Thirteen more Wednesdays—after this one—in 2014, and we’ll end the year with a Wednesday Curator special on New Year’s Eve (Wednesday, December 31, 2014). For this week I’m mostly going through the curator’s attic. Too many pieces I tagged that I haven’t shared yet.

I struggle most of all about what I’m ignoring. And those subjects are? Climate change, Ebola hemorrhagic fever, and guns. So Rebecca Solnit’s post for tomdispatch.com, at Salon on September 21, The Politics of Pretending are Killing Us really resonated. Now, Paul Krugman thinks climate may be cheap or even free, and he speaks his mind in Errors and Omissions in the New York Times on September 18. Even Mr. Krugman, though, would surely agree that at some point in time we have to start acting, collectively. (I’m sure not getting on the “green” bandwagon is an opportunity my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will look upon as an epic American failure.)

I’m proudly more than a little bit left of center. Whenever I think about myself on the political spectrum, the scene in Tootsie comes to mind where, asked to make Dustin Hoffman as Dorothy Michaels more attractive, the cameraman in New York says “How do you feel about Cleveland?” Way left!!! So I get emails every day from the “woe is me” incumbents, hollering about the newest million dollars being spent by the Kochs, what a schtunk John Boehner is, etc. Now, these Members of Congress are good and decent people, and Ms. J and I send them what we can, but the “give us money because of:  Kochs, etc.” doesn’t sit well. And in that vein I share with you, from Daily Kos on September 26, Senate Dems Have More Money, Because Citizens United is Killing Republicans. The article doesn’t suggest anyone can sit back and do nothing, but it does reflect the fact that, in the end, people matter.

Here is Four Words to Seem More Polite by Olga Khazan for The Atlantic on August 16. I found the title off-putting—how about focusing on being polite, not seeming so—but the article includes several truths and lots of good advice.

I ran across this piece from the Harvard Business Review, To Change Employee or Customer Behavior, Start Small, by John Beshears and Francesca Gino, posted on September 19. This pair does behavioral economics, which is a field that fascinates me. Read the post and see if what they’re saying clicks for you!

I’ve been following Tyson Ho for a couple of months on Serious Eats, as he reports on what it takes to open a new ‘cue restaurant in Brooklyn, circa 2014. Here’s How I Built a Barbecue Restaurant in Brooklyn: On Writing a Menu, from August 26. Also, and in closing, here’s some fine looking food from Serious Eats, The Best Things We Ate in August.