Reporter Judith Newman recounts a story that takes in the late monologuist, a Cleveland architect, his Weimaraner, his clients, Sherwin Williams, and, in the end, Gray’s widow and old house.
Category: people
Rose Marie, 94, Comic Actress And Singer Who Had 90-Year Career
She began working as a singer at age 3, had a national radio show at 5 (she went on a national vaudeville tour at 7 to prove she wasn’t really an adult), and had a decades-long television career that included three Emmy nominations for playing comedy writer Sally Rogers on The Dick Van Dyke Show and nearly 20 years as a favorite on Hollywood Squares. She was doing voiceover work as late as this year, and a documentary about her came out just last month. (Fun fact: she says her father was an arsonist for Al Capone.)
Z’ev, Percussionist And Pioneer Of Industrial Music, Dead At 66
“Performing solo and with others, Z’ev improvised surrounded by homemade percussion instruments. He delved into attacks and resonances, propulsion and meditation. He worked with found objects and later with digital processing. He was intrigued by the properties of materials and by the paths linking sounds, images, the body, nature and spirituality. In a globe-spanning career, he collaborated with musicians, dancers, poets, performance artists and visual artists. His discography includes more than 70 albums as well as multimedia work.”
Dissident Tibetan Filmmaker Gets U.S. Asylum After ‘Arduous And Risky Escape’ From China
Dhondup Wangchen, who interviewed Tibetans about life under Chinese rule for his documentary Leaving Fear Behind – and was jailed after the smuggled film was shown at festivals abroad – was reunited with his family in San Francisco on Christmas Day.
Can Pop-Up Art Clinics Help People Be Healthier?
”You’re doing the art sitting next to people and you start talking to each other. It creates community and is therapeutic in the sense that the hospital becomes less sterile—it gives it a sense of beauty and helps people feel more at peace and connected to others.”
A Tech Pioneer Returns To The Arts As He Learns He’s Going To Die
He had to walk and play at the same time, which was difficult with his impaired sight and depth perception. The orchestra had worked out a plan to cover for him should he suffer any sudden problems onstage. Law and Tyan sensed that, given the importance he attached to “Fiddler,” his decline might accelerate once the play was over. Six weeks after the last performance, he went into hospice care and, less than forty-eight hours later, died
A History Of Our Fascination With Prodigies
Ours is an era, a popular parenting adviser has written, when Lake-Wobegon-style insistence on above-average children is “yesterday’s news,” overtaken by an anxious credo that “given half a chance, all of our children would be extraordinary.” Yet versions of today’s uneasy preoccupation with off-the-charts early achievement actually go back further than we think.
The Unlikely Friendship That Produced “The Night Before Christmas”
“On one hand, we have a man of inherited wealth, his way greased by the power and position of his family, but also a man who believed in the public good (even if he didn’t like city hall telling him what to do with his property) and believed in helping struggling artists—and a man, yes, with enough twinkle in his soul to write the world’s most famous poem about Santa Claus—in the spirit of Christmas, let’s be generous and assume he was the author. And then you have a man on the run from his creditors and the law, a toothless, middle-aged immigrant who arrived in this country with little more than a beat-up violin and a few words of broken English.”
The Singer Soars After Two Double-Lung Transplants
“Diagnosed at age 20 with pulmonary arterial hypertension, or high blood pressure in the lungs, Charity Tillemann-Dick’s heart was more than three times larger than normal. But she couldn’t imagine a life without song. As her career flourished, Tillemann-Dick’s body deteriorated until a 2009 lung transplant saved her life. She was 26.”
Take A Look At The Top Traits Needed To Be Successful Working At Google
“Project Oxygen shocked everyone by concluding that, among the eight most important qualities of Google’s top employees, STEM expertise comes in dead last. The seven top characteristics of success at Google are all soft skills: being a good coach; communicating and listening well; possessing insights into others (including others different values and points of view); having empathy toward and being supportive of one’s colleagues; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas. Those traits sound more like what one gains as an English or theater major than as a programmer.”