Archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar found a big mound carved into a western Norwegian island — along with the remains of a “huge” ship as long as 55 feet, Paasche told The Washington Post, in a discovery that may tell new tales about how the ships evolved to become fearsome and agile vessels more than 1,000 years ago. – Washington Post
Tag: 12.04.19
Reset: 50 Classic Songs About LA? Things Are Changing
Some of Los Angeles’ selling points need to be reset. The idea of endless summers has shifted in the age of climate change. “It Never Rains in Southern California” has morphed into Bad Religion’s “Los Angeles Is Burning.” The carefree allure of rolling down the Ventura Highway used to be a cool thing to sing about. Now the drive is mostly a bumper-to-bumper slog. – Los Angeles Times
Queering History: How LGBTQ Artists, Playwrights, And Novelists Are Reimagining The Past
Jesse Green: “On the whole, queer art, which fully emerged from the closet in the 1960s and 1970s — around the same time people in great numbers did — has mostly concerned itself with its own moment, as if to say, ‘Here I am.’ … [Yet] another approach has been emerging in tandem. … The watchcry for these works isn’t so much ‘Here I am’ as ‘There we were.’ More trenchantly, they sometimes ask how the two ideas are, or aren’t, related. What is the queer past for?” – T — The New York Times Style Magazine
The Seattle Man Who’s Memorizing Joyce’s Unreadable Finnegan
At 25, he picked up Finnegans Wake and tried to read it. He did not get far. He was stopped by a 100-letter word in the middle of the first page. How do you read a 100-letter word, he wondered? “But I’m in music school at the time, practicing the piano every day, and I realize the only way to read a 100-letter word is to practice it like I practice the piano. – The Stranger
Where Are The World’s Best Non-Native English Speakers?
According to a new report from an international education company that tested 2.3 million volunteers in 100 countries, the level of English as a second language is highest in Northern Europe, Singapore, and South Africa and lowest in the Arab world and parts of Asia. – The Economist
Stephen Garrett, First Director Of Getty Museum In Los Angeles, Dead At 96
“Garrett helped transform J. Paul Getty’s pet project museum, which the billionaire originally operated out of his own home, into what is now arguably the wealthiest art museum in the world.” – artnet
Remember That Big Golden Sculpture Hanging In The Lobby Of The New York Philharmonic’s Hall? It’s Gone, And Lincoln Center Says It Won’t Be Back
The abstract artwork, titled Orpheus and Apollo and created by sculptor Richard Lippold specially for Philharmonic Avery Fisher David Geffen Hall when it opened in 1962, was taken down for “maintenance and conservation” in 2014, something that all too few people had noticed. Now Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic have indicated that, when the venue’s reconstruction is completed in 2024, the hanging sculpture won’t be reinstalled “because of current safety standards that impact the wiring.” – Gothamist
‘What I’ve Learned From 10,000 Nights At The Theatre’: Guardian Critic Michael Billington’s Farewell Essay
“British theatre is incredibly resilient, yet radically different from when I took up my post at the Guardian in 1971. Even the job of being a critic has altered in all sorts of ways. … But if the process – and the people who get to write the reviews – has changed, the role of the critic remains much the same.” – The Guardian
Howard Cruse, ‘Godfather Of Queer Comics’, Dead At 75
“While [he] was not as famous as underground comics stars like R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman, his artistic influence was nonetheless felt strongly, especially among other gay cartoonists. In the early 1980s he was the first editor of Gay Comix, a series of occasional comic books … He then developed Wendel, an adventurous strip about a man and his lover navigating the early years of the AIDS epidemic.” Cruse won multiple awards for Stuck Rubber Baby, a graphic novel that we might describe today as autofiction. – The New York Times
From the Ground Up
The latest piece by choreographer Allison Orr — known for creating dances performed by forklifts, sanitation trucks, and the like — is From the Ground Up, made for Wake Forest University’s Facilities and Campus Services departments. Hundreds of people gathered at the Quad to watch lawnmowers waltz, housekeepers twirl and heavy equipment dance. – Doug Borwick