It's a familiar scene: You're waiting for a train, or for a chronically late friend. Bored, you reach for your phone to pull up Twitter -- but you left your phone at home, or the battery's dead. You stare about, panicked, desperate for something stimulating to occupy the next few seemingly endless minutes. Billboards to read? A couple making out to ogle? Anything!

What if there were another way? French startup Short Édition's new short story dispensers, launched in Grenoble, France, by Christophe Sibieude, make getting fun new reading material as easy as using a vending machine. (Oh: but free.)

We've seen book vending machines before, but these short story devices are all about convenience. The pieces are printed out like receipts, onto thin scrolls of paper that are easy to carry around or discard. And if you like that many websites have begun to advertise how long each article takes to read before you decide to click through, you'll appreciate that you can pick a story based on how much time you have available. Stories, selected otherwise randomly, come in lengths of one, three and five minutes.

Unfortunately for those of you reading this in English, these are French short story machines, all eight of them currently located in Grenoble, scattered in the public areas where you might find yourself with a few minutes to kill: city hall, the tourism office, libraries. 

Still, if no short fiction pop-up dispensary has appeared in your own locale as of yet, take this as an inspiration to load up your smartphone or tablet with a few choice stories to indulge in the next time you're at loose ends. There's nothing like a piece of literature to turn a few throw-away minutes into a transformative experience.

H/T This Is Colossal

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NEW YORK (AP) -- We've heard it through the grapevine - "Motown the Musical" is coming back to Broadway.

Motown Records founder Berry Gordy and producer Kevin McCollum said Monday that the musical that tells the story of how the record label rose and fell and then rose again will return to New York starting July 2016 for an 18-week stand.

McCollum said the show has gotten stronger since opening cold on Broadway two years ago and Gordy has been sharpening the story. "It's a much crisper and shorter and has a real pop to it," he said.

The show is currently on tour and will play the holidays in Washington, D.C. Early next year, it hits Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee, Ohio and Wisconsin, among other places. It also plays the Shaftesbury Theatre in London's West End in February.

McCollum, whose shows currently include "Something Rotten!" and "Hand to God," said the "Motown" creators have tinkered with the musical since it left Broadway, something not possible in New York. "Mr. Gordy doesn't quit and neither do I," he said.

For his part, Gordy said: "We tweaked a lot of stuff and the road show got tighter and tighter. And now it's coming back to Broadway and we're very happy about that because that's where it started. It was raw and they accepted us and loved us, and so we're so excited to get back to where it started when it was rough."

The show first began performances in March 2013 at the Lunt Fontanne Theatre and closed this January after over 700 performances, routinely breaking $1 million a week at the box office. For this upcoming stint, the show will be at the Nederlander Theatre, a smaller venue but one McCollum thinks is a better fit.

The story begins and ends in 1983 - Motown's 25th anniversary - and travels back in time to show how Gordy helped start the careers of Diana Ross, Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and many more.

"Ultimately, 'Motown' is the story about the American dream. One man, who against all odds, built a company that changed music as much as Steve Jobs changed music," McCollum said.

The show, directed by Charles Randolph-Wright, has one of the most amazing scores, including "War," ''Reach Out and Touch," ''What's Going On" ''Sign, Sealed, Delivered," ''My Girl" and "Dancing in the Streets." The show earned four Tony Award nominations.

"This music connects so many people - white, black, young, old, rich, poor. It's very universal and that's why I think coming back is the right thing," McCollum said. "This is the music that defined our country and art and civil rights. It continues to be resonant in today's very troubling, tumultuous times."

For Gordy, 85, who is a co-producer of the show with McCollum and Doug Morris, said "Motown the Musical" is no mere musical for him. It's his life up there, after all.

"So many people tell me that they relive so much of their life through the songs and the stories. I usually let them know I'm reliving it all the time and it's wonderful and beautiful - the good times and the bad times," he said. "I'm so glad that the love lasted between us all so strongly."

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Between your meticulous sister's need to host the perfect holiday meal and your picky brother's refusal to accept any gift without a hint of cynical criticism, the most wonderful time of the year can  turn into a struggle to stay calm and chipper. Unless you literally run on sugary cookies and jam-packed sale racks, you might need a quick escape from the nearly inescapable rush that is late-November through early January.

If your reading chair is your happy place, you might want to cuddle up with something other than the usual heart-rending thriller or page-turning fantasy. Short story collections, personal essays, memoirs and historical fiction often move at a pace that allows for quiet contemplation -- something you might be longing for after weeks of planning, chatting and gift-hunting.

Honeydew by Edith Pearlman

In a tradition established by Alice Munro and Grace Paley, and, until recently, under-recognized by the gatekeepers of literary fiction, Pearlman writes quite stories about the blips of tumult that can stir up quiet lives. She’s been writing short stories -- and only short stories -- for decades, chronicling the lives of soup kitchen staffers and academics, earnest blue collar workers and whimsical academics. Most of the stories are set in her native Massachusetts; all of them reveal something tender and universal about everyday life.

Fools by Joan Silber

Silber’s 2013 short story collection may have a few dramatic elements: adultery, theft and impulsive escape from the grips of stifling family life are a few of the page-turning plotlines. But Silber’s stories are told through the rich colloquialisms of her narrators, who mostly confront their troubles coolly and pragmatically. Each story in Fools confronts the question: What makes an action foolish, as opposed to brave? And when is it better to be foolish, as opposed to steadfast in our established beliefs?

