journalism conference was: not freelancer-friendly, overpopulated by FOIA nerds bragging about their data-driven discoveries, attended by a certain number of on-air news personalities including women wearing sleeveless dresses in primary colors. I felt like a dateless dipshit at the prom for much of the time. But it meant I got to spend several days doing nothing but thinking of myself as an investigative journalist. I learned a lot: about how to do those FOIAs, about how to win a Pulitzer, about how to be who I am.
You take the good. My favorite experience was the residency at the Carey Institute. It was in this amazing rural area in upstate New York, and the trees were aflame with autumn. We were the first group in the program, and it had this air of bristling excitement. I was woefully underproductive on the page--or so it seemed at the time. But that was the start of the journey that's taken me to the place I am today. And that? It feels like a good place to be.
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NYC
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I went to NYC last week and had a great time. One day, I walked through Central Park. It was raining lightly, and the leaves were turning, and it was all very grand and expansive and delightful. I miss it already.
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Return
One Year Ago
See this Instagram photo by @susannahbreslin * 6 likes
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The Vineyard
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I spent a couple weeks on Martha's Vineyard. I was there working. This was the hallway to my room, at night, lit by the EXIT sign. It looks like something out of "The Shining," doesn't it? First, it was warm. Then, it was cool. I took some walks to the lighthouse. Eventually, I was ready to leave, and then I did.
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How Well Are You Received?
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The guy walks in and takes a look at Vincent van Gogh's latest work. It's La Berceuse. Why is her face so yellow? the guy wants to know. He points at the woman's strange hands. What have you mangled there? the guy queries, clearly annoyed. I don't like this, the man says. It's just too weird. (Just ignore him.)
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Preps
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Where I grew up, they didn't have people like this. I guess it's an East Coast thing. I gawked at them when I saw them. They were on their way to a wedding. They saw me agog and smirked.
I don't think they really got what I was thinking.
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Don't Do It
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Journalism Is a Boys Club
Image via imgur
Last week, I attended the Investigative Reporters & Editors conference in New Orleans. Here are some thoughts about my experience there. tl;dr Journalism is a boys' club.
What's up, dicks up
There are many reasons why I'm not really an ideal fit for a conference like this. I'm a freelancer, and many of the attendees were institutionalized, which is to say with bigger media outlets. I'm an introvert, and there were something like over 1,800 people in attendance. The event took place in New Orleans, and the last time I was there was in 2005, when I got wiped out by a hurricane.
A lot of the time that I was there, I felt sort of overwhelmed: staring at the long, snaking line to register on the first day, sitting in the back of conference rooms while panelists mumbled on about PowerPoints, milling around mixers trying to read the name tags of people I didn't know. If fashion is branding, there was a real lack of people in black, girls with rings through their noses, and interesting tattoos. The fleet of beings that most fascinated me where the Broadcast Girls, who stomped from presentation to presentation in skintight, primary-colored sleeveless dresses, their hair styled just so, their makeup on like pancake spackle. I suppose their investigative journalism falls into the category of HOW YOUR LOCAL BUSINESS IS RIPPING YOU OFF!! but who am I to judge? I was the one in the Gap men's khakis wondering what the fuck I was doing.
There was a reception on the second night I was there. It was at the aquarium. I went by myself because I didn't really know anybody, and eventually, mostly because my husband told me to via text, I managed to start walking up to people and talking to them. I am six feet tall (more than that, actually), but I am shy. I got to talk to people with various cool outlets: stringers for the New York Times, and a shooter for the Washington Post, and a nice man who wrote an entire book on the Pulitzer Prize. The fish floated in their tanks, and a shark darted through the water, and at one point I got into a HURRICANE SIMULATOR and paid a few dollars to find out what it was like to stand in 70+ per mile an hour winds and mostly just smiled inside its plastic tube. At least with the hurricane winds, I didn't have to talk to anybody.
Somewhere along the way, between the panels I loved hosted by the Dart Center, and the advice about how to be a better business person with your freelancing career, and the stories about the data journalism and the FOIA chatter, I realized that this was a boys club. Sure, there were women in attendance. Yes, there were ladies on the panels. I met some really cool chicks there. But there was something distinctly bonerific about the entire event. I think that was in part because of the investigative aspect. It was like the media's version of having a professional erection. Like, you had to prove how manly or how tough you were by doing battle with some giant lummox, and that, let's face it, at least how I understood it, was a man's job.
The most helpful time I had there was at an event at a bar in the French Quarter that was for freelancers. I ended up sitting across from a woman at a long table, and while she and I had very different beats, and we lived in different parts of the country, we had a great conversation. Here's what she did: she listened. Right now, I'm working on two book proposals: one is about X, and one is about Y. This is me; this is two versions of me. X is more wild. Y is more academic. This is how we compartmentalize. This is how women compartmentalize. I am X, I am Y. This is who I am. But it is hard to be two people, isn't it? What this woman made me realize, by asking wonderful questions and by listening really, really hard, was that maybe I should be working on one chimera of a proposal, and that proposal is XY. Or, no, maybe it is Z. The end of the alphabet. Like, you know, the conclusion of everything. So that's what I'm going to try: combine the two into one. Because who wants to exist in a fractured existence? I know I don't.
