Dignifiying a dead dishwasher's life →

austinkleon:

From the St. Petersberg Times, a lovely portrait of Neil Alan Smith, a dishwasher at the local Crab Shack who was struck by a car while riding on his bike:

Shortly after the St. Petersburg Times announced Mr. Smith’s death on its website, a reader posted a comment stating the following: A man who is working as a dishwasher at the Crab Shack at the age of 48 is surely better off dead.

Web editors removed the comment, deeming it an offensive and insensitive insult to a dead man’s friends and family. Though hardly unusual — check out the comments beneath stories about any recent tragedy — this one spurred the Times to make Mr. Smith the subject of this story, as a reminder that every life matters.

Amazing.

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Penguin repackages the classics, including Wuthering Heights, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Tess of the D’Ubervilles, Cranford, Jane Eyre and Sense and Sensibility. Jane Smiley writes:

They are beautiful, they are tactile, covered in cloth with embossed designs. When I invite my friends over, they look at the covers, flip them over, feel the deckle-edged pages, open them to see the typeface. One friend, busy and involved with the newest of new media, at once imagines herself reclining on a brown leather couch and reading “Jane Eyre” (578 pp., $20) at her leisure — 26 ounces, black covers embossed with shiny red leaves, a red ribbon bookmark twinkling from the bottom edge.

(via Jacket Copy)