Single, Carefree, Mellow by Katherine Heiny

In a fresh, lively update on Alice Munro or Edith Pearlman’s odes to the quotidian, Katherine Heiny writes stories that quietly highlight the dramas of dating life, from teenagehood through adulthood. Heiny writes about both lovers growing estranged through social media, and young girls learning about the power of their own sexualities, with wry, almost resigned humor. Single, Carefree, Mellow is a wise and amusing look at girlhood and womanhood.

When I Was a Child I Read Books by Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson might be the first fiction writer ever to be publicly interviewed by the POTUS -- which goes to show how levelheaded and thoughtful her opinions on writing, and on more political issues, are. If you’ve never read anything by the chronicler of Midwestern family life, start with her novels. But if you’ve discovered the magic of Home or Lila, her essays are definitely as worthy of your time. In When I Was a Child I Read Books, Robinson fluidly contemplates significance of community and the power of the individual. You don’t have to be a religious thinker to find beauty in Robinson’s poetic musings.

The Double Life of Liliane by Lily Tuck

There’s something uniquely calming and meditative about reading a memoir; the past is neatly organized in a way that makes perfect sense. Lily Tuck’s latest novel isn’t exactly a memoir, but it sits somewhere between novel and autobiography, blurring the lines between related memory and imagined possible scenarios. Like Tuck, heroine Liliane’s parents divorced when she was young, wreaking personal havoc that mirrored the tragedies unfolding in Europe at the same time. To make sense of her fractured life, Tuck -- and Liliane -- piece it together in a sensical plot.

Read our review of The Double Life of Liliane

Neverhome by Laird Hunt

Hunt takes on a new approach to writing about the front lines of war, and the individuals swept up in the violence of combat. Rather than relate the dark scenes with muscular prose, Hunt tells his story about a woman disguised as a male solider through letters -- letters about missing home, letters about the principles that guided her to go undercover, letters about the daily life of a solider. The story is loosely based on a bundle of letters Hunt stumbled upon written by a real undercover female soldier -- An Uncommon Soldier: The Civil War Letters of Sarah Rosetta Wakeman -- and is a smart work of historical fiction that encourages contemplation.

Read our review of Neverhome

Infinite Home by Kathleen Alcott

If your own family has you feeling jittery, Alcott’s story about an unconventional, rag-tag crew united only by their generous landlady is a fun reprieve. Protagonist Edith, spurned by her conniving son, has built a happy family of her own among her tenants -- until, no thanks to her own kid, she gets slammed with potential eviction as her mind begins to worsen. The unsteady state of their home and their landlady forges an even closer bond between Edith and her housemates in this lyrical meditation on what really makes up a family.

Here by Richard McGuire

Here is a mostly wordless graphic novel that can be flipped through quickly for a stop-motion look at the life of a single house over the course of millennia. But, that’s not how we recommend reading it. Instead, taking the time to soak up the details of each scene -- the offhand conversations between lovers and family members, party-goers and homebuyers, the subtle redecorations and the repeated movements and phrases. This book is a heartwarming time capsule, and fluid look at the way our interior lives have evolved, and how they’ve remained the same.

Read our review of Here 

The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits

The title of Julavits’s latest book is appended by a descriptor not commonly found on bookstore shelves. The Folded Clock is a Diary, a collection of musings written offhandedly each day by its author. It’s been scrubbed of identifying details, but otherwise remains a deeply personal collection of thoughts about motherhood, language, and what success really means. Julavitz writes hilariously about “The Bachelor,” and touchingly about her relationship with her husband. If anything, the book’s a comforting reminder that we’re not alone in our desires and neuroses.

Read our essay on diary-keeping in the Information Age

Can’t and Won’t by Lydia Davis

Genre-defying is a hackneyed phrase these days, slapped onto any smart book with a fantastical element. But Davis truly does fit the description! Her stories are quick, dreamy snapshots of a mood or a sentiment, and they take the shape of the idle thoughts that make up most of our days. Davis’s spare language is comforting and digestible, but leaves ample room for contemplation and imagination, too.

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Rather than simply walking down the aisle with their beloved 2-year-old Siberian Husky Ryder, this Tennessee couple included him in a far more integral way.

Josh and Addie Burnette decided to get married with just three days notice last November. So they decided to make Ryder their videographer, with the help of a GoPro camera. 

"We got Ryder a year after we've been dating, we treat her as our child," Addie told The Huffington Post. "So she was always going to be involved in our wedding. The idea of having a GoPro on her seemed obvious."

Josh uploaded Ryder's work to Youtube earlier this month in honor of the couple's one year anniversary.  

(Story continues after the video.)

The pair tied the knot at Roan Mountain outside Johnson City, Tennessee, where they had their first date 10 years ago.

The snow was a "fun and beautiful" surprise and the pair couldn't have asked for a better day -- or videographer, Addie told HuffPost. 

"It’s the only video and unregrettably so," she said. "There’s a lot of surprising moments in her footage. It almost made me so sad because she’s always so curious and interested in what’s going on -- there's this whole other world -- it’s the small moments you don’t realize she’s a part of the experience."

Josh, a film director and editor, edited the video -- but there's no denying that Ryder handled her job like a pro.

Check out some photos from their wedding below:

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Out singer-songwriter Solomon Ray is putting a fresh, electronic spin on Beck's "Guess I'm Doing Fine," and we've got a first look at the music video. 

The tune, which first surfaced in February, marks yet another step in the transition from Ray's rap roots to a more hybrid pop sound, which is still heavily rooted in hip-hop. It's the first cut from "Why Boys Cry," his new EP, which is slated for an early 2016 release. 

