Laura Miller: “Instead, the Lynch of [the new memoir] Room to Dream lives a bit like a medieval peasant, in a realm of signs and portents, a cosmos whose ultimate design he cannot grasp but devoutly trusts.”
Tag: 06.27.18
Kentucky Opera Has A New General Director
“Barbara Lynne Jamison will take charge Aug. 15, coming to Louisville from Seattle where she is Director of Programs and Partnerships for the opera there and part of the senior management team.”
Lost In Translation: Why Is Canadian English So Different From East To West Coast?
“I had felt prepared for Vancouver. I was a Prince Edward Islander, sure, but one who had suffered under two decades of linguistic nitpicking from my (formerly) Ontarian parents. I never considered that the locals in my new town would even notice I was from out East. All of my parents’ hard work, and still I sounded like some backwater pirate?”
Emojis Are Taking Over. So Is This A New Language?
Emoji, which have grown from an original set of 176 characters to a collection of over 3,000 unique icons, present both opportunities and challenges to the academics who study them. Most agree that the icons are not quite a language—the emoji vocabulary is made up almost entirely of nouns, and there’s no real grammar or syntax to govern their use—but their influence on internet communication is massive. By 2015, half of all comments on Instagram included an emoji.
We’ve Reached Peak Screen. So Tech Companies Are Wondering What’s Next
Tech has now captured pretty much all visual capacity. Americans spend three to four hours a day looking at their phones, and about 11 hours a day looking at screens of any kind. So tech giants are building the beginning of something new: a less insistently visual tech world, a digital landscape that relies on voice assistants, headphones, watches and other wearables to take some pressure off our eyes.
What’s It Like To Receive The NEA’s Top Honor For Folk Art?
Ofelia Esparza, an 86-year-old artist who has been making Day of the Dead altars for much of her life, became a National Heritage Fellow last week. She says “that for her, altar making goes beyond tradition. It’s an obligation, a show of respect for the loved ones who are no longer with us.”
An Oregon Theatre Must Swap Back A Gender-Swapped Character In ‘9 To 5’
Look, theatres … you have to get permission to gender-swap roles (or make any of a number of other changes). So now a woman is playing a role that was written as male – but as a man, not as a woman, which is how the actor started playing the role. “The problem is that in the contract, it says that we can’t change pronouns,” the theatre’s business manager said.
The Woman Who Turned The LA Children’s Chorus Into A Powerhouse Is Stepping Down
Anne Tomlinson has been at the helm for 22 years, taking the chorus numbers from 100 to 450 and from three ensembles to six. Though she’s firm with the kids at rehearsal, “it is quite clear that plenty of fun is being had. The fun, however, is in the execution of the craft. And craft is elevated above all else.”
Long Live The Trashy Summer Read
Sure, there’s a place for the literary work we all read in the winters. But “sometimes, in place of a two-page long vivid description of a wooded area or a contemplative soliloquy, all you really want — nay, all you really need — is simplicity. In summer— when one is most consumed by a uniquely ceaseless craving, for a good story, a delicious meal, skin against skin; when patience for artifice is low and the thirst for a fast and painless escape is high — this is particularly true.”
Five Literary Magazines That Have Shaped African Literature
African literary magazines and journals don’t just shape literary culture, they offer the most rebellious responses to political and social movements. They not only respond to the cultures they’re in, these magazines also create distinct cultures of their own that reflect the personalities of their editors.