“When we find ourselves taking a childlike view of our place in history, we would do well to take a lesson from those scribes of 3,000 years ago, and recognise that the timeline stretches as far behind us as it stretches ahead. For proof of this, we have only to look to Eridu and Pompeii and Tenochtitlan, and a hundred other dust-swept ruins whose inhabitants hoped their empires would endure forever – but must have known, on some level, that they would not.”
Tag: 08.08.17
Read Annie Dillard’s Classic Essay About Solar Eclipses
“I had seen a partial eclipse in 1970. A partial eclipse is very interesting. It bears almost no relation to a total eclipse. Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as kissing a man does to marrying him, or as flying in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane. Although the one experience precedes the other, it in no way prepares you for it.”
In honor of this month’s event, The Atlantic brings back Dillard’s 1982 piece “Total Eclipse.”
Resurrecting The Most Legendary Musical In South Africa’s History (It Was Suppressed Under Apartheid)
“Nelson and Winnie Mandela were in the crowd. Miriam Makeba was the female lead. Abdullah Ibrahim played inconspicuously in the orchestra, as did a teenage Hugh Masekela, on a trumpet given to him by Louis Armstrong. Thrilled by what they saw and heard, the audience members, at first roped into ‘white’ and ‘nonwhite’ sections, refused to leave the theater after the show … On the opening night of the musical King Kong [in 1959], a black composer, Todd Matshikiza; a white creative team; and a 72-strong black cast offered the audience a vision of another kind of country, in which creativity and collaboration prevailed.” After nearly 60 years, King Kong is being updated and revived in Cape Town.
Barbara Cook, Broadway And Cabaret Legend, Dead At 89
The classic Broadway ingenue of the 1950s and ’60s, she made her name as the original Marian the Librarian in The Music Man and Cunégonde in Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. After a difficult period of alcoholism and weight gain, she reinvented herself as a cabaret star – one of whom no less than Stephen Sondheim said, “No one sings theater songs with more feeling for the music or more understanding of the lyrics than Barbara.”
Following Casting Kerfuffle, Broadway’s ‘Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet Of 1812’ To Close
“The Broadway musical that had more Tony Award nominations than any other last season will close on Sept. 3 after struggling to overcome a recent casting controversy, the show’s producers announced on Tuesday.”
First Actor To Play Godzilla, Haruo Nakajima, Dead At 88
“Nakajima played [the mutant dinosaur] in the 1954 original and 11 subsequent films, donning the suit that he said weighed about 220 pounds and wreaking havoc on model cities and rival monsters. But he began his career in samurai films, including a small role in Akira Kurosawa’s legendary 1954 film Seven Samurai.”
Country Music Superstar Glen Campbell, 81
“The sweet-voiced, guitar-picking son of a sharecropper … became a recording, television and movie star in the 1960s and ’70s, waged a publicized battle with alcohol and drugs and gave his last performances while in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.08.17
The Board’s Role in Community Engagement: Part I
The board of directors of a nonprofit arts organization can and should play an important role in planning for and adopting community engagement as a crucial mission strategy. There is a tendency on the part … read more
AJBlog: Engaging Matters Published 2017-08-08
Study: How Bots Spread Fake News
For the first time, these guys have systematically studied how fake news spreads on Twitter and provide a unique window into this murky world. Their work suggests clear strategies for controlling this epidemic.
Scientists Are Working On Making Us Immortal. Ethical Questions Abound
“Mind uploading could actually offer something tantalisingly close to true immortality. Just as we currently back up files on external drives and cloud storage, your uploaded mind could be copied innumerable times and backed up in secure locations, making it extremely unlikely that any natural or man-made disaster could destroy all of your copies. Despite this advantage, mind uploading presents some difficult ethical issues.”