Although Ray cites Kanye West as his biggest musical influence, he told The Huffington Post that covering Beck was a no-brainer, because growing up with the Grammy Award winner's music really allowed him "to feel comfortable writing abstract verses" in his own work. 

Listen to his full "Guess I'm Doing Fine" cover below: 

Although he's openly gay, Ray says that expressing any specific LGBT themes in his music is only done "inadvertently," but that a recurring motif has been "isolation" and "pain and how we, as humans, interpret it." 

Despite its title, "Why Boys Cry" will be a departure of sorts for the California-born artist, as it's the first time he's "not writing songs about heartbreak." 

No matter what, he's giving us all the feels. 

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Police in Altamonte Springs, Florida, "shut down" a senior citizens' clubhouse for illegal gambling. What were the elderly Jewish residents doing? Playing Mah Jongg.

The standing Thursday afternoon Mah Jongg game at the Escondido Condominium clubhouse came to a screeching halt after a male resident complained that gambling was involved. Zelda King, 87, who organized the weekly game, said the daily "loss limit" is $4.

"That's gambling?" she asked incredulously of The Huffington Post.

King's game-mates range in age from 86 to almost 90. She has played for most of the 13 years she's lived in the complex, after moving here from New Jersey. "It wasn't just us they shut down," said King. The condo management put up a notice that suspended all poker, bingo and other Mah Jongg games too until the matter could be resolved.

Turns out there was nothing illegal about any of it. The Heritage Jewish News, which broke the story after King's daughter called them, reported that Altamonte Springs has no prohibition against Mah Jongg gambling. The only relevant reference found by the paper was in the state's gambling laws, which establish that “Certain penny-ante games are not crimes; ‘Penny-ante game’ means a game or series of games of poker, pinochle, bridge, rummy, canasta, hearts, dominoes, or mahjong in which the winnings of any player in a single round, hand, or game do not exceed $10 in value."

Playing Mah Jongg is such a deeply rooted tradition among Jews that word of the problem in Florida even reached Israel. The Times of Israel noted that the game, which comes from China, has been played by Jews since, well, forever.

King described the resident who ratted them out as a "troublemaker" who has complained about multiple condo issues in the past. But in the spirit of the season, she declined to name him.

Meanwhile, her game will resume the Thursday after Thanksgiving.

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Every writer of color and most readers of color know the jolt of seeing a name like yours in print. It's a facsimile of the nod, the silent acknowledgment of a face like yours in a crowd. 

Usually the nod loses power over time because one of two things happens: we move, by osmosis, to more diverse rooms and cities, and those faces become more commonplace, or we don't, so we make real friends with our superficial allies. In terms of writing, though, the feeling never really fades. The publishing industry literalizes, in its pages and screens, Zora Neale Hurston's epigrammatic line, "I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background." Every fresh byline attributed to, or even suggestive of, a person of color is still uncommon enough in media circles that it leaves an impression.

Seriously, why are bylines still so white? That's a question four New York writers asked each other so often that they decided to do something about it. This past April, they launched Writers of Color, a searchable online database of writers of color organized by location and topic. Their goal is to serve as a resource for editors to easily find and publish more writers of color, no matter the outlet or subject. 

Jazmine Hughes, 24, an associate digital editor at The New York Times, and Durga Chew-Bose, 29, a freelance writer, were complaining about the homogeneity of the publications they loved over brunch, but, as Hughes told The Huffington Post, "instead of just stopping when the check came, we mobilized." They put together a memo and Google Doc to send out to their networks, and when the responses shaped up to more than just a side project, Hughes called in her colleague, "tech wiz" Vijith Assar, a software engineer at the Times and sometime freelancer himself.

Assar initially signed up to be listed in the database, but the project excited him into a self-professed "nerd blackout," and he soon turned their spreadsheet into a full-fledged web site. He also brought in Buster Bylander, a college friend turned fellow freelancer, to handle the site's design and visuals.

The prototype of Writers of Color, the email and submission form, launched in April and became a full site in June; Fast Company featured it in its "Today in Tabs" newsletter. So far there are about 750 writers listed along with their location, Twitter handle, and email address. The project has been well-received in publishing circles, and "a few places have gone as far as adding us to their recruitment process and listing us on internal human resources documents," says Assar. 

Writers who have found work through the site include Washington, D.C.-based essayist Nneka M. Okona and Evette Dionne, who now writes for Refinery 29. 

Still, on the flip side of any diversity effort is the specter of tokenism. The project founders feel this acutely, despite a climate of best intentions from both editors and publications. Chew-Bose said, "I can usually tell when I'm being pitched an assignment or when an editor is reaching out to me as means to diversify his or her publication." Assar says, "It has been strange to realize that my demographic qualities are valued by some publications but a barrier at others. Both positions are uncomfortable."

To be sure, the landscape is improving for writers of color on many counts. Even literal ones, like in the first annual VIDA Women in Literary Arts "Women of Color" count, which tallies those bylines in 12 publications including the New Republic and Harper's. Yet, this is the same year in which a white poet donned textual yellowface (by adopting a Chinese pen name) to publish a poem - pretending to be us while pretending we don't exist, as Jenny Zhang wrote incisively. Given such context, a byline is rather more political than it seems. 

VIDA acknowledges that a difficulty in its survey was the impossibility of "assign[ing] race to any writer," which meant it had to rely on self-reports. In contrast, an advantage of the Writers of Color project is that its participants have already identified themselves.

Ultimately, the luxuries afforded to white writers are negative: the freedom from having to represent, the freedom from setting a precedent, the freedom from speaking on behalf of.

