Some 1,600 people reserved tickets in advance to see the Sistine Chapel and its sublime walls and ceilings on the first day the Vatican Museums opened to the public after a three-month coronavirus shutdown. – Washington Post (AP)
Author: Douglas McLennan
Mary McNamara: The Luxury Of Being Outraged
Protesting. Even during a global pandemic. Think about that for a second. How furious do people have to be to gather in the streets at a time when a highly infectious disease is killing thousands daily, especially black and brown people, who are dying at disproportionately high rate? – Los Angeles Times
Will The Pandemic Be An Opportunity Or Will It Tear Us Apart?
Social media essentially gives a megaphone to the extremes, so it’s very hard to know what most people really think. “And when you look at the people who are loudest on Twitter and elsewhere, it’s quite clear that this pandemic is turning into just another culture-war issue, where people on the left see what they want to see and people on the right see what they want to see.” – The Atlantic
Leading Thinkers Envision The Post-Pandemic World
“They describe a society that is clear-eyed about the disparities that have made this pandemic so much worse for some communities than for others. They call on us to sustain each other through mutual aid, understanding that our lives are all woven together in ways that may not always have been visible until now. They outline the necessity of protecting democracy, resisting authoritarianism, and paying attention to one another, filling in the spaces left by loss.” – LitHub
Living Your Life Through Aphorisms
Much of the history of Western philosophy can be narrated as a series of attempts to construct systems. Conversely, much of the history of aphorisms can be narrated as an animadversion, a turning away from such grand systems through the construction of literary fragments. The philosopher creates and critiques continuous lines of argument; the aphorist, on the other hand, composes scattered lines of intuition. One moves in a chain of logic; the other by leaps and bounds. – Aeon
Nancy Stark Smith, A Founder Of Contact Improvisation, 68
Ms. Stark Smith, whose signature braid became longer and grayer over time, was also a prolific writer and respected teacher who, beginning in 1990, developed what she called “Underscore,” a structure or framework for practicing long-form dance and improvisation. – The New York Times
And Now A Word From The Cassandra Of American Letters
Lionel Shriver, who is sixty-three, thinks people are ridiculous for congratulating themselves on enduring quarantine, when the worst is yet to come. “This is not the bad part,” she said. – The New Yorker
How Verdi Evolved To The Next Form Of Opera
“At the Paris Opéra, there were many colleagues to deal with and only the institution’s most successful composers had enough clout to impose their will on a piece. It makes sense that Verdi’s triumph came at the end, when he was no longer just a successful foreigner, but a living legend and someone who had a work history with the company. For Don Carlos, he was the ultimate authority, like a modern movie auteur.” – San Francisco Classical Voice
Opera Of The Web (Not Just On It)
“In our first performance one of our actors froze in the middle of her big solo. But, fortunately, we had planned for and built that into the piece, so what we did is skip to the next cue, and then when she unfroze she joined up with us again, just as you would do if you were doing a live play or musical or opera.” – American Theatre
Time To Rethink The Entire Restaurant Industry
The current crisis has turned the industry’s cracks into chasms, exposing the ways in which it fails its workers almost by design. It has also raised the question of what restaurants will look like—and how they could survive—once this is all over. But a better question might be whether they should survive as they currently exist. What could restaurants look like if we threw out the old system and built something better? – The New Republic