Newbery Award winner Susan Patron, a target of ire for using the word “scrotum” in her children’s book, says adults are correct in acknowledging the power of the written word. “Children who read widely understand more about the world; they have a foundation for making better decisions. They think, and because of that, they may even challenge their parents’ beliefs. For some, a scary idea, but isn’t a thinking child preferable to one who accepts the world at face value and has no aim to change it for the better?”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Smithsonian’s Spending Draws Congress’ Attention
“Congress is taking another hard look at the Smithsonian Institution’s funding and governance after an audit showed the top official at the museum complex had nearly $90,000 in unauthorized expenses, including private jet travel and expensive gifts. Lawrence M. Small, 65, who became secretary of the Smithsonian in 2000, will earn $915,698 this year in total compensation….”
In Chicano Studies, Culture Clash Is The Syllabus
UCLA’s Chicana and Chicano Studies 188 is “billed as the first university-level course focusing entirely on the works of Culture Clash, the provocative Chicano trio that for 22 years has carried the banner of barrio-based theater, a form traced to Luis Valdez’s Teatro Campesino. Many students have enrolled in the weekly seminar … to satisfy a history requirement, using the trio’s work as an academic window on Chicano life and times.”
From Child Soldier To Starbucks’ Star
Ishmael Beah’s memoir of his life as a child soldier might seem an awkward match for coffee and pastries. But “with Starbucks’ decision to promote and sell his book in more than 6,000 stores, the 26-year-old author has been thrust into the role of spokesman for child soldiers worldwide. He’s become an overnight celebrity, with a 10-city book tour scheduled for the coffee chain. In a life filled with some truly shocking reversals, this new chapter may be just about the last thing he ever expected.”
Technology Enables A Narcissistic Generation
“All the effort to boost children’s self-esteem may have backfired and produced a generation of college students who are more narcissistic than their Gen X predecessors, according to a new study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. And the Internet, with all its MySpace and YouTube braggadocio, is letting that self-regard blossom even more, said the analysis, titled ‘Egos Inflating Over Time.'”
Did Advanced Math Guide Medieval Islamic Art?
“In the beauty and geometric complexity of tile mosaics on walls of medieval Islamic buildings, scientists have recognized patterns suggesting that the designers had made a conceptual breakthrough in mathematics beginning as early as the 13th century. A new study shows that the Islamic pattern-making process … appears to have involved an advanced math of quasi crystals, which was not understood by modern scientists until three decades ago.”
Music Wasn’t Hatto’s, But It Was Good
Now that Joyce Hatto’s widower has admitted he was behind the plagiarized recordings bearing her name, former Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer wonders about the pianists whose work won attention for her. “‘The best ones are really superb,’ Dyer said by phone yesterday. ‘Which is why I’m still interested in them. I want to know who really made them now.'”
Industry No Longer Shut Out By Indies
“The victory of ‘The Departed’ at the Oscars on Sunday night represented many things,” David Carr opines, and one of them is this: “Old-line Hollywood studios, confronted over the last few years by indifferent audiences and an insurgent collection of independent film makers, declared dominion over the industry’s crowning event.”
An Anthem To Apartheid Or A Nod To A Proud Past?
“De la Rey,” a hit South African rock song about an Afrikaner general in the Second Boer War, has inspired some white fans to wave the old, apartheid-era South African flag. “A dozen years after the end of an Afrikaner government that invented apartheid, the mere concept of Afrikaner pride remains an exquisitely sensitive issue among whites and blacks alike. … ‘De la Rey’ has become a vessel for those aspirations and fears and, for the last month, the object of a caustic, often racially tinged national debate.”
Was Pianist’s Plagiarism Mozart Requiem Syndrome?
David Patrick Stearns ponders the puzzling musical-recording plagiarism case of the late British pianist Joyce Hatto. “Ultimately, one asks not just how this happened, but why. There’s no mercantile motivation: Self-published and available mostly through British Web sites … the recordings can’t have sold more than a thousand copies of each title. The amount of money involved is hardly worth a trip to small claims court.”