Chew-Bose, who has previously written on identity and race for publications including BuzzFeed and the Guardian, said, "I'd love the luxury of nuance afforded to white writers without feeling like I'm betraying who I am." But she adds, "I can no longer simply write about race... the personal essay with regards to me being brown has exhausted me."

Her sentiment brings up questions on the demand side of the writers' market. That is, do we also need an "Editors of Color" database? As Assar put it, "Publications often promote writers into editing positions," so Writers of Color likely helps both sides. But the founders have open-sourced the site code. In case anyone cares to pick up where they left off.

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The holiday season can be a stressful time for parents. Between the decorating and the cooking and the gift-wrapping, to-do lists just keep getting longer. And then there are your in-laws...

Funny parenting duo Laughing Moms teamed up with SheKnows Media to create a music video that sums up the stress of hosting your in-laws during the holidays. Parodying The Weeknd's "Can't Feel My Face," the song features spot-on lyrics like, "Gotta clean this place when I'm with you, so you'll love me"; "'I know how he likes his shirts folded.' She told me, 'Here I'll show you how'"; and "I start to stress eat when I'm with you, but I love you."

Bottoms up to all the stress-eating parents out there hosting out-of-town guests.

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"Most of my photos are grounded in people. I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a person's face." -- Steve McCurry

Photographer Steve McCurry has been traveling the globe for decades, capturing images of war, trauma, desperation, hope and joy. Known for his iconic photograph Sharbat Gula (1984), also referred to as Afghan Girl, McCurry has photographed major political events and conflicts in countries including Burma, Yemen, Afghanistan and Cambodia. 

Yet it was his first trip to India and its neighboring countries in the late 1970s that provided inspiration and subject matter that catapulted his career, according to Lia Zaaloff, co-curator of SteveMcCurry: India, an exhibit at New York City's Rubin Museum of Art.

Through April 4, 2016, visitors will have the opportunity to view images from the photographer's travels in a museum for the very first time. Many of the 37 photographs on display are considered iconic, and some have never been seen by the public.

A master at working with light, color and connecting with his subjects, McCurry has described India as one of the most important places to which he's traveled in the past 30 years.

"I have visited India over 80 times but in some ways I feel I've barely scratched the surface," McCurry told The Huffington Post. "It was the first country that I traveled to as a young photographer, and I found it so unique with its varied cultures and customs and regions. "

His images of India and its surrounding countries have helped shape the fields of photography and photojournalism, showcasing the complexity of everyday life. Scroll down to see a selection of the images on display below.

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It's no secret that dance can be a pricey hobby for young kids and the parents who foot the bill. The cost of classes, coupled with expensive leotards, tights and every type of shoe imaginable may make the dream seem out of reach, but renowned ballerina Misty Copeland told HuffPost Live that aspiring dancers shouldn't feel discouraged.

Copeland, who made history last year as the first-ever black female principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, said that even she didn't have the funds to pay for her instruction alone.

"I mean, my entire training basis was from scholarships. I did not have the means to be a part of the ballet world," she told host Caroline Modarressy-Tehrani on Monday.

While she acknowledged that money can be an obstacle, she encouraged dancers to seek out programs that "promote diversity" and seek out people that are passionate about the art.  

"I think it's just about finding the right program. Project Plié, I think, is a good one for people to research through ABT.org," she said.

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Misty Copeland here.

Want more HuffPostLive? Stream us anytime on Go90, Verizon's mobile social entertainment network, and listen to our best interviews on iTunes.

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For a "Star Wars"-loving parent, the first time you watch the original movie with your kid is a very big deal. 

In this new video from How To Be A Dad, Andy Herald introduces his 6-year-old son to "Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope" and films his adorable reaction throughout the viewing. Their cinematic journey involves action-packed sequences, epic music, special effects and as the dad quickly learns, a lot of questions -- 278 to be exact.

But nothing compares to the dad's satisfaction with his son's final review: "The amazingest thing ever I ever saw in my whole entire, whole entire, whole entire, whole entire, whole entire life."

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LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) -- University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto has decided to cover a campus mural from 1934 that shows scenes from state history, including black workers in a tobacco field and a Native American with a tomahawk.

Capilouto wrote on the school's website Monday that he met with a group of students recently and understood their frustrations over the mural.

Capilouto says he'll have the Memorial Hall fresco shrouded until a more permanent solution is found. The mural was painted directly into the plaster, making its removal difficult. He says an explanation of the cover will be placed nearby.

In 2006, senators of the University of Kentucky's student government passed a resolution to remove the mural, but then-President Lee Todd said he thought the artwork was an important historical and artistic artifact.

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This kid is shining bright like a diamond, thanks to a superstar artist.

Henri “Kai” Grabill, a 2-year-old from Des Moines, Iowa, recently had his walker painted to look like a glittering galaxy by tattoo artist Nathan Gerger, the Des Moines Register reported.

Kai had previously been using a loaner walker, and when the family bought him one of his own, the toddler’s mother, Kourtney Knapp, wanted to make it special. The 2-year-old has a rare chromosome abnormality that causes him to have hypotonia, which reduces muscle strength and makes it difficult to walk. Because Kai and his walker are so small, Knapp had difficulty finding ways to make the device unique.

"I didn't want it to just be another medical device we have to deal with," Knapp told The Huffington Post. "I wanted him to see it and be excited to walk with it instead of feeling like a daily chore."

