Daily Office: Thursday
¶ Matins: Where have all the busybodies gone? Whitney Carpenter, writing at The Bygone Bureau, suggests that you answer this question with a glance in the mirror.
Consider: the news about Niall; Pete Warden’s geographical analysis of Facebook networks; and the fact that the Paterson story has been denied by the Times, which was expected to drop a bombshell. Who would notice busybodies in this environment?
¶ Lauds: Dan Callahan writes about one of our favorite actresses, Mary Astor, at Bright Lights. His analysis of Astor’s performance in The Maltese Falcon — looking for the “real” Brigid O’Shaughnessy — is not to be missed.
¶ Prime: The idea of the celebrity director, invited to join a corporate board in order to confer cultural tone or, worse actually, diversity, gets sent to the cleaners by Felix Salmon.
¶ Tierce: Sharon Begley explains why so many affluent women of a certain age look like dolls: “Hello Botox, Bye-Bye Sadness — But Not for the Reasons You Think.” (Newsweek; via Arts Journal)
¶ Sext: We always knew that Joe Jervis was a prince; now he turns out to be a prince from Wales. A good friend is an avid genealogist.
¶ Nones: Greece has been hobbled by massive strikes and rallies, protesting austerity measures that the government must undertake in order to restore the nation’s credit-worthiness. Guess who helped Greece get into this pickle? Our friends at Goldman Sachs, of course! Beat Balzli reports in Spiegel Online. (via Felix Salmon)
¶ Vespers: Eric Puchner’s buzzed-up novel, Model Home, appears today. A brief but riveting bit of memoir at Speakeasy is said to overlap some of the novel’s material.
¶ Compline: Lisa Levy isn’t crazy about Brian Dillon’s The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives, but her discussion of hypochondria is engaging, and, like Whitney Carpenter’s discussion of busybodies, it suggests why a certain stock figure is on the wane. (The Second Pass)