Category: people

Wilhelm was a trailblazer, “one of the few women writing science fiction under their own names in the 1960s, and her books quickly gained a following as well as awards. Unlike many of her colleagues, she straddled genres, between futuristic fantasies and enigmatic mystery novels. She set her science fiction in the near term and imposed present-day sensibilities.”

Daniel Wu’s life is not well-known in the U.S., even though he’s a Cali native. Why? He randomly took a trip to Hong Kong after he got an architecture degree, and in Hong Kong, he was discovered – and turned into a movie star, with three movies his first year there and six the year after, and more, and more, and more … “The 43-year-old actor and producer is now a superfamous A-lister who gets swarmed by paparazzi whenever he leaves the house.”

Bulick, a folk musician and potter and human of many talents,”supervised the nation’s first comprehensive regional cultural planning process, Arts Plan 2000. That document led to the creation of the Regional Arts & Culture Council, an autonomous nonprofit serving [Portland’s three] counties. During Bulick’s tenure the agency quadrupled in size to a budget of more than $4 million and more than 20 full-time staff, and it launched nationally praised and imitated neighborhood arts, youth-at-risk, public art, cultural tourism and arts in education initiatives.”

Saul Bellow never followed his Québec into the contemporary world. Before Alice Munro won in 2013, he was the only Nobel Prize recipient in literature to have been born in Canada. Yet besides a library in Lachine that bears his name, his historical presence is invisible. By contrast, another Jewish scion of Montréal, Leonard Cohen, is enjoying a yearlong retrospective at the Musée d’Art Contemporain, the entirety of whose galleries are devoted to works depicting or inspired by or tangentially related to that beautiful loser.

Dave Itzkoff visits the comedian at his 19-bedroom mansion (complete with multiple aquariums, bowling alley, basketball court, and Rolls-Royces), and accompanies Morgan on a visit back to one of the Brooklyn housing projects where he grew up – and where he and some residents still recognize each other.

Seven months after the death of Joan, his wife of almost 70 years, beset with pneumonia, the apparent victim of gross financial malfeasance and surrounded by a panoply of Hollywood charlatans and mountebanks, he may be facing his greatest challenge, every bit the equal of any of the psychologically flawed superheroes he helped shepherd into being. According to one insider with working knowledge of Lee’s current situation, “It’s a real fucking mess over there. I think his money will be gone in a few weeks… Stan and [his daughter] JC are literally being picked apart by vultures.”

“The image of Stephen Hawking … in his motorised wheelchair, with head contorted slightly to one side and hands crossed over to work the controls, caught the public imagination, as a true symbol of the triumph of mind over matter. As with the Delphic oracle of ancient Greece, physical impairment seemed compensated by almost supernatural gifts, which allowed his mind to roam the universe freely, upon occasion enigmatically revealing some of its secrets hidden from ordinary mortal view. Of course, such a romanticised image can represent but a partial truth.” An obituary by Hawking’s Cambridge colleague Roger Penrose.

Two of the women have described incidents over the past 10 years in which they were sent to Mr. Meier’s New York apartment, where he exposed himself, according to interviews with one of the women and several former employees of the firm. A third woman said in an interview that Mr. Meier grabbed her underwear through her dress at a firm holiday party, and a fourth said he asked her to undress at his apartment so she could be photographed.

“Working largely out of the artistic limelight at her home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., Ms. Stein resurrected historical weaving techniques and merged them with 20th-century Bauhaus design sensibilities.” She also, early in her career, made sock puppets out of actual socks – and one of those puppets became very famous.

The 65-year-old member of show-business royalty – she’s the daughter of Judy Garland and the half-sister of Liza Minnelli – was performing at a London jazz club when she started forgetting her patter and the lyrics to her songs. Shortly after the show ended, she collapsed backstage and was taken to a hospital, where the initial diagnosis was made.