Elephants have good memory

America's first female VP candidate on a major party ticket died today at 75. Lynn Sherr, who traveled with Ferraro on her groundbreaking 1984 campaign, recalls the congresswoman's electrifying debut, the way she inspired women all over the country—and how she handled her loss with grace. Plus, Mark Katz remembers Geraldine Ferraro's great sense of humor . Geraldine Ferraro opened the door to her Washington congressional office, grabbed my hand, and pulled me to the mirror above her fireplace. "C'mere," she said in her brisk Queens cadence. "C'mere. I have to see what everyone's talking about." Photos: Geraldine Ferraro It was the summer of 1984, the first time I'd met her, and the two of us stood side by side gazing at each other's reflection. Everyone, it seems, was right. We did look alike, with our nearly identical short, thatched, and blond-streaked hair, our high cheekbones and strong chins. True, I was some four inches taller than the congresswoman, and she had a … [Read more...] about Geraldine Ferraro Dies: Memories of Her 1984 Campaign

One night in October, just a couple blocks from Harvard Square, a young crowd gathered at a music space called the Sinclair to catch a performance by Bill Callahan, the meticulous indie-rock lyricist who has been playing to bookish collegiate types since the early ‘90s. Callahan’s opening act, Lonnie Holley, had been playing to similar audiences for two years. A number of details about Holley made this fact surprising: He was decades older than just about everyone in the club and one of the few African-Americans. He says he grew up the seventh of 27 children in Jim Crow-era Alabama, where his schooling stopped around seventh grade. In his own, possibly unreliable telling, he says the woman who informally adopted him as an infant eventually traded him to another family for a pint of whiskey when he was 4. Holley also says he dug graves, picked trash at a drive-in, drank too much gin, was run over by a car and pronounced brain-dead, picked cotton, became a father at 15 (Holley now has 15 … [Read more...] about Lonnie Holley, the Insider’s Outsider

HONG KONG — Far from the sleek skyscrapers of downtown, in a world of bamboo trees and Buddhist shrines, the Wo Hop Shek Garden of Remembrance stands as one of this territory’s most alluring resting places. Grasshoppers prance on the pathways, and bells chime in the distance. But the garden , which opened two years ago as a place for families to scatter the ashes of loved ones, is deserted on most days. The stately granite walls that line the paths, meant to preserve the names of those laid to rest here, are nearly bare, with only 300 of 9,000 plaques in use. “Nobody wants to come here,” said Lam Ming-wai, a government worker who oversees the garden. “ Hong Kong people are too old-fashioned.” Generations in Hong Kong have followed a familiar routine to honor the dead, jostling for prime burial spots in the mountains and by the sea, or spending small fortunes on jade urns and elaborate ceremonies. But now the government is seeking to upend those customs. Concerned by a … [Read more...] about Hong Kong’s Drive for ‘Green Burials’ Clashes With Tradition

SPACEMAN OF BOHEMIA All new books, but debut novels especially, are blind dates. The raconteur who charmingly burbles during drinks is tapped out of stories by the time the oysters arrive; the genius who wears his erudition so lightly over appetizers starts clubbing you over the head with it during dessert. ( No, your mind screams when things turn . And it was all going so well. ) I start a lot of debut novels in this job. Most betray me at some point or another — though a few make my heart do cartwheels, or at least a pirouette. Jaroslav Kalfar’s “Spaceman of Bohemia” is not a perfect first effort. But it’s a frenetically imaginative one, booming with vitality and originality when it isn’t indulging in the occasional excess. Kalfar’s voice is distinct enough to leave tread marks. He has a great snout for the absurd. He has such a lively mind and so many ideas to explore that it only bothered me a little — well, more than a little, but less than usual — that this book … [Read more...] about Meet an Intergalactic Spider in ‘Spaceman of Bohemia’

Not sure what to watch next? Subscribe to The Daily Beast’s Obsessed See Skip newsletter here and get the latest show and movie recommendations every Tuesday. There are roughly 47,000—oh, wait, a new Netflix Original just dropped; make that 47,001—TV shows and movies coming out each week. At Obsessed, we consider it our social duty to help you see the best and skip the rest. We’ve already got a variety of in-depth, exclusive coverage on all of your streaming favorites and new releases, but sometimes what you’re looking for is a simple Do or Don’t. That’s why we created See/Skip, to tell you exactly what our writers think you should See and what you can Skip from the past week’s crowded entertainment landscape. See: Succession Succession ’s final season is another wild dose of twisted, Freudian in-fighting that affirms the show as one of the smartest things on television…ever. Without it, the TV landscape is going to have a noticeable, … [Read more...] about What Will We All Do When ‘Succession’ Ends?

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — For a long time, Joe Minter managed to share a yard with his wife, Hilda, their two sons and 100,000 of their neighbors. His scruffy three-bedroom house filled up most of a small city lot, just up the hill from Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. But somehow he made it work. When these souls began to cry out for their own lawn ornaments, however, he realized he would have to find more room. The sloping land to the south and west of Mr. Minter’s dooryard belonged to the two historically black graveyards called Grace Hill and Shadow Lawn. “We are in the presence of about 100,000 African ancestors,” Mr. Minter will tell visitors who drop by on a Sunday morning. These are the emancipated slaves and farmers and steelworkers who made Birmingham: the muscle that built the “Magic City.” The dead weren’t going anywhere, but the rest of the neighborhood was thinning out, Mrs. Minter said. Some homeowners died off; others drove north and never came back. So the Minters began … [Read more...] about Scrap-Iron Elegy