In northern Australia, indigenous people are reclaiming land and landmark names. “These changes are about time, mate, but we always kept the names when we worked on country anyway – they never went away. But this does give us recognition and that makes us proud.” – The Guardian (UK)
Blog
Members Are Furious At SAG-AFTRA’s Plan To Change, And Limit, Health Coverage
Seriously, SAG-AFTRA? During a global pandemic that has a lot of members out of work? Well, trustees say, “By 2024, the Health Plan is projected to run out of reserves. We must prevent this from happening.” – Variety
How A Writer Pays, And Then Loses, Attention
Novelist Helen Garner terrified her friends for years with what they called her pitiless writer’s eye – detached, curious, and omnivorous. But as she ages, she’s found it’s harder and harder to pay that attention to the world. Then the virus, and lockdown, arrived. “The daily work habits of 40 years went up in flames and new ones sprouted from the ashes. Instead of going to bed early and starting work straight after breakfast, I wallowed on the couch till one in the morning, feasting on wild-eyed Jewish stand-up and cold case investigations by women detectives.” – The Guardian (UK)
The Superheroes We Have, The Superheroes We Need
Thinking about what we’ve had – Batman, Superman – well, it’s time for a change. “A new guard of superheroism doesn’t simply mean diversity. It makes room for the possibility that especially now, as our political systems and institutions are being questioned, there is no absolute moral authority, even for those tasked with saving the day.” – The New York Times
The Terrible Plight Of Music And Theatre Event Staff
Lighting designers, sound engineers, tour managers, caterers, bus drivers, and more – all laid off more or less permanently, nebulously, until a vaccine. Their unions and associations are trying to help. “We basically trawled the internet looking for temporary jobs for our members. … Some top technicians have got themselves into Amazon fulfilment centres, or driving for Asda. We had two members bump into each other in the same aisle in Tesco, stacking shelves on a night shift.” – The Guardian (UK)
Buckingham Palace’s Private Art Collection Is Going On Display For The First (And Perhaps Only) Time Ever
Talk about your unprecedented times. Buckingham Palace needs a plumbing update, so the paintings, including Vermeer’s The Music Lesson and two Rembrandts, have to find a temporary home, and the Queen’s surveyor sounds thrilled about it: “In a way, we’re obliged to do it. … We’ve got to get them out of the picture gallery for the building work.” – The Guardian (UK)
In The 2016 ‘Much Ado’ On PBS, Shakespeare Conveys How Much Black Lives Matter
This is a good time for some required quarantine viewing, no? And it’s always a good time to check out how good directors, dramaturgs, and designers (not to mention actors) can turn Shakespeare’s plays into a living, breathing commentary on contemporary life. – LitHub
As Boston’s Art Museums Reopen, There’s A Sense Of Hope
During the height of the first wave of the coronavirus, it seemed this day would never come. Now, “it’s odd how the surreal can become de rigueur. At the Gardner I barely noticed the masks, the arrows on the floor, the laminated signs tacked virtually everywhere.” – The Boston Globe
Linda Manz, Who Starred In Terence Malick’s ‘Days Of Heaven’ At Only 15, Has Died At 58
Manz also featured in Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue. – Variety
To Find A Book That Charts Our Own Distressed Times, Try Doris Lessing
The Golden Notebook, published almost 60 years ago now, gets to the heart of almost everything (depressingly, still) going on right now. “Lessing — like Anna — is unafraid to dirty her hands in the quest for truth. She might write with an acid touch but she doesn’t keep an Olympian distance from new causes or passionate affairs.” – The New York Times