So, in early November, she contacted Gerger, who works at a nearby tattoo studio, and sent him a picture of Kai’s favorite shoes -- a pair of space-themed Converse sneakers -- for inspiration to create a design for the walker.

“I have painted casts before and done face paint projects but never any hardware like this,” Gerger told HuffPost. “With kids it seems like it's the little things that make all the difference, so why not?”

Gerger got to work and covered the walker in a spectacular design of shining stars and swirling arms of dust. When he presented the custom design to his young client, the response was very positive.

"He doesn't like anyone touching it, and he goes where he wants to go," Knapp said. "Instead of us leading him, he leads us."

You go, Kai!

H/T USA Today

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We are who we surround ourselves with. In some cases, we are able to pick who that is, as with our close friends and lovers. Other times, we are handed a group of individuals that, at first glance, doesn't sync with our values and personalities, whether by blood, by work or by mere geography. 

The final quarter of each year tends to amplify just how successfully we've navigated these social structures. Holiday ads encourage making a long list and checking it twice. Merry jingles play over images of pleasant people in sweaters around a ham. Something in us wants to believe in the perfected November and December bliss, even if we've never seen it in real life, which can lead to higher levels of stress and sadness around this time of year. 

These feelings can hit hardest when it comes to how people perceive their families, whether or not close-knit social bonds are the ones they were born into or ones they created later in life. While parsing out these feelings in real life can be difficult, sometimes it helps to see the situation from a good work of fiction. These 13 books are just a few examples of stories that mirror close familial relationships as they truly are, in all of their complexities and hidden joys.

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When you're a kid, adults don't take too kindly to you playing with your food. When you're an artist -- well, that's another story.

Last year, artist Hannah Rothstein celebrated Thanksgiving with a photo series of dinners plated in the style of famous artists, including Georges Seurat and Andy Warhol. This year she's back with a new roster of artists -- from Keith Haring to Gustav Klimt -- and another hearty serving of turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, cranberry sauce, and corn arranged with stylistic flair.

Rothstein's plates faithfully adhere to the iconic artists' signature styles (only, you know, in traditional Thanksgiving foods). Jackson Pollack's plate is splattered and sprayed with gravy and cranberry purée, and Pablo Picasso's is in several neatly rearranged shards, while Seurat's displays dotted rows of corn and crumbs. On Klimt's plate, even the corn kernels have been coated in his trademark gold. 

If seeing food tossed about, gilded, and even suspended in tanks of water makes some readers think reproachfully of the food-insecure in our own communities, the Thanksgiving-minded mission behind Rothstein's project may be some reassurance. Limited-edition prints of the plate photographs are on sale, with a portion of the proceeds earmarked for the SF-Marin Food Bank.

See more of Rothstein's whimsical plates below, and head to her website to see the full series.

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The right pair of drapes can snap the mood of an entire home into place, just like the right rug can really tie a room together. Decor is, after all, an expression of what you want your dwelling space to be, and, by proxy, what you want to spend your time doing and thinking about. Busy florals lend themselves to energetic conversation; calming hues create an air of contemplation. In this light, domestic spaces and the ways we arrange them are worth celebrating -- they can be artistic, expressive and deeply personal.

But when domesticity becomes a mandate rather than a passing interest -- as it has for women for centuries -- choosing, creating and discussing artful drapery can feel like a heavy burden. As you probably read in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the pressure and mundanity of being home-bound lends itself to a loss of individuality.

That’s the premise of photographer Patty Carroll’s cluster of photo series, "Anonymous Women." Taken over the course of two decades, Carroll’s photos examine how femininity and domestic life drown out a woman’s ability to express herself. The subjects in Carroll’s images blend seamlessly with the textiles that make up their environments. A woman cloaked in a zebra print sheet can barely be differentiated from her zebra-clad home; a woman wearing warm floral hues is camouflaged by a backdrop in the same print.

Carroll recently launched a Kickstarter project to fund an anthology of her work bound in a hardcover book. On the site, she writes, “The project is not just about photography; it is about and for all sorts of women and their homes. I hope you will support the funding of this project, because it is really not just for me, but for the big picture of women.”

Of her inspiration for the project, Carroll said in an earlier interview with The Huffington Post, “I always wanted to have a 'perfect' home where everyone got along, was sober, was home for dinner, and had towels from a store, not pilfered from the last motel we stayed in [...] Drapery becomes a symbol in this work for an established, traditional home environment where the decor is considered seriously. After all, a perfect home does not have mismatched furniture and styles.”

Support Carroll's project on Kickstarter here.

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Imagine you're arguing with your uncle, again, over who knows more about the upcoming election. Or a fight breaks out between your brother and mother, again, because a certain child refuses to answer his parent's phone calls. Instead of hammering home your views on Bernie Sanders' campaign -- or stepping in between a monumental yell fest betwixt mom and son -- what if you just pulled out a coloring book and went to town? It sounds childish, but, so does your 35-year-old sibling right now.

For the adult set, coloring has been growing in popularity over the past year or so as a sort of coping mechanism, used to counter the pitfalls of busy, everyday life. Take the advice of psychologists -- who recommend coloring as a stress-relieving technique and an alternative to mediation -- and seek refuge this holiday season in a few black-and-white pages begging for adornment. Who knows, maybe you and Uncle Fred will find middle ground in your shared love of coloring inside the lines.

Here are the 13 best adult coloring books out there:

1. The Mindfulness Colouring Book: Anti-Stress Art Therapy for Busy People

Who would like this? Your yogi uncle or meditation junkie best friend. 

