Curo, Curare: Profiles

Happy Halloween. This reading list featuring movers and shakers, actors and creators can perhaps help you with last minute costumes (Lincoln might be a tough one to pull off…) and if you’re not dressing up, preferring to stay in with a hot cup of tea and something good to read, check out these profiles:

1.  Daniel Day Lewis – As much as I love movies I haven’t yet joined Lewis’s devoted legion, though I’m sure after this fall, I will happily take my place among them. I’m unabashedly mainstream, even in my choice of presidents and Lincoln is by far and large my favorite. And as Speilberg is my favorite director, I’m looking forward his biopic “Lincoln,” out this November 16th. 

Daniel Day Lewis as Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”

Quotable Quote:

It sounds pretentious, I know. I recognize all the practical work that needs to be done, the dirty work, which I love: the work in the soil, the rooting around in the hope that you might find a gem. But I need to believe that there is a cohesive mystery that ties all these things together, and I try not to separate them.
                              -Daniel Day Lewis on his method of acting, which he prefers not to disect. 

2. Daniel Craig – I watched “Casino Royale” alone on Christmas Day, near midnight and was instantly in love. Not with Craig, but with the elegant, mysterious world Martin Campbell created and Craig’s tortured, dark Bond, the most serious I’ve ever seen him but who despite what critics say, could still order a martini with a smirk. I’m not sure if he is my favorite, but “Casino Royale” and, I hope “Skyfall” will be among the best Bond movies out there.

Photo by Annie Leibovitz, from Vanityfair.com.

3. (Really) Old People.  With my grandmother in the hospital as the result of an entirely preventable illness, reading this article makes me think: what if… which is never a good thought at a time like this. Regardless, the findings of Dan Buettner and his partners is fascinating and definitely something to think about, not to mention implement in one’s life.

Meet Stamatis Moraitis, whom in his mid-60s, doctors diagnosed with lung cancer, giving him 9 months to live. Today, 35 years later, he is 97 and cancer free, never having had a day of cancer treatment in his life. Spoooky.  Photo by Andrea Frazzetta/LUZphoto for The New York Times.

4. Jack Dorsey – My, and it seems the world’s new favorite tech genius who cofounded Twitter and is now head of Square, a service you will soon see at your local Starbucks. Having worked for the CEO of a big company and personally crushed on a future tech leader, both of whom were middle children, Dorsey’s birth order fits the bill. What’s more, I like the way he runs his companies, with his own blend of “loose-tight properties” which entails “autonomy on the shop floor but working under centralized values,” a model I will likely employ it in my own household when it comes to child rearing. (I’m being serious. This is my takeaway from business leaders I admire: what kind of parent I aim to be). Anyway, his next act may be running for mayor of NYC! Those lucky Big Applers.

One of Dorsey’s rough sketches that led to Square. Quality of penmanship and level of genius appear to be adverse correlations. Image taken from Forbes.com.

That said (or read), stay safe this Halloween. My heart goes out to the battered east coast.