The shutdown has suspended usual rules, positions and behaviors, suggesting there may be opportunities to not just rethink but take action. – Douglas McLennan
Blog
Our Collective Dreams Of Rome
So many legends, so much art, and yet … “Rubbish collects in gutters, litter spills from over-stuffed communal bins, pigeons scavenge among fallen, leaking garbage bags. People walk casually past the trash, a symptom of ineffectual politicians and waste plants straining for space. La grande bellezza is looking like shit.” Then the virus came. – The Guardian (UK)
Pulitzer Prize-winning Author Shirley Grau Has Died At 91
Grau, who won the 1965 prize for her fourth book, The Keeper of the House, wrote “stories and novels [that] told of both the dark secrets and the beauty of the Deep South.” – Los Angeles Times (AP)
Raphael Probably Was Buried At The Pantheon
In the year of the 500th anniversary of Raphel’s death, a 3-D reconstruction of his face, using a plaster mask of his skull, provides what may be “concrete proof that the skeleton exhumed from the Pantheon in 1833 belonged to Raffaello Sanzio and [may open] the paths towards possible future molecular studies aimed at validating this identity.” – The Guardian (UK)
How Do We Solve A Problem Like William Faulkner?
A question for everyone who loves to read his work: “How should we now regard this pathbreaking, Nobel Prize–winning author, who grappled with our nation’s racial tragedy in ways that at once illuminate and disturb—that reflect both startling human truths and the limitations of a white southerner born in 1897 into the stifling air of Mississippi’s closed and segregated society?” – The Atlantic
Lorenzo Soria, President Of Golden Globes Group, 68
Soria was the president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and former editor of the Italian news weekly L’Espresso. He began his second term as president of the press association in 2019. – St. Louis Post-Dispatch (AP)
Weird 2020 Moments Continue, With A Booker Longlist That People Actually Want To Read
Novelist Candice Carty-Williams is astounded and, she says, in love with the list, despite the ways that “Book Twitter was excited but baffled that the offerings we usually expect to be on the list were not there.” – The Guardian (UK)
Visual Artists Stuck At Home Are Using The Virtual World As Source Material
Paint what you see – including virtual realities that might just be based on paintings. – CBC
Some Creative Ways To Reopen Theme Parks Safely
Nothing will be the same, or at least for a long while, so why not try something new? “It’s easy to imagine many areas of a theme park resort being refashioned into a special-event space. I’ve been holding out hope that the outdoor grounds of the Disneyland Hotel would be utilized for a food and drink event featuring the talents of the staff at its tiki bar Trader Sam’s. But this is also a chance to re-imagine the theme park space, to view the entire grounds as something akin to a game board.” – Los Angeles Times
Britain’s Scariest Horror Film Disappeared For Decades
The perfect holiday film? “First broadcast on ITV, at 9pm Christmas Eve 1989, it haunted all who watched it, thanks in part to Wise’s tense, economical direction, and one of the greatest jump-scares in the history of horror. ‘[It created] a genuine physical reaction,’ wrote Nancy Banks-Smith in the Guardian, ‘as if one layer of your skin had shifted over another.'” – The Guardian (UK)