More on Wall Street, Hurricanes: Trouble the Water

Little Morgan, my niece, recently signed on to Gchat for the first time. She's 9 years old. So the latter part of my evening is now spent staring at two open chat boxes, one from her and one from my brother. We're a true American family.

I took the opportunity today to tell my little doppelganger about what's happening on Wall Street. (I'm a bad person!)

Morgan: helllllloooooooooo
me: hi there baby! just get home from school?
Morgan: ya i just got home i am also talking to daddy
Morgan: what are you working on at work
Sent at 4:53 PM on Tuesday
me: i'm editing an interview of a businessman who lost his job
Sent at 4:57 PM on Tuesday
Morgan: why did he lose his job?
me: well because he worked at a big bank on Wall Street and the bank closed.
Morgan: because of the hurricane?
was he mean?
me: haha, no not because of the hurricane -- though that probably didn't help. he was greedy and he was doing sneaky things, so he might have deserved it. he tricked a lot of people into giving him their money
Morgan: oh that is not good. we still haven't fixed the fence.

(Maaaayybe my explanation was a bit of an oversimplification, but ... not really and she's 9, I tell myself guiltily. But I already did a nice tribute to WS in "Perks of Fall Street.")

My family lives about 20 minutes from Galveston, where Hurricane Ike recently ravaged the city, hence baby Morgan's immediate assumption that the businessman above must've been affected by the catastrophe that's affected the Grices.

It got me thinking about a review I read in Salon earlier for "Trouble the Water," a documentary about Hurricane Katrina. It looks great; and I can't help but feel grateful that things didn't go worse for the Grices or anyone else when the rains came.

Two More Looks at Paul Newman's Life: Salon, Slate

Salon and Slate both ran such awesome pieces about PN's life.

From Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, she writes:

He looked like something Donatello might have dreamed up, his eyes turned down just the slightest bit at the corners, his mouth perpetually ready for kissing. Still, we all know that great-looking actors are a dime a dozen. The best of them are also informed by something that comes from inside, a mischievous spark, a sly sense of self-deprecation that suggests they don't take themselves all that seriously (even when they take their work very seriously).

And Slate's Dahlia Lithwick writes about his life and adamant insistence on giving back:

But Newman never stopped believing he was a regular guy who'd simply been blessed, and well beyond what was fair. So he just kept on paying it forward. He appreciated great ideas for doing good in the world—he collected them the way other people collect their own press clippings—and he didn't care where they came from. Whether you were a college kid, a pediatric oncologist, or a Hollywood tycoon, if you had a nutty plan to make life better for someone, he'd write the check himself or hook you up with somebody who would.

I can't stop reading about him. Hattip Ezra on Slate's piece.