Why Returning Indigenous Artifacts Is More Difficult Than An Agreement

“The University of Toronto embarked on a fourteen-year process of repatriating the bones of more than 1,700 individuals in its possession. But until recently, such agreements tended to be the exception, not the norm. In the meantime, the legal status of artifacts—which can serve as evidence in land claims negotiation—remains a long-standing sore point.”

When Becoming A Stowaway Was All The Rage

“As long as there has been transportation to faraway places, people have been sneaking on board. … The stowaway fad, however, was a different kind of social phenomenon. It was part of the attention-seeking aesthetic of the Jazz Age, a larksome activity similar to flagpole sitting, outrageous swimming challenges, and ‘buildering’ – the art of climbing skyscrapers. … And, in the new age of the mass media, each stowaway’s story of success incited more attempts.”

Soprano Lisette Oropesa Says She Was Denied Roles Because She Was Too Fat

“That’s why I lost weight … If you’re singing repertoire that only two other people in the world sing, congratulations, you’ve won the voice lottery! You can sing anywhere you want, you can write your own checks. But there are a million Norinas and Adinas and Lucias, so it’s much more competitive. There are roles I wasn’t even considered for because of the way I looked. I thought that I’d worked way too hard and was singing far too well (I believed) to be stopped before I could even enter the room. Someone would look at my photograph and say, ‘No. Too fat!’ It ain’t right, but it’s life.”

Alitalia’s Destruction Of Centuries-Old Viola Da Gamba Makes World News

Traveling from Rio de Janeiro to Tel Aviv via Rome, Myrna Herzog was told that there was no room in the cabin for her 17th-century instrument and she’d have to gate-check it. (The airline says Herzog declined the chance to purchase a seat for the gamba; she denies this.) She went public with photos of the damage, and the story has hit major newspapers in Europe as well as The Daily Mail and Fox News.

Publisher Of ‘Fire And Fury’ Talks About Fighting Trump’s Cease-And-Desist Letter

Macmillan CEO John Sargent: “The person who told me said, ‘Are you sitting down?’ and I said yes, and they said, ‘We have just received a cease-and-desist letter from the president of the United States.’ The reason I was stunned is that it is actually hard to conceive that a sitting president of the United States would issue a cease-and-desist order, because it is extraordinarily unconstitutional.”