Shawn Taylor writes movingly on his struggles as a father of color:

Being tattooed, visually Black (I’m half Jamaican and half Puerto Rican), over six feet tall and muscular, holding a little ethnically-ambiguous toddler makes many people double, triple, quadruple take—and also, for some odd reason, loosens tongues, mostly of white folks, and creates an environment of familiarity. And yet they still manage to see me wrong: In my daughter’s twenty-two months of living, I have been labeled ‘uncle,’ ‘babysitter,’ ‘guardian,’ ‘cousin,’ but never father. I can’t tell you just how crushing a blow this is. I LOVE being a father and I think that I am becoming a better one by the day, but to have one of my greatest joys discounted is painful.

The NYTimes, on how many celebrities are publishing ghostwritten books:

Like a branded fragrance or clothing line, the novel — once quaintly considered an artistic endeavor sprung from a single creative voice — has become another piece of merchandise stamped with the name of celebrities, who often pass off the book as their work alone despite the nearly universal involvement of ghostwriters. And the publishing industry has been happy to oblige.

Ghostwriting is a win-win for the publishing industry and for the celebrity. The publisher gets to make a mint by leveraging the celebrity’s name, but still publish a book that is at least mildly readable. Meanwhile the celebrity doesn’t need to do nearly as much work, and can pass off better-written prose as his or her own.

I don’t see this practice stopping anytime soon, although ghostwriting as a concept is obviously not a recent development (it has been with us since time immemorial). What does concern me is the fact that Stephen Tobolowsky’s book will be published relatively soon, and I fear it will get unfairly perceived as either a) a ghostwritten book, b) another “celebrity memoir” book, or c) both of the above. I believe that Stephen’s stories, which are 100% his own words, transcend these categories and I hope the book is marketed that way.

(For samples of Stephen’s stories in written form, click here and here)

Nurse Bonnie Ware shares the most common five regrets people express on their deathbed. Moving stuff that may make you reconsider your own life (via Mark Krilley).

I’ve never read anything by Jonathan Franzen but after reading his powerful meditation on the relationship between technology and love, I think I’ll probably start:

There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie.

This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart’s revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self’s own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.

Robert Kolker has written a moving story that brings together the family members of prostitutes who were slain by a New York serial killer.