Weekly Notes #4

• After last week's shooting at Umpqua Community College, this teacher wrote about the unbearable weight we put on too many people's shoulders when we refuse to engage in productive conversations about a really tough, emotional topic like gun control.
• The thought of spending hundreds of dollars on custom jeans is outrageous to me. But maybe it isn't just the jeans you're paying for -- it's the total experience.
• The New Yorker describes Sue Rahr's strategy called LEED, "listening and explaining with equity and dignity." sounds like an amazing policing strategy, and a really effective life strategy.
• Living wage? CNN Money profiles a month of earning and spending for a single working mom, earning minimum wage. It's reality and it's no good.
• After all this heavy stuff, I've got to share this excerpt from an interview of Karl Lagerfeld in British Vogue. Always reliable for a meme-ready quote, he says, "I am all fake but not remade."