2. Color Her: A Mix 'N Match Coloring Book

Who would like this? Your feminist sister-in-law or budding riot grrrl cousin. (For more on artists Iris Glaser and Katrin Leblond's book, check out their website.)

3. I Love My Hair

Who would like this? Fans of mohawks, updos and everything in between, but particularly anyone who worships historical hair icons like Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette and Diana Ross. (Check out Andrea Pippins' website or our past coverage of the book for more.)

4. The Stoner's Coloring Book: Coloring for High-Minded Adults

Who would like this? Just kidding, you know exactly who would like this.

5. Coloring Flower Mandalas

Who would like this? Your blissfully zen grandfather or recovering hippie aunt. (See more here.)

6. Grace Miceli's Feminist Art Coloring Book

Who would like this? A die-hard Yoko Ono fan or anyone who appreciates the minimalist cartoons of Grace Miceli. (See our coverage of the book here.)

7. Secret Garden

Who would like this? Who doesn't love intricately crafted garden scenes? If you need convincing, Johanna Basford's Enchanted Forest is similarly wonderful. 

8. Coloring for Grown-Ups

Who would like this? Your comedy-loving sister and her new significant other. Bonus: there is a beer goggles activity fun page!

9. Unicorns Are Jerks

Who would like this? Me, apparently, because my sister just gifted it to me and it's awesome.

10. The Tattoo Colouring Book

Who would like this? Your tattoo-heavy dad, duh. 

11. The Between the Lines Series

Who would like this? The contemporary art fiend in the family, because this compilation is full of original art by the likes of Erik Parker, Marilyn Minter and the estate of Félix González-Torres. 

12. The Indie Rock Coloring Book

Who would like this? Your boyfriend who can't help but argue with his three brothers and just needs to focus on a Broken Social Scene maze instead.

13. The Pixel Coloring Book

Who would like this? Your younger sister who's obsessed with retro video games.

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New York City street artist Ann Lewis and other activists protested gentrification and rising rents last week, as the Brooklyn Museum hosted a real estate summit for developers and investors. The next day, those issues got personal for Lewis when tenants in her building received eviction notices.

The timing was coincidental but resonant for Lewis, who goes by gilf! in her work and often addresses gentrification. For an ongoing project, she identifies buildings where small businesses and arts institutions have been pushed out by developers and large companies. She wraps them in custom-made yellow caution tape that reads, "gentrification in progress." 

Lewis also recently found out that the bar where she works is losing its lease. So she began selling rolls of the “gentrification in progress” tape Monday for others looking critically at gentrification to use as a tool to start conversations about changes in their neighborhoods.

Realizing what the tape says can be surprising and entertaining for someone who expects to see official police tape, Lewis said.

"The lightness of it lends itself to this discussion,” she said. “You’re not damaging anyone’s building, it’s not like you’re tagging ‘gentrification’ on people’s buildings, but what I think is interesting about this tape is it actually barricades people from interacting with certain spaces, which is exactly what gentrification does." 

Last year, Lewis and other street artists held a show in an East Village building that was set for demolition to make way for luxury condos. She recreated the kitchen of a family who had lived there, then smashed it to pieces with a sledgehammer that bore the label "progress." 

Lewis lives in Bushwick, an increasingly popular neighborhood where the median rent went up 23 percent between 2005 and 2013, according to New York University’s Furman Center. Fair housing advocates say the increase, which has occurred in neighborhoods throughout Brooklyn, is displacing low-income and long-time residents.

She moved to the neighborhood six years ago for a cheap live-work space, but plans to leave New York after Morgenstern Capital bought her building last month.

“There needs to be a way to develop communities in a manner that is beneficial to the people who exist there, and it’s not happening,” Lewis said. “I think it’s too late for New York. All of my friends are scattering in the wind.”

She is aware that an influx of artists is part of what makes neighborhoods attractive to developers. Artists who are displaced have a responsibility to recognize and combat the forces of gentrification in their new communities, Lewis said.

"It’s important for us to recognize these guys are on our coattails. What are we going to do to make sure that this doesn’t happen again?”

Kate Abbey-Lambertz covers sustainable cities, as well as land use, housing and inequality. Tips? Email: kate.abbey-lambertz@huffingtonpost.com.

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You know a Tom Hooper movie when you see one. Or at least that's what I said after seeing "The Danish Girl" for the first time at the Toronto Film Festival in September. After the triple punch of HBO miniseries "John Adams," Best Picture winner "The King's Speech" and Broadway favorite-turned-film "Les Misérables," Hooper's ornate period-piece stylings and sensitive overlapping themes have crystallized. "The Danish Girl" picks up where they left off.

Based on the true story of Lili Elbe, a 1920s painter who was born into a man's body as Einar Wegener and underwent the first gender confirmation surgery, "The Danish Girl" is a compassionate and luxuriant look at a time when transgenderism had no vocabulary. Eddie Redmayne, already a Hooper disciple, plays Lili as she begins to understand she isn't Einar, while Alicia Vikander, who broke out this year with "Ex Machina" and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," portrays Einar's loving wife, Gerda. At the center of "The Danish Girl" is both a search for identity in a judgmental world and the tale of an unconditional romance. 

A small group of film journalists had lunch with Hooper at Manhattan's Bowery Hotel earlier this month, after which I sat down with the 43-year-old British director to discuss the film. We chatted about following up "Les Mis," working with Redmayne and the timeliness of "The Danish Girl."

I first saw the movie in Toronto, where it played rather somberly. But at a New York screening, the audience found a lot of humor in it. It's common for filmmakers to tweak things after their movies play for festival audiences. Did your "Danish Girl" adjustments come from things you wish you’d done differently or from reading audiences' temperaments? 