I get it. Sure, I've got it wrong about the conference. Journalism really isn't a boys club, and while my experience is valid it's probably wrong. Or, you know, maybe I'm right. The data boyz with their FOIA bonerz seemed to be engaged more in some sort of locker room battle over the lengths of their dicks than their ability to ... write. In fact, that is what I missed most and heard so little about at this conference: writing. Even with your data buckets and your FOIA requests, you still have to turn the thing into a fucking story. Where is your narrative? What's your meaning? Or maybe for you guys it's all just posturing. I'm looking for something bigger, something deeper than that. Something not quantifiable but ultimately far more real.
I was going to write some other sections of this, but that's all she wrote, fellas.
Have Laptop, Will Travel
"Fall."
"Flogging the Freelancer" is a blog post a day about freelancing in the gig economy. Browse the archives here.
I'll be traveling, and blogging, over the next few days, but one thing I try and do as a freelance writer is to do a story every time I travel.
So, when I went to Hawaii, I wrote "Gun Tourism Is All the Rage in Waikiki": "It was like Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, California — except for instead of burning incense and selling hemp necklaces, they were hawking the fruits of the Second Amendment."
When I went to Miami, I wrote "How the Biggest Strip Club in America Grinds": "'I like dancing a lot,' she says. 'I’m not shy. I have a lot of spunk.'"
And when I went to Shanghai, I wrote "This Restaurant Is Shit": "I had no trouble eating the desserts that looked like shit at the toilet-themed restaurant."
Freelancing is about starting, and stopping, and restarting. I've found this process of living, and working, and reworking helps me stay in the flow.
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I Heart New York
"Scary."
After I went to the journalism program at Yale, I spent a couple days in NYC. It was an amazing time. I ate at The Breslin, which I Ioved. I sat at the bar upstairs and enjoyed a Brooklyn Bramble cocktail (I tried the Pickled Gibson, but it was too weird for me), the market salad with tahini dressing (tasty!), and the duck and sausage (delicious). Thanks to Matt for being a cool bartender. I stayed at the Algonquin, which, oh my god, I loved so much. Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Circle! Dark wood! A cat named Matilda working the front desk! A copy of the New Yorker in every room! I will definitely return. On my first full day there, I went to see the Alexander Calder show at Dominique Levy. Everything was white, white, white there, and you had to wear booties to not scuff up the floor. The Calders were mostly small-sized, and there was a very dear set of miniature sculptures that fit into a cigar box, a gift for his wife. The rooms in which the pieces were shown were designed by Santiago Calatrava. After that, I saw the Richard Prince show at Gagosian. The show featured cheesy pulp books that were coupled with the original artworks that had been commissioned for them. It was a little odd, and somewhat amusing. Of course, the infamous appropriated shot of an underage Brooke Shields in the nude was included. As usual, Prince underwhelmed. After that, I went to the Met. This show required a warning, and I loved the China fashion exhibit. There were some amazing Tom Fords and a lot of glorious Galliano, but I wished there were more McQueens. Don't miss the weird, watery floating box on the roof garden. The next day, I had to check out the new Whitney Museum. So glad I did. It is super cool. It's like a stack of fantastic shoe boxes, or art-filled jewel boxes, and the views that frame the art make you feel agog. The all-floors show is America Is Hard to See. The top floors with older works were crowded and less impressive, but the lower floors with newer works were just spectacular. Oh, and I walked the High Line, too.
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My Bloody Sacrifice
I've got a new personal essay up, this one on The Billfold: "Blood Sacrifice."
I fantasized that if I went, on the night that I was there, by some strange coincidence, Achatz would be there. Achatz, I knew, had had cancer, too, and, in my daydream, Achatz would come by the table, and I would motion to him, and he would bend down low, and I would tell him, in a murmuring voice, that I had had cancer, and I knew that he had had cancer, too. He would smile knowingly at me, and I would smile knowingly at him, and then he would disappear into the kitchen, and he would emerge with a plate of something that looked like a tumor splattered across porcelain, and I would eat it, and whatever it was made of (rhubarb? venison? something else entirely?), it would be delicious, and I would have eaten the tumor that had tried to eat me, metaphorically, of course, and the cycle of life would close upon itself, completing itself, like Ouroboros with his tail in his mouth rolling down a street like a wheel.
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I'm on Instagram
"Got my bikini. #thanksforlosingmyluggage #united #bikinis #beach #aruba #selfies"
I got an iPhone 6 Plus, which I love, and I'm on Instagram. Follow me here. I love taking photographs, but my big Canon was a PITA to drag around and was getting old. I had trouble with my old iPhone, though, because my hands tend to shake, and my photos were often blurry. I wasn't sure whether to get the iPhone 6 or the Plus, but I went for the latter and am so glad that I did. Taking photos on it is fantastic. The images are great, and the weight makes it easier for me to take a sharp picture. Since my old Canon was dying anyway, my hope is to have my iPhone 6 Plus be my main camera. We'll see how it goes. For some reason, it took me forever to get on Instagram. Probably mostly because of the problem I had with taking iPhone pics, and I never really got the point. Now I get it. I also love, like everybody else, that Instagram is like Photoshop for your life. It makes everything look better. Thanks, Instagram!
Buy THE TUMOR: "This is one of the weirdest, smartest, most disturbing things you will read this year."