- Much like the fiberglass cow craze that swept other cities earlier this year, downtown St. Paul, Minnesota has been overrun by 101 statues of Snoopy which were commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of St. Paul native Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” strip. – NPR [Real audio file]
Tag: 10.05.00
IMAGINE THIS
The world’s first John Lennon Museum opens this week, and it’s not in Liverpool, London, or New York. It’s in a Japanese town 30 km north of Tokyo. Why there? “Could have something to do with money. Construction company Taisei Corp. reached an agreement with Yoko Ono last year to build the museum on two floors of the spanking-new Saitama Super Arena.” – Daily Yomiuri (Japan)
NEW SAN JOSE MUSEUM DIRECTOR
The San Jose Museum of Art has named Daniel T. Keegan as its new director. “Keegan, 51, comes to the San Jose museum from the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, Mo., after three years as director there.” – San Francisco Chronicle
REMEMBERING NIJINSKY
Nijinsky “danced for only a decade and spent more than half his life in a mental asylum before he died in London in 1950” but his life has a grip on our dance imagination. The author of a remarkable 1997 film riff exploring the dancer’s life talks about his magnetism. – Los Angeles Times
BOOKER PRIZE FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
Finalists for the literary prize are: Margaret Atwood – “The Blind Assassin,” Trezza Azzopardi – “The Hiding Place,” Michael Collins – “The Keepers of Truth,” Kazuo Ishiguro – “When We Were Orphans,” Matthew Kneale – “English Passengers,” and Brian O’Doherty – “The Deposition of Father McGreevy”- BBC
LARGEST DONATION EVER TO LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Billionaire John Kluge is donating $60 million to the Library of Congress. “Kluge’s money is the largest single gift in the institution’s 200-year history. The donation, according to a source close to the project, will be used to establish the John W. Kluge Center for scholars and a $1 million annual prize for lifetime achievement in scholarly endeavors. The center will be located in the library’s Jefferson Building and, like a university, will have endowed chairs in a number of fields.” – Washington Post
HIT A POET WHILE HE’S DOWN?
“It seems churlish to complain that poetry is receiving publicity, however dishonestly generated. Sales and readerships are very low; I read recently that 3% of all book sales are of poetry, and even that figure seems surprisingly high. But might we not be in danger of an inflationary rhetoric with regard to contemporary poetry, where so many superlative epithets – ‘best poet of their generation’, ‘best American poet currently writing’, and so on – are scattered like confetti over the whole crowd? – The Guardian
GILLER PRIZE FINALISTS ANNOUNCED
Great excitement in Canada about the announcement of finalists for the Giller Prize (one of Canada’s top literary prizes). A few reactions? “All the books have brown covers except one.” “Bleak, bleak and bleaker.” The list showed “big themes, big ideas and a few surprises.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)