It’s a combination of both. One of the craziest experiences about taking a film to a festival is getting to sit and watch your film with 2,000 people. By that point in a movie, you’re so close to the film and you’ve seen it hundreds of times. Plus, also, I have a brilliant editor called Melanie Oliver. This is the sixth film we’ve done together. She edited all nine hours of “John Adams” by herself, and she did “Les Misérables,” which was an epic thing to cut. She also flew out to Venice with me and had that experience of seeing the film in a big room. So between me and her, we came up with a list of improvements, which were sound mixing, grading and a few subtle picture edits. The extraordinary thing, I think, about directing, and I know it’s a cliché, is that God is in the details, almost to a scary degree in that if you play a music cue slightly too loud in a scene it can overwhelm the actor. One of the things I’ve learned about filmmaking over the years is you can make a big different in how a film plays based on subtle little adjustments. 

You've talked at length about how laborious "Les Mis" was, so it couldn't have been easy selecting your next project. Lush period pieces have become your M.O., but what made you certain this one was feasible after such a difficult film?

It’s interesting, I don’t think lush period pieces are my M.O. If you tell a story about what happened last year, it’s a period piece. If you tell a story about what happened yesterday, it’s a period piece. I came out of televison, where I was directing “EastEnders” and “Prime Suspect” and “Cold Feet," all of which were contemporary. My first film, “Red Dust,” was contemporary. I think it’s more that directing is about falling in love, and the stories I’ve fallen in love with happen to be set sometimes in the near past.

Really, you could say what links the last three films together is that love is at the center of all of these movies. It’s funny, you suddenly get to a point in your career where you’ve done enough of a body of work to start seeing patterns. I think this time is the first time where I’ve started to realize that. I mean, yes, “Les Mis” was necessarily epic because of the journey that Jean Valjean goes on. But what’s the center of that movie? The center of that movie is a man who’s been brutalized by years in prison who is forgiven by a priest and, through that, has this extraordinary epiphany where he discovers the power of faith and love and compassion and, in one burning, glorious, brilliant moment, remakes himself as someone who’s going to reengage with the world through love. Then he finds this daughter figure in Cosette and his life changes forever. At the center of “The Danish Girl” is love. At the center of “The King’s Speech,” I think, is a loving friendship. So I think probably what speaks to me is what moves me or what touches me or what makes me cry, and I’m aware I’m probably coming across as quite a cerebral person or quite an analytical person, but, ironically, in my choices it’s not about my brain at all -- it’s about getting moved.

What kind of visual language do you think you’ve cemented through these last few films? I could point to certain things throughout "The Danish Girl" and say, "Oh, that looks like a Tom Hooper shot."

I feel it's quite different. With “Les Mis,” I wanted a lot of the world to be quite ugly because at the center of it was France in a revolution. Even the look of Hugh Jackman -- there’s nothing pretty about what he’d experienced. I wanted the savagery of that, and I wasn’t trying to create beautiful images in “Les Mis.” And in “The King’s Speech,” I don’t think I was particularly pursuing beauty because I wanted to get a different version of royalty, which was about sitting around in all the echoey rooms that were sort of dilapidated. The monarchy is not everyone’s idea of it, and I wanted to get away from the cliché.

Whereas this film, I think, is a film where I chose to put beauty at the center because at the center are two artists who are deeply engaged by the pursuit of beauty in their work. For Gerda, it's through the beauty of portraits, and the real portraits are about the idealizing of beauty in the pursuit of female perfection. For Einar, it's through the beauty of the landscape. Early on in the film, you see Einar looking at Amber Heard’s character, and it’s almost like Lili, living as Einar, is haunted by this apparition of feminine beauty and perfection. It’s this alluring goal that she has this connection to, and so I wanted to almost get inside their viewpoints. I wanted to shoot the film through a painter’s point of view. In “Les Mis,” there’s lots of handheld, and here the camera’s positions are quite static, so it’s framed like paintings. There’s an opportunity, really, to explore the artistic aesthetic through the filmmaking, which is quite different.

You’re working off a script written several years ago, based on two books even older than that. And yet we’ve learned so much about this subject matter in recent years. By the time you were ready to shoot, did you feel the script needed to be updated or altered at all, in keeping with what we now know about being transgender?

That’s a really good question. There was what we call the 2007 draft, which was the brilliant draft that I read. It was a work of art, in a way. Through reaching out to trans women and trans men and hearing their stories and the literature I read -- Conundrum by Jan Morris and books of gender theory -- I started to go, “Oh, there is this way of looking at this subject that’s changed.” [Screenwriter Lucinda Coxon] and I did work on a draft where we were trying to fit the script more in terms of how it would be told today. And I went back and read the original draft, and I actually realized there was a kind of innocence about that that felt more reflective of how they must have experienced it in the 1920s because this language didn’t exist then. So, actually, having gone a little bit in that direction, I began to think it’s more interesting to really stick to the historical point of view.

It brings alive the challenge because now, my God, it’s challenging, but there is a language. There is some kind of road map. There are people you can talk to and predecessors who’ve been through the transition. But then, there were no predecessors and no road map and no medical advice and no psychological advice. There wasn’t even an acceptance of the claim Lili was making. A good example would be in the memoirs, Man Into Woman. Lili talks about herself in the third person, like, “Lili and Einar are in this battle between the woman and the man for supremacy. Which one is going to win out?” In today’s language, you wouldn’t ever talk like that. You would say she was always she, and you wouldn’t talk about a battle between him and her. Again, we thought about, “Oh, should we update that?” But then we thought, “Well, hold on. These are Lili’s own words. This is how she made sense of it.” And also, if you think about it, I suppose it’s a way of her explaining what it was like to be her to someone who didn’t understand. So, in the end, we found that honoring her language and her way of expressing it was a more interesting way to go. Through that, we accept that everyone’s journey of transitioning is unique to them.

