Totes getting this shirt.

http://www.topatoco.com/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TO&Product_Code=OP-CATLADY-SHIRT-PINK&Category_Code=OP

npr:

“I used to sit in my dorm room at least once a week and play ‘America’ by Simon and Garfunkel, just because that line, ‘Leaving Saginaw to go look for America,’ I was just, like, ‘Well, this is what I’m doing.’ I wasn’t planning on coming back, and fate landed me back here. And I figured that, ‘Well, I’m here for a reason, and I’ll find my purpose.’ And I think that’s become making public art.”

- Eric Schantz, a mural painter from Saginaw, MI who decided to paint lyrics to the song America on boarded up buildings around the city.

Remember people

I miss my workmate, Antonio

npr:

I finally met Bob Feller at a card show in Cleveland in the early 1990s. My brother-in-law Ray and I took Dad to surprise him. Dad was able to tell Feller that he remembered those first pitches back when Feller was still just that Iowa farmboy — “the Heater from Van Meter.” I’m sure Feller heard that sort of story about himself virtually every day, sometimes from people who were NOT there. Guys with four different nicknames get that kind of attention. But his graciousness meant the world to Dad - and to me.

- NPR editor Todd Holzman on the mutual respect he and his late father had for pitcher Bob Feller, who passed away yesterday, age 92. - @acarvin

npr:

So if George Bailey had never been born, the warm and vivacious Mary Hatch would have become a myopic spinster librarian? George is a heck of a guy, and Mary adored him from childhood, but why should she be denied love just because he didn’t exist? (And would a honky-tonk Gomorrah like Pottersville even have a library?) I prefer to think that the alternate-universe Mary would have married the smitten Sam Wainwright and lived comfortably on his arms-manufacturer profits.

- Author Alonso Duralde on questionable things that have appeared in classic holiday films.

Not included in his list: a discussion on why Ralphie doesn’t actually shoot his eye out, despite the fact it could have served as an object lesson for children everywhere (or at least children in households that watch TBS) when it comes to taking responsibility for their decisions. -@acarvin

georgemgarza:

“The power to communicate, and therefore the power to transform society, belongs to everyone.”

There is something awkward about the way we as a society view communication. Perhaps the lack of comprehension is due to the business surrounding the idea.

We live in a world where…

rodriguezantonio:

npr:

“We must do everything that we can to avoid a scandal and try, in my opinion, to prevent Madame Curie from coming. If she comes and this matter surfaces, that would create difficulties at the ceremony, in particular at the banquet. It would be quite disagreeable and difficult forth Princess apparent as well as for other royal figures in the audience and I don’t know who could have her at their table.”

- Biochemist Olof Hammarsten, who was on the Nobel Committee that selected Marie Curie for her second Nobel Prize in 1911. After the prize was announced but before it was awarded, word got out that Curie, a widow, was having an affair with a married man, causing a major scandal in Europe.

“I am convinced that you [should] continue to hold this riffraff in contempt…if the rabble continues to be occupied with you, simply stop reading that drivel. Leave it to the vipers it was fabricated for.”

- Albert Einstein, encouraging Curie to attend the ceremony anyway.

Did she end up going? NPR’s Robert Krulwich tells the story.