internet reading list of late

(triplicates of links that occupied my mind at *work* recently)

How Green Was My Valley at Roads & Kingdoms
Roads & Kingdoms used to be one of my favorite sites because of the photo-heavy pieces on far-flung places, but it kind of morphed into this corny Anthony Bourdain wannabe where young writers write short pieces about drinking alcohol or eating fried shit in some city most of us can't afford to go to. If you are exposing me to something completely foreign to me - that's one thing; but drunken travel tips? Fuck that.
But good shit still flows through, and this piece on an old dude who seems somewhat obsessed with fruit trees in Tajikistan is pretty great. Some guy just tapped into fruit tree nature, to where he can't not think about it, so it becomes his life's purpose, that's some beautiful human interest type story I will read all the fucking time. But then again one time I got sexually aroused by picking cherries at peak ripe season off a tree on my land and was pretty sure the cherry tree was seducing me.

Farm-to-Fable by the food critic at a Tampa Bay newspaper
This made the internet rounds, but for good reason. I figure pretty much anywhere in America, if you started pulling the strings on claims like "farm to table" or even "organic" it'd all come unraveled, unless somebody in charge has paid the proper government organization for the proper government certification to be able to "legally" make the claim. So this expose is kind of like having John Stossel investigate whether pro wrestling is real or not. Still though, I appreciate the GOTCHA! effort, although there is a website mentioned in the article that's supposed to be where we the people can keep track of these things on our own, but I know a number of the local to me spots listed as kosher on that website are bastard places likely to be fake as fuck as well. Oh well, everything is fake now. The Age of Facade.

Godmother of Soul by somebody who writes for the New Yorker
My local library has a free magazine bin where you can put your old magazines in it for other people to take. Some kind folks always leave old New Yorkers there, but they're always from like 14 months ago, and I still end up getting them and bringing them home to flip through and get mad at the stupid poetry (unless it is Charles Simic) or read a profile of something I understand well but the thing is written from New Yorker perspective, which is always kinda weird but predictable to me. When I was a lowly housepainter, this one guy I worked for/with, we did a lot of work at this one place where the man of the house was some sort of editor or writer or some shit, allegedly connected to the New Yorker. They obviously had money because they had a Liberian lady raising their children and there were fancy paintings on the walls, like those big ass ones of old white people with little lights in the ceiling pointing at it just right. Sometimes we'd finish work early and go through the field to go kick it by their river access, and the electrified fence would always hit my sweaty naked back and shock the fuck out of me. But that guy had a writing building which is near the size of my family's house, but it was just an outbuilding in a field, yet really nice. To him, it was considered rustic and slummy and rootsy and real as fuck. Hahaha, oh man, this world is intersectional as fuck but we all ignore each other so easily.
Anyways, I got some good new New Yorkers (less than two months old) the other day, but read this online. This is a profile of Erykah Badu, and it made me love Badu all over again. I sort of stopped listening to her at all (we used to listen to a lot of Badu in this house, due to the ol' lady, but I'll be honest, I wasn't complaining), but this piece had me seeing what's actually survived a couple hard drive crashes and is still on our piecemeal absconded itunes. Not much newer stuff (which I'll have to abscond freshly I guess) but "Southern Girl" rip from my own vinyl still there, as well as the first album and the Live thing that came out, so I can call Tyrone to my heart's content until I find some unstale zippyshare links.