First Prize, Sports Action Singles. Feb. 12, 2012, Batu Sangkar, West Sumatra, Indonesia. Wei Seng Chen/Malaysia.

When I lived in Paris, my wife and I often picniced in the Luxembourg Gardens, by the long pool in the mossy shade of oak trees. A bottle of red wine was a must, plus a warm baguette and fresh cheese, tomatoes, and fruits plucked straight from the market at Place Maubert.

I was reminded of those delightful outings this morning when I saw the latest winners of the World Press Photos annual competition. In the Spring, the Luxembourg Gardens would line all the first, second, and third prize winners in the various categories on the fence along the edge of the park, and Ali and I would wander by, pausing over our favorites. This year, I have no doubt which one would have held us rapt for the longest.

You see, this epidemic of niceness in the literary world these days I find infuriating. It is everywhere—in book reviews. On the sleeves and back covers of books. In online forums like GoodReads. Granted, some books truly are so brilliant as to be unassailable. The vast majority, however, have low points, sloppy phrases, characters that seem off or ill-defined, plot twists that are inexpertly handled. The margins of my books are scribbled with high praise and curse words, call outs, and cautionary notes alike. At the end of the book, the way those high points and low points counterbalance leads to my ultimate judgement of the book. It is, I feel, a critical part of my job as a writer.

That a quote from Elissa Schappell, the co-founder of Tin House who headlined last night at the Franklin Park Reading Series. She had the difficult task of following Robert Lopez, who read two clips from his book Asunder and held the room rapt for twenty straight minutes. But Schappell was equally moving, mixing humor and sadness and anger and pitch-perfect faux British accents as a counterbalance to the very real drama in her story.

"One night of passion, and I spend the rest of my life digging a grave."

After the reading concluded, I bought both books (Schappell's is the acclaimed "Blueprints for Building Better Girls") and talked with the authors. What a priviledge to live in a city where so many inspiring figures devote their lives to the literary craft. I'm not all about kissing writers' asses, mind you. I left last month's reading series disappointed and unsure if I would return for this month's set of writers. But tonight I was reminded of the great joy that listening to artists share their work in a room of fellow artists can provide.

"This morning in America’s highest court, freedom seems to be less about the absence of constraint than about the absence of shared responsibility, community, or real concern for those who don’t want anything so much as healthy children, or to be cared for when they are old. Until today, I couldn’t really understand why this case was framed as a discussion of “liberty.” This case isn’t so much about freedom from government-mandated broccoli or gyms. It’s about freedom from our obligations to one another, freedom from the modern world in which we live. It’s about the freedom to ignore the injured, walk away from those in peril, to never pick up the phone or eat food that’s been inspected. It’s about the freedom to be left alone. And now we know the court is worried about freedom: the freedom to live like it’s 1804."

A child bathes from a public tap in his neighborhood in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on March 6, 2012. A UNICEF report says unhygienic conditions cause an estimated 1. 2 million child deaths before the age of five from diarrhea worldwide every year. The report says in urban areas access to improved water and sanitation is not keeping pace with population growth. (Eranga Jayawardena/Associated Press)

Men bathe on a water pipe above a sewage drain in New Delhi on December 20, 2011. (Kevin Frayer/Associated Press)

And here was their explanation, something about improving their ability to provide top-notch journalism. One thing is clear: If ever there were a doubt that New York's most estimable paper is slowly and surely marching towards a pay-only site, this seems to dispel it. Maybe readers we'll get 2 or 3 free articles a month, if they're lucky. Something about this really bothers me, and that from the perspective of a guy whose living is dictated by the success or failure of these publications. I'm just not sure that charging for content is the way to go. Ultimately everyone might get there; for the time being, I'll resort to the numerous other publications on the web that don't charge for content and do do a damn fine job covering the news -- politico, salon, slate, bleacher report, etc.

A siberian husky is ready to start at the sled dog race (Hendrik Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images) #

One of my favorite stories I've written is about Lance Mackey, a little known dog musher who was convinced he would win the 2007 Iditarod ... despite the fact that he had never finished in the top 3 of the race and only once had led briefly.

The reason he was so confident was because he had destiny on his side: His dad had won the Iditarod on his sixth try wearing bib number 13. Then along came his brother, who won the Iditarod on his sixth try wearing bib number 13. And 2007 was Lance's sixth Iditarod, for which he had drawn lucky bib number 13.

All of this came back to me this week when I saw a gallery of amazing photographs from this year's Iditarod. Mackey's story is now tucked away in Iditarod lore. As destiny had scripted, he won the Iditarod on his sixth try in blow-out fashion, like his brother and dad before him. He repeated the feat the next two years. I wrote the story for the Associated Press. Here's a reprint, as the online link seems to have vanished:

© Robert Capa © International Center of Photography / Magnum Photos

Slate's got a great collection of Hemingway photos up on its site today. This was taken at his hunting lodge in Sun Valley, Idaho, in 1940, after he returned from his time in Spain. Check the full album here.

This is not George's barbershop, nor is it the guy who cut my hair there, nor is it my head of hair, but it looks kind of like the place where I got my hair cut. Credit here goes to Gabriele Stabile of the NYTimes

Furthermore, forgive me if all of the context I just mentioned above—the wedding, the move, the accident, the rehab—are, in fact, just excuses buzzing around the much deeper, darker existential truth here: I'm terrified to get my hair cut in New York.

When I lived here in college, I got so many bad haircuts, and paid such a fortune for them, that it drove me to extremes: first, to a Latino barbershop down on 103rd street on the Upper West Side; I still remember the place, too, the big green sign, the salsa music inside, and the buzz cut that resulted, so shortly cropped on the sides that I could see my scalp. My stylist left a little tuft of bangs hanging down out front, proof that she had done what I asked for—to leave some good length.