Mr. Goodkind was a latecomer to writing: He spent years as a woodworker and wildlife artist before publishing his first novel, “Wizard’s First Rule,” when he was 45. But that book — the story of a heroic forest guide, Richard, who teams with a beautiful woman, Kahlan, to defeat an evil wizard, Darken Rahl — won legions of fans and earned positive reviews when it was published by Tor Books in 1994. – The New York Times
Author: Douglas McLennan
Music Has A Philosophical Language All Its Own
Music is a Socratic teacher. Its melodies and call-and-response mechanisms, together with the subsequent variations in modulations and rhythms, steer us away from linear thinking and towards nuance. – Psyche
Orchestras Have Quickly Added Music By Black Composers. So…
“There’s a real sense of people trying to save face. It has to be met with some skepticism. It’s always this concern that I’m being programmed just to fit a mold, like I’m being tokenized.” – The New York Times
Dance As A Political Act
“Regardless of who it is that you’re watching dance, whether they’re doing a classical ballet or a hip hop piece or a post-modern piece, who you are watching on stage is already a political statement, and it’s an artistic statement and those things are not mutually exclusive because we’re working with human bodies.” – KPBS
Baltimore Museum Of Art Will Sell Three Major Works Of Art To Fund Diversity Efforts
The Baltimore Museum of Art’s board of trustees voted Thursday night to have Sotheby’s auction house sell three significant — and, it could be argued, irreplaceable — modern artworks later this fall in an effort to expand ongoing diversity initiatives. – Baltimore Sun
Grading The Trump Presidency As An Act Of Theatre
Trump’s political drama is unlike anything we’ve seen before. No one can figure out the rules of the script. Just when you think the action is building to a climax — the Mueller report, impeachment, more than 200,000 dead from a pandemic — a different calamity usurps our attention. – Los Angeles Times
Words We Can Grab From Elsewhere
“I’m really against translating or editing foreign speakers’ texts into seamless English. Not only because I know this disadvantage as a second language speaker (and writer) who has a hard time expressing the same ideas in a different medium. But also because any meaning carried by a given text is strongly nuanced by the author’s linguistic choices.” – Eurozine
How Should Museums Deal With Racist Art In Their Collections?
Removing works with problematic content won’t improve historical understanding, but keeping them on the wall without addressing their historical context doesn’t help either. Their fundamental meanings need to be faced head-on, no matter how ugly the content or how charming the painting. – San Francisco Chronicle
How The Met Became The Metropolitan Museum
In 1870, the Met’s founding signaled America’s cultural ascendance from provincial to international, from the sweaty work of building a nation from scratch to a time when enrichment of the mind was seen as not only possible but essential to a good life. – National Review
It Means Something Different To Be A Polymath Today
“We have moved from an age of institutionalized specialization in the second half of the nineteenth century to an age of institutionalized anti-specialization in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond.” – Washington Post