“Because America was a nation of immigrants who lacked universally shared traditions, it had to invent some. So it came up with Thanksgiving, baseball–and Norman Rockwell.”
Tag: 2013
The Physical Benefits Of Laughter
“At the physiological level, humor reduces levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and is thought to enhance our immune, endocrine, and cardiovascular systems. Laughter also provides a workout for the muscles of the diaphragm, abdomen, and face. A joke can raise our spirits, or ease our tension. If we’re able to laugh during a stressful situation, we can put psychological distance between ourselves and the stress.”
A Magazine On Mock Trial
“On January 30, approximately 180 people overfilled an auditorium in the New York Public Library to witness an event titled (after Musil, in part) ‘Cabinet on Trial: A Magazine of No Qualities?’ … The NYPL event echoed a 1921 Dada trial of Maurice Barrès, staged by André Breton to address Barrès’s collusion with nationalist groups like Action Française.” Sasha Frere-Jones reports.
For Books To Survive, They Must Adapt
“It is the Exceptionalists, the ones who claim the mantle of defender of the book, who undermine the book by claiming that it is a world unto itself, in need of special protection, that its fragility in the face of the behemoth or barbarian du jour… requires insulation, like the skinny kid kept away from the schoolyard and its bullies.”
‘Only Connect The Prose And The Passion’: A Manifesto For Administrators, Artists And Funders
Marian Godfrey, a longtime official with the Pew Charitable Trusts, calls for organizations to (re-)consider how their activities – and even their stated missions – really relate to and with the people they’re meant to serve (and to remember that the people they’re serving aren’t the artists themselves).
Who (Or What) Killed Canadian Literature?
“Depending on who is pointing the finger, they include the rise of ebooks and Amazon.ca; too many titles for too few buyers; the routing of supportive independent booksellers by Chapters/Indigo; the impossibility of competing with deep-pocketed multinational publishers for authors and market space; and, more cosmically, the atomization of everything, especially attention spans, in our digital world.”
The History Of A Party
The Vanity Fair Oscars party, that is. (It’s surprisingly interesting.)
Big Vocabulary = Success
“Vocabulary size is a convenient proxy for a whole range of educational attainments and abilities–not just skill in reading, writing, listening, and speaking but also general knowledge of science, history, and the arts. If we want to reduce economic inequality in America, a good place to start is the language-arts classroom.”
Paying For The ‘Friendship’ Of An Arts Institution: Worth It?
“Friend of the arts” schemes are easy to run and easy to administer, and the wealthy love ’em – but they may lead to boxing out the general public.