Where did your connection to Eddie Redmayne first blossom?

Oh, I’d love to tell you that story. He was 22 years and we were shooting “Elizabeth I,” starring Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons, for HBO. We were shooting Tudor England in Lithuania and other places. It was pretty illogical. We built the interior of Whitehall Palace, the queen’s palace, inside of an old disused Soviet sports stadium, and Eddie was playing this young kid who rebels against Queen Elizabeth I. Obviously it’s never a good idea to rebel against Queen Helen Mirren, and he gets sentenced to death. In the scene where he gets the death sentence, Eddie just gave the most extraordinary, emotionally raw performance. His skin was translucent, there were hot and cold flashes running over his face. It was like watching someone who actually was experiencing a death sentence. It was like watching a young person just going, “Fuck, my life’s over and I’m 22. I’ve been such an idiot.” He was weeping and in that moment I just thought, “This kid has got this extraordinary contact with his emotions and I need to find a film where he’s the lead because he’s an amazing talent.” I think it’s that emotional transparency that Eddie has that then led me to cast him as Marius in “Les Mis.” I look back at that film, and his performance remains one of the highlights. Again, it’s so fucking raw. I wanted a Lili who would have that emotional connection so that you’d understand step for step and beat for beat, and so the audience would feel compassion for her. 

What was your objective in the visual cues that signal Lili's transition? Early in the movie, she poses so Gerda can finish a portrait of a woman wearing a dress. In that moment, you see Lili first emerge out of Einar, and the way the camera traces Eddie makes the start of that journey both quiet and incredibly bold. 

The most important work was in the psychology. I think for Eddie, the most important were the meetings we had with very inspiring trans women, iconic people actually who you may not know in the U.S. We met with a very famous model from the 1960s who now lives in Chelsea. We had an afternoon in a pub with her, telling us her extraordinary life story. Then he worked with a movement choreographer called Alex Reynolds, who also did “The Theory of Everything.” It was about trying to tap into the latent femininity that he carries. I kept saying to Eddie, “You are always Lili -- you just disguise this and now you have to let the disguise slip.” It was about a revealing of what was beneath, rather than a metamorphosing of something warping into another thing. A lot of that work was broken down in terms of the detailed movement and body language.

Knowing that Nicole Kidman and Charlize Theron had been attached previously, did you feel pressure to cast an A-list actress? Alicia Vikander has had a huge breakout year that coincides with this movie, but at the time she was cast, she was more of a gamble.

I think Nicole was actually attached to play Einar, or Lili, initially, which is interesting.

Did you consider having a woman play Eddie's part?

I did. I think you could have found a way to do it. I suppose I just felt that Lili presents as a man for the first third of the movie, and the transition is very late. That, in the end, led me the way I went. But was there pressure? I mean, I don’t know. I just feel lucky that Alicia exists. When you’ve got another actor who has to go head-to-head with Eddie in so many intense two-handers, you’re scared of finding someone who’s not going to be strong enough to take Eddie on and raise his game, and Alicia is that person. She’s got such heart and a tremendous life force. She brought strength to Gerda. She wasn’t playing herself -- she was giving life to this character who was very strong and never a victim. So, no, I think we’re just pleased that we found her.

"The Danish Girl" opens in limited release on Nov. 27.

This interview has been edited and condensed. 

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Looking at the work of an artist like James Taylor, you might wonder how he kept churning out hit after hit. "Fire and Rain," "Sweet Baby James," "Carolina in My Mind, "Country Road" -- the list of Taylor's folksy-rock classics extends back to the 1970s and still captivates listeners whenever they hear them.

More: Watch James Taylor perform "Sweet Baby James"

Taylor's latest album came out this summer, and for the last four decades, he's been considered a masterful songwriter. But as 67-year-old star tells "Oprah's Master Class" this weekend, Taylor feels that the process is more subconscious than that title implies. Rather than feeling like the person who writes a song, Taylor feels more like he's simply the first one to hear it, in his mind. In order to hear that music, however, he does have one essential part of his creative process.

"When writing a song, I need quiet," Taylor says. "I need those three days of boring nothing-happening before I start to hear them."

Soon, the chords begin to surface and the words begin to swirl. It's not instantly a complete song, but the elements are there. This is when the quiet is especially important, Taylor explains.

"You get these pieces, and then you're going to have to sequester yourself somewhere, find a quiet place and start to push them around," he says.

In Taylor's opinion, he isn't the only artist who benefits from this type of isolation in the creative process.

"I think in order to create, artistic people need to be alone," Taylor says. "They need to have time to themselves. Isolation is key."

While there is a difference between being alone and being lonely, Taylor says artists shouldn't fear the latter.

"If you have to be lonely in order to be free, learn how to tolerate a little bit of loneliness," he says. "It's hard, but you're strong. You can do it."

Taylor's full interview airs this weekend on "Oprah's Master Class," on Sunday, Nov. 29, at 8 p.m. ET on OWN.

More from Oprah.com

James Taylor explains the physical, biological reaction we all have to music

James Taylor performs "You've Got a Friend"

The lessons James Taylor would like to pass on to his children

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