Vanessa Vitiello Urquhart (who says she’s “dancing on the grave of gay culture”): “As our culture evolves toward a more humane, accepting attitude toward gay people and their relationships, it makes sense to ask: Is there any place for a gay culture in this bright new future? … Should the wider LGBTQ community really be spending time, energy, and emotional bandwidth on pleas to preserve gay spaces?”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Gay Culture Is Most Certainly Not Dying, Thank Goddess
June Thomas: “It’s perfectly possible, normal even, to treat queer culture like a drop-in center: read a gay novel now and then; go out on a jaunt with a lesbian bird-watching group occasionally; take in a drag show once every decade. Those things will continue to exist and thrive if enough people are interested in them. Otherwise, they’ll disappear, only to be memorialized in queer studies monographs; collected in lesbian herstory archives; and remembered with fondness by the folks who enjoyed them in their heyday.”
World Ballet Day: Behind The Scenes With Five Major Companies In One Day
“Starting at the beginning of the dancers’ day, each of the five ballet companies – Australian Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, The Royal Ballet, The National Ballet of Canada and San Francisco Ballet – will take the lead for a four-hour period streaming live from their headquarters starting with the Australian Ballet in Melbourne. The live link then passes across time zones and cultures from Melbourne to Moscow to London to Toronto to San Francisco.”
A Woman’s Epilepsy Medication Turned Her Into A Compulsive Poet
“Introducing what appears to be the exact opposite of writer’s block: After starting a new medication for epilepsy, a 76-year-old woman was suddenly stricken with an unstoppable urge to write poetry, according to a [new] case study.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.08.14
Local arts funding and urban design: responses
AJBlog: For What it’s Worth | Published 2014-09-09
Back-To-School Time: A Test
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-09-08
And Now: The Answers To Who Said That
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts | Published 2014-09-09
Gerald Wilson, 1918-2014
AJBlog: RiffTides | Published 2014-09-09
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Chicago Symphony’s New President Has Big Shoes To Fill
“Once [Jeff] Alexander takes command, he will have his work cut out for him.” Deborah Rutter really is a tough act to follow. But, writes John von Rhein, though Alexander hasn’t (yet) been as high-profile as, say, Rutter or Deborah Borda or Alison Vulgamore, he has plenty of experience that will stand him in good stead.
Should We Break Up The Biggest Museums To Save Them?
Hrag Vartanian, on the crowding that afflicts such museums as the Louvre, the Met, the Hermitage, the Tate, and the National Gallery (both U.S. and U.K.): “We need to break up the major museums. That may sound radical to some, but it’s an idea whose time has come. I’m suggesting not that museums sell off their collections but that more museums consider aggressively building outposts or prioritizing longer-term partnerships with smaller or newer institutions that could benefit from such relationships.”
Amazon May Be In For Trouble In India (Thanks To Its Allergy To Paying Taxes)
“While the e-commerce giant from Seattle has argued that it only acts as an intermediary between sellers and buyers in the country, it has been accused of violating India’s foreign direct investment, or FDI, regulations by trying to make a ‘backdoor entry’ into the country’s retail business.”
Here’s One Famous Writer Who’s Very Happy With Amazon (And Pleased To Say So In Print)
Neal Pollack: “When I waded into one conversation to say, ‘Hey, Amazon’s not so bad,’ someone referred to me as being like ‘the Vichy French, taking money to cover up crimes.’ What in the name of Bezos is going on here? There are obviously a lot of issues at play … But while everyone seems to hate Amazon, my personal experience with this supposedly evil corporate behemoth has been fantastic.”
Joan Rivers, 81 (Kids, She Was So Much More Than The Fashion Police)
You young’uns who only know her for getting facelifts and yanking the chains of celebrities on the red carpet before awards shows: by the time she was your age, she was already a thriving stand-up and one of the best comedy writers in the business – and for a time in the 1970s and ’80s, she was one of the three or four most successful comedians in the entire English-speaking world.