James Turner

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/16/opinion/sunday/james-turner.html

Version 0 of 1.

James Turner is the founder of Glimpse, an English nonprofit that advocates valuing friends and experiences more than the “stuff” advertisers pressure us to buy. The group’s first project was Citizens Advertising Takeover Service, in which members replaced the ads in a London tube station with pictures of adorable cats.

READING I just finished “Uprooted: On the Trail of the Green Man” by Nina Lyon. It’s ostensibly a book about the Green Man, a very old English icon who represents nature, fertility and the spirit of the land. His face is carved into lots of British churches, despite having nothing to do with the Christian tradition. The book is very funny, especially when the author tries to start a kind of urbane sex cult in the Green Man’s honor, which doesn’t really take off amongst the other mums in the village.

I’m also rereading “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe. That book had a massive influence on me in my teenage years. I’m still a little bit obsessed by that moment in the 1960s when things were thrown up in the air and people didn’t know what was going to happen. I think we might be approaching another one of those moments now.

LISTENING I’m listening to Christine and the Queens. The sound has quite a lot of Kate Bush influence, and she’s bilingual so she sings in English and French. I’ve also been listening to the Tom Waits album “Closing Time.” He’s one of those artists who passed me by until very recently. He’s a great storyteller, and his voice sounds like he’s singing at you from a bar at closing time.

WATCHING The most recent film I watched was “The White Helmets,” a new Netflix documentary about volunteers who pull people from the rubble in Syria. I’ve seen it a couple of times because I work for the advocacy group the Syria Campaign. Glimpse is my nights and weekends job. The film is actually very hopeful because even in the midst of such hatred there are people putting their lives at risk to save others.

For downtime I’m watching “Stranger Things.” I suppose the most distinct thing about it is its evocation of childhood in the ’80s. It made me remember aspects of my childhood that I had forgotten — sticking radios to the handlebars of my bike, making up code names for my friends. I had a club called the Skateboard Gang when I was 9. We had business cards printed with Snoopy on them.

FOLLOWING A lot of my time is taken up with replying to people who have seen the cats project online and want to get involved or just ask a question about it. At one point we had about 200 emails a day, mostly from people wanting to do their own takeover. We’re going to help make it happen, hopefully.

WEARING I bought a blue cotton jacket in Montpellier, France, recently which must be about 40 years old. My friends in Norway taught me that if you wear a thick cotton jacket on top of a big wool sweater you can survive even the coldest temperatures. I’m a recovering gear nerd, and I love discovering how older, natural materials are actually just as effective as the modern stuff. Our granddads had it right.