Highlights from this Sunday's Times (6/28/09)

Marvin Powell heading to work at the Pontiac Assembly Center on June 10, 2009, at 5:48 a.m. (Damon Winter/The New York Times)

- Jonathan Mahler on Marvin Powell and other middle-class African-Americans being pulled down by the fall of General Motors
- Cara Buckley on the increasingly stiff competition among helado vendors in the Bronx
- Graham Bowley on his and his friend's journey from Islamabad to K2's base camp and back

Praise for the Art of Writing

Quotes can be an effective motivator. Even the simplest statement, when said well and by the right person, can leave an imprint. Every once in a while I'll post up a quote or two with quotes about writing, its craft, and how it's done.

From the Spring Paris Review, in an interview with John Banville:

"The sentence is the greatest invention of civilization. To sit all day long assembling these extraordinary strings of words is a marvelous thing. I couldn't ask for anything better. It's as near to godliness as I can get."

From the Writers on Writing series (NYT), Paul West:
"I have a porous vision, into which anything can get, and I welcome all invaders, knowing the world is richer by far than a wall of identical shoe boxes, whose mildewed aura defeats what's creative."

Highlights from this Sunday's Times (6/21/09)

Rafael Nadal. (Clive Brunskill/Getty Images)

- Cynthia Gorney on Rafael Nadal, the No. 1 tennis player in the world (I think this article could win Gorney a National Magazine Award)
- Walt Bogdanich on "a rogue cancer unit" at the Philadelphia V.A. hospital
- Sarah Garland on a case of Long Island gang violence

And here are a few tardy highlights from last Sunday's Times (6/14/09):

- Daniel J. Wakin on outgoing New York Philharmonic music director Lorin Maazel
- Jon Gertner on the state of California's determination to build a high-speed rail system a la France and Japan
- Katie Thomas on a girls' basketball team in New York and why it, and so many others like it, is not as supported as the average boys' team

Highlights from this Sunday's Times (6/7/09)

- Ellen Barry on Sergei Kanev, a crime reporter in Moscow whose life is punctuated by death threats
- Alan Feuer on the fall of the great New York law firms
- Deborah Sontag on two divergent Muslim artists in New York

And here's a bonus: my mother's recommendation.

- Scott Malcomson on Shakira's efforts to improve early-childhood education in South America