“In a general election as impossible to predict as the one here on Thursday, with many constituencies in the balance and a large chance of a hung Parliament, any pressing issue may swing the vote of the undecided. One of these issues is dance. Yes, dance … [The] subject has spurred a voting initiative and more than one political furor in recent months.”
Tag: 05.03.10
Nashville’s Schermerhorn Symphony Center Loses Organ, Pianos To Floods
“One of the city’s recently acquired glories – the $2.5 million Schoenstein pipe organ installed in the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in 2007 – is among the latest casualties of the Cumberland’s unstoppable flood waters.” Two Steinway concert pianos and the center’s dining facility were also damaged, though the main concert hall was not flooded.
Battling Chinese-To-English Malapropisms In Shanghai
“Fortified by an army of 600 volunteers and a politburo of adroit English speakers,” the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use “has fixed more than 10,000 public signs (farewell ‘Teliot’ and ‘urine district’), rewritten English-language historical placards and helped hundreds of restaurants recast offerings” such as “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid.”
Readers Around The World: A Photo Essay
“If you’ve been moved by the spirit of spring to get outside and read a book, you’re not alone. In photos recently uploaded to Flickr, people are reading in public in all kinds of places, all over the world.”
Canada Prizes Are Sent Back To The Drawing Board
“The Canada Council for the Arts will administer the hotly debated prizes as well as the $25-million endowment the government has pledged to form them. … Even the scant details made public when the Canada Prizes were first announced in late January of 2009 have been wiped away, and virtually all options are on the table….”
A Good Idea After All: Moby-Dick, The Opera
“[W]hile new work is often seen by audiences as more a duty than a pleasure, the opening-night crowd in Dallas broke into spontaneous applause three times during the first half, and screamed and yelled its approval at the curtain calls. It was a wonderful and rare reminder that new opera truly can excite people if it’s done right.”
Columbia University Gets Trove Of Edward Gorey Work
“Andrew Alpern, an architectural historian and lawyer who published a collection of ephemera by Gorey in 1980, donated the more than 700 items, which include nearly every edition of every work that Gorey published.”
Hal Holbrook On What Playing Mark Twain Means To Him
“The easiest way to describe what it means to me is like this — when I sit in a hotel room, listening to the news, and listening to the idiots blabber in what they like to call ‘news’ … if I didn’t have Twain to go on stage and attack this kind of foolishness, I would end up in the nuthouse.”
Appreciation: Lynn Redgrave
“To Vanessa’s tragically unbending Antigone, Lynn was the levelheaded Ismene, the sibling not built for radical extremes, who preferred everyday humanity to the glories of myth. … The truth is that critics, by and large, were as susceptible to her appeal as her fans. As much as Vanessa Redgrave is revered, Lynn was beloved.”
NYC: Shepard Fairey Mural Is Illegal Advertising, Must Go
New York City’s Department of Buildings has “issued a stop work order” to the owners of the downtown land “where Fairey’s mural was erected last month. The buildings department said the owners did not have a permit to erect a structure in the area and that the mural violated zoning laws prohibiting advertising on the property.”