Five Bullets 6.10.22
This week: NY's Fort Tilden, Writing tips, Geodesic Domes & more.
Happy Friday everyone! Here’s five things I found interesting this week:
Over the weekend, I had a chance to return to Fort Tilden on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, NY. Fort Tilden is one of my favorite places to visit for it's history, beautiful beaches and trails. I jogged down from Jacob Riis beach and followed the trails to Battery Harris East, the remaining case-mated structure of a giant cannon which was placed there to protect New York harbor from enemy ships during World War One and Two. Atop the battery is an observation platform which offers 360° views of the Atlantic Ocean, Coney Island, and the Manhattan skyline. Check out my blog post on the fort's history if you're interested to learn more.
This week's blog post is about ways you can get started writing NOW. I share some tips and tricks I've learned about journaling, blogging and just getting down to writing! Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, Steven Pressfield's War of Art and Stephen King's On Writing were all extremely helpful when I was just starting out.
If you're a music geek like me, you’ll enjoy Tape Op! The magazine has interesting and well written interviews and articles as well as gear reviews and recommendations. I learn something new about music every time I receive a copy in the mail (its FREE!). This week I read an article about the Mixtape Museum, an online database dedicated to preserving and archiving DJ mixtape culture. These cassette tapes contain the early history of hip-hop, from backyard and park shows, to exclusive tracks from artists like Mary J. Blige and 50 Cent. Here's a video of rapper Nas on mixtapes.
I came across the following quote from Buckminster Fuller's book I Seem to be a Verb :
“ I live on Earth at present, and I don't know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing - a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process - an integral function of the universe."
Fuller, an architect, inventor, philosopher and visionary, is perhaps most well known for creating the geodesic dome. The Fuller quote reminded me of a documentary I watched a while back, Spaceship Earth (named after Fuller's book Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth) about an 8-person team which lived in a geodesic dome-enclosed biosphere for 2 years to demonstrate humanity's effect on the environment. There’s so much to dive into with Buckminster Fuller and I'm only now scratching the surface.
I finished reading Joan Didion's The White Album. I haven't read any other works by Didion and bought this while browsing in a book store. The White Album is a collection of essays written during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, compiled in 1978. Didion is an intelligent, insightful writer and her essays explore topics ranging from Charles Manson, to the Hoover Dam, to the Women's Movement. Didion manages to make the most mundane elements of society - i.e. the shopping mall - as interesting as a sociological experiment while also exploring the existential confusion of the late 1960’s and early ‘70s.
Got something to share? Leave me a comment!
That's all for this week! As always, thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
Until next time,
KW
Currently reading: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne