Blog

Writing About A Movement, Not A Moment

What we think we know about the fight for women to get the legal right to vote is only a sliver of the history – and of our present. “There’s a lot of that still hanging in the balance. And so, I guess my answer is that I hate to think of it solely as a fight, but I think that the question of women’s equality is far from complete.” – NPR

Rewriting Irish Dancing’s Weirdly Strict Gender Rulebook

Trans dancers are challenging the conventions. Hayden Moon says it’s not easy: “I’d spent years learning to be high on my toes and not make any noise and never let my heel touch the ground, doing all of these very pretty kicks and leaps and jumps. And then all of a sudden I was getting told by my dance teacher that I wasn’t loud enough.” (And that’s the least of the challenges he’s faced in the Irish dance world in Australia.) – Dance Magazine

Chadwick Boseman, King In ‘Black Panther’ And Jackie Robinson In ’42,’ Has Died At 43

The actor, who also played James Brown in Get on Up and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall, was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2016, but had never spoken publicly about the diagnosis, and kept on working during much of his treatment. “Boseman’s Panther became an icon for children of color, coming at a time when representation was only just beginning to become a priority in Hollywood.” – The Hollywood Reporter

Is New York Over?

The city is indeed at a moment of reckoning—not simply because of the pandemic, but because of what it had already become. After the fiscal crisis of 1975, New York and its economy were restructured around tourism, high finance, luxury retail, and real estate. On the glittering surface, things had never looked better. By 2019, New York was richer than it had ever been before, its population at an all-time high and its forests of glass towers rising ever higher. Nearly 65 million tourists a year were flocking to the city—more than six times the number who came when the city teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Beneath that glittering surface was a lot of emptiness. – The Atlantic

What’s Lost When Film Festivals Go Virtual

Festivals can serve as coronations, bestowing status or, even better, controversy. (Almost inevitably, “Joker” took home Venice’s top prize, the Golden Lion.) More valuably, they can channel the conversation toward worthier less-shiny objects. At a festival, you find yourself talking to strangers: in lobbies, shuttles, at bars, in snaking lines or seated next to you, as a way of sharing enthusiasm. – The New York Times

The Former Judge Who Writes Angry Letters To Journalists

A little over a year into my tenure at The Chronicle, I’d been initiated. For journalists, receiving an angry handwritten letter about usage from Quentin Kopp is a rite of passage, badge of honor and battle scar… His second letter to me, from December 2018, protested my use of “spaz” as a verb and any use whatsoever of “grok,” which he called “self-devised.” He concluded with a backhanded compliment: “But, don’t worry: Some quasi-literates may embrace you because you’re creative.” – San Francisco Chronicle