“With the recession and credit crunch licking at our boots and high heels, many more artists will be joining the ranks of the starving or cash-poor, while every penny goes on paint, canvas, paper, pen, music sheets, strings, rosin, film or video. … What we need is not more artists, nor fewer, but more saints – such as the Carnegie or MacArthur foundations – willing to sprinkle a little seed money into the path of deserving artists, that their tiny hands may not be frozen.”
Tag: 01.06.09
Brits Trying To Turn Basra Palace Into An Iraqi Museum
“While Iraq struggles to return to peaceful normality, the British have been working to restore some of the country’s pride in its past – with a museum.”
Cuba Allows Electronic Access To Hemingway Papers
“Cuba has opened up electronic access to thousands of documents belonging to the writer Ernest Hemingway, who wrote some of his greatest works on the island.
The archive includes photographs, letters and manuscripts, as well as an unpublished epilogue to Hemingway’s novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
Bad Economy = Good News For Used-Book Sellers
“The consensus of the economic pundits seems to be that 2009 is going to be awful – every bit as bad as 2008. … In the search for silver linings, I conclude that this can only be good news for secondhand book dealers. So my prediction for 2009 is that the devoted book reader will beat a path ever more urgently to those forgotten, out-of-the-way corners of musty tranquility of which the shopping class knows nothing.”
On Dogs, Homework, And Safeguarding The Ego
“[G]enuine excuse artisans — and there are millions of them — don’t wait until after choking to practice their craft. They hobble themselves, in earnest, before pursuing a goal or delivering a performance. … The urge goes well beyond a mere lowering of expectations, and it has more to do with protecting self-image than with psychological conflicts rooted in early development, in the Freudian sense.”
Animal Cruelty On Film: Protected Speech Or Not?
“A decade ago, Congress decided it was time to address what a House report called ‘a very specific sexual fetish.’ There are people, it turns out, who take pleasure from watching videos of small animals being crushed. … So, in 1999, Congress made it a crime to sell ‘crush videos’ and almost all other depictions of unlawful cruelty to animals.” A Supreme Court case raises the question of whether the law violates the First Amendment.