Category: issues

“There is some argument over whether General Sir James Abbott founded Abbottabad. Herbert Edwardes, another soldier and administrator in the Punjab, has his claims. But it was Abbott who managed to put his name to the place, and he really should have left it at that. The encomium he composed when he left the hilltown he loved must be one of the worst poems ever written.”

“Why? Because there aren’t enough training opportunities, because the salaries are pathetic, and because the burden of fund-raising and administration precludes any opportunity for creative thinking.”

“The most recent estimates from 2009 show Americans spent $14.5 billion on tickets for the performing arts. That’s $6 billion less than Americans spent on sports admissions, but $4 billion more than they spent on movie tickets.”

“Festival Republic and Livenation will send out tickets as soon as possible, rather than waiting, sometimes for six months, until just before performances. Police say the delay makes it difficult to prove fake sites did not have the tickets to sell in the first place.”

“Primarily, a good number of the 1.5 million Americans who go to an arts performances on an given day bring someone along. Less than 7 percent go alone — 41 percent have a companion and 54 percent bring a family member. They usually spend 2.7 hours at the event.”

“Last August, student loans surpassed credit cards as the nation’s single largest source of debt, edging ever closer to $1 trillion. Yet for all the moralizing about American consumer debt by both parties, no one dares call higher education a bad investment. The nearly axiomatic good of a university degree in American society has allowed a higher education bubble to expand to the point of bursting.”

“What is it that makes a neighborhood, or for that matter a whole city, come together at a certain moment, culturally speaking? Why was SoHo in its early days vibrant and special in ways that, despite the art world’s current money and hype, seem so hard to come by now?”

“Like its counterparts elsewhere, this arty crowd sometimes looks and acts unconventional — but it’s not with political ends in mind. These young artists tend to set aside politics for commerce, and the promise of attractive paydays from foreign businesses.”

“Venturing into a possible new area of revenue, Lincoln Center has agreed to serve as a paid adviser to the developers of a proposed performing arts complex in Tianjin, China’s fifth largest city.”

“For centuries, cursive handwriting has been an art. To a growing number of young people, it is a mystery. The sinuous letters of the cursive alphabet … are going the way of the quill and inkwell.”