Welcome to the seventh edition of The Three Things, brought to you by Michael Schechter, Howie Goldfarb, and me.
Howie’s birthday was last Sunday and I should have mentioned it in last week’s post, but I didn’t realize it until it’d already been published.
So join me in wishing him a very happy belated birthday!
For those of you new to this series, The Three Things arrives in your inbox on Sunday mornings (unless you don’t suscribe, but that can easily be fixed if you hurry over and enter your email address or add to your RSS feed) so you have some extra time to spend perusing the obscure content we’ve curated for you (and one another) before your week begins and deadlines, meetings, and work takes over.
Michael on Dreams. This week, I revisited a classic I’ve always loved, but hadn’t though of for far too long. After seeing an inspirational cartoon of a quote from Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture, I had to go back and watch it again. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it now. If you have, do yourself a favor and watch it again. You’re going to want to read the book as well, but start with the video. It’s a great reminder that achieving our childhood dreams should be hard and that even when our circumstances are dire, we should never lose hope.
WWII Photos Superimposed on to Modern Street
Howie on Ghosts. I have seen photos and videos of Europe during and after WWII. It is amazing so much is still standing and this photo collection is very eerie. When I shop in antique stores in Vermont and upstate New York, I see old photos of people and families. I wonder what their lives were like. This photo series shows a history that old photos can never show us because it puts those people here today, but living the same scenes from back then. And thus the ghosts of the past and I wonder what they would think if they saw the same place today. And if they would choose an iPhone or an Android.
Gini on Hilarity. I’ve seen this blog before, but I recently got sucked into it again. Its author might very well be the funniest writer on the web. David Thorne is the author of two bestsellers, including The Internet is a Playground and I’ll Go Home Then, It’s Warm and Has Chairs. He started blogging email exchanges he had with irritating neighbors, bill collectors, and even his family. One of the classics is “Overdue Account” in which he tries to trade a drawing of a spider in exchange for erasing his past due balance. If you click on the link, be prepared to be sucked in for a long while.
Now it’s your turn. Is there a podcast, video, or article you think we need to see?