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Here’s A Snowflake From The First Full-Length ‘Nutcracker’ In The U.S.

Seventy-five years ago, in a San Francisco busy with Naval activity in the middle of WWII, the San Francisco Ballet staged the first full-length Nutcracker in the U.S. The snow is still falling – but there’s a lot more of it now than there was in 1944, when 16 white-clad ballet corps members danced with sparkler-style sticks around the stage. – San Francisco Chronicle

Is Memoir Writing Selfish?

Michelle Tea, author of several memoirs and novels, says (in her new book called, er, Against Memoir) that it certainly is. “Examining the need to record her experiences in the title essay, she writes: ‘Personal narrative is a mental illness, but you don’t want to be well.’ She tells me how the compulsion to write is similar to the craving to drink.” – The Guardian (UK)

So They Hired Phoebe Waller-Bridge Of ‘Fleabag’ Fame To Help The James Bond Movies Out

Remember how Carrie Fisher (RIP, General) used to punch up scripts? It’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s time now. She’s the second woman – only the second – to get a writing credit on a Bond movie on the six-decade franchise. She says she wasn’t trying to fix the, shall we say, anti-feminist message of many early Bond films: “They were just looking for tweaks across a few of the characters and a few of the storylines.” – BBC

The Greta Thunberg Of The Theatre

Isabella Madrigal, a tribally enrolled member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians in California, and a 17-year-old, figured out, as she had a hard time finding good roles, that she could shape her own narrative. She explains, “if there is a lack of Native actors, it’s because there’s a lack of Indigenous storytellers. This lack of representation goes beyond just not seeing a Native face in the media. That’s certainly part of the issue, but it’s not the entire thing because our defining stories are also missing from the national narrative.” – The Desert Sun (Palm Springs)

The Design Of ‘English-Style’ Gardens Owes A Lot To China And Japan

Garden and art history books tell a specific story that leaves some important bits out. “In a few short decades, what became known as the ‘English style’ had spread across Britain and on to the rest of Europe. In fact, centuries later it remains the dominant garden style in the world. You’d be forgiven for assuming this style arose entirely spontaneously from the imagination of a handful of ingenious 18th-century Brits. However, the evidence paints a different picture.” – The Guardian (UK)

A Bookstore With A Mission, Surviving In The Midst Of Book Business Upheaval

Must be nice to be able to say that people wanting bestsellers can just “ge them elsewhere.” Another Story Bookshop in Toronto was founded with a mission of social justice, with the purpose of getting “diverse books into diverse hands” – and though the founder died two years ago, the new owners are continuing the mission despite Toronto’s rising real estate market and, of course, the ever-present threat of Amazon. – The New York Times

The Artist Obsessed With Worms

Simone Lia is a comic-strip artist, but one day she noticed that she couldn’t stop drawing worms. Her “worms look like demob-happy frankfurters. They have floaty bodies, dazed smiles. … With a laugh, she explains she realised how much she admired the character of the worm: ‘They’re very humble, live in the ground, do good work, get on with it.’ These qualities, she says, ‘I’d like for myself.'” – The Observer (UK)