Tag: 07.07.18

Ireland Is Wealthier, Better Educated. And The Benefits To Irish Culture Are Obvious

When personal security and community confidence combine they can deliver social emancipation, as Ireland’s recent referendums and law reforms on divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion (on top of a strikingly diverse political leadership of late) amply illustrate. It is a veritable loosing of the conservative shackles of church, class and culture that has catapulted Ireland to the forefront of Millennial-style liberalism.

Moderation And Restraint Are Held As Virtues. But What Does Brain Science Say?

“Almost every major religious or philosophical tradition heavily emphasises the value of self-restraint as a pathway to a virtuous and satisfying life. It makes sense that impulse-control has been held in such high regard historically: the ability to curb destructive urges and prudently delay gratification makes life easier in the long run. So what does modern brain science tell us about the best ways to approach willpower?”

The Challenging Patron Behind The Non-Publication Of Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Barracoon’

How was Barracoon funded? None of the PR has focused on this aspect of the book. And “like it or not, Barracoon bears Mason’s indelible mark. It was written on her schedule, under her pressure, and with her money. The 2018 edition of the text even opens with the bizarre dedication that Hurston, respecting her patron’s insistence on privacy, never included in her typed manuscript: ‘To Charlotte Mason, My Godmother, and the one Mother of all the primitives, who with the Gods in Space is concerned about the hearts of the untaught.'”

Dear Actors: Stop Whining About Audience Members Looking At Their Phones

Everybody in performance needs to toughen up and remember that “hushed reverence at public performances, from classical music to theatre, is a relatively recent invention, to keep the riff-raff out; it sounds as if attending plays in Shakespeare’s day, all tobacco and ale and raucous banter, was more closing time on a bank holiday than church service. It kept the playwrights and the actors on their toes, because they were forced to earn the audience’s attention, rather than just expect it.”

Meet Marsha Hunt, A 100-Year-Old Hollywood Actress Who Stood Up For Her Peers And Never Lost Her Principles

She lost her Hollywood career (though she found work on stage) thanks to her advocacy for free speech. “Hunt is the last surviving member of what was known as the Committee for the First Amendment. It was a group of a few dozen big Hollywood names, including Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, John Huston and Judy Garland. They produced a radio show called Hollywood Fights Back, protesting HUAC as itself un-American. And several members, including Hunt, flew to Washington, D.C. to show support for the writers and directors who’d been called to testify before HUAC.”

Romance Novels Are Trying To Reach A Hot Intersection Of Inclusion And Publishing

Or at least romance writers are. Some of the publishers aren’t there yet. “Even as the genre has evolved to reflect readers’ varied tastes and fetishes — popular subcategories include vampire and werewolf romance, military romance, cowboy romance, time travel romance, pirate and Viking romance — the lead characters are often confined to a fairly narrow set of ethnic, cultural and aesthetic types.”

Oakland Is Getting Its Hollywood Moment

Or at least its indie moment, after the Oakland scenes of Black Panther fade. “Long in the shadow of the city across the bay and nestled between liberal Berkeley and the exploding tech expanse of Silicon Valley, Oakland (pop. 425,000) is in the midst of a long-awaited movie moment, and [Sorry to Bother You writer/director Boots] Riley is helping put it on the map.”

Does Classical Music Have An Excess Social Baggage Problem?

“If you’re looking for virtuoso virtue-signallers, then classical music is the place to start. But right-on competitions are merely the gruesome fruit of something more deeply rooted: an intellectual culture poisoned by late 20th-century identity politics and postmodern verbiage. That’s a problem in other disciplines, of course, but at least artistic and literary pseuds attract mockery. It flourishes in university music departments because no one gives a toss what happens there.”