Category: issues

“Gay’s the Word on Bloomsbury’s Marchmont Street, the country’s only LBGT book shop, celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. It’s long been something of an institution for gay Londoners.” Now the store’s landlord, Camden Council, wants to raise the rent by “a hefty 25%, more than the shop’s managers say they can afford.”

“A new generation of young, hip and occasionally tattooed librarians … call themselves guybrarians, cybrarians and ‘information specialists,’ and they blog at sites like The Free Range Librarian and The Lipstick Librarian.” Not to mention The Depraved Librarian and other sites whose names we can’t reprint. (And you should see what goes on at ALA conventions.)

“Newly published research suggests that, at least in the business world, the link between inspiration and ingenuity is strengthened by focusing on the needs of others.”

“Escondido arts patrons were reassured yesterday that the California Center for the Arts will not be closed because of drastic budget cuts. The news from the City Council was prompted by a deluge of about 200 e-mails that arts supporters sent to council members, pleading with them to keep the center open.’

“The World Economic Forum convened a panel discussion at Carnegie Hall Thursday on arts leadership. The focus? ‘The role and responsibilities of cultural leaders and institutions in the collaborative process of development solutions to a number of challenges affecting the world’. Hmmm.” (Pithiest observation: “People pay for entertainment. Art is subsidized.”)

“Every year since 1946, at 9:45 p.m. on Feb. 13, the city churches ring out an echo of the air-raid sirens that first announced the [Allied] planes. It’s an eerie thing to witness. … In Germany you almost never see public expressions of grief over something that happened to Germans in World War II.” Yet the general public is finally working out how to reclaim this issue from the neo-Nazi movement.

“Black actors and campaigners are upset that the white film star [Gérard Depardieu] was cast as Alexandre Dumas, a French national hero with mixed African blood. The blond, blue-eyed Depardieu sports curly hair and darker skin to play the creator of The Three Musketeers in [the new film] L’Autre Dumas.”

Charlotte Higgins: “I’m not sure that five years ago one could have accurately predicted how popular the public lecture would become. You’d think: I gave up listening to people droning on at the front of the room when I left university.” Yet the talks are selling out all over, and in London, there’s even a School of Life which offers “sermons.”

“With the closing of record stores such as Tower Records, Ticketmaster lost retail outlets for event sales. The new accord will let Wal-Mart shoppers buy tickets for concerts, sports and other events at cash registers in the retailer’s entertainment department….”

City officials say “that the Frank Gehry-designed theater will be constructed on the originally planned site, and that below-ground construction work on the foundation will start next quarter. … But even if the foundation work moves ahead as planned, the project faces numerous challenges, leaving skeptics questioning whether it will ever be built.”