Category: people

CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster says it never meant to offend “anyone or any group” and did not intend to “diminish the importance” of stories that were left out of Canada: The Story of Us, which was meant as a marquee program to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the country.

After a four-decade gospel career (she was discovered by Mahalia Jackson), she began performing on Broadway in such shows as Purlie, Inner City, Me and Bessie (as in Smith), and Black and Blue.

“Artists are always being lectured on their moral duty, a fate other professionals—dentists, for example—generally avoid,” she observed. “There’s nothing inherently sacred about films and pictures and writers and books. ‘Mein Kampf’ was a book.” In fact, she said, writers and other artists are particularly prone to capitulating to authoritarian pressure; the isolation inherent in the craft makes them psychologically vulnerable. “The pen is mightier than the sword, but only in retrospect,” she wrote. “At the time of combat, those with the swords generally win.”

“Even as he evolved into their doctor, interpreter, educator and chief negotiator with outside buyers and suppliers, he often found himself in a paradoxical position: A Westerner committed to safeguarding the ancestral cultural traditions of a clan that was growing accustomed to – and even preferred – modern comforts.”

“The Leonore Annenberg Fellowship Fund for the Performing and Visual Arts … has distributed $6 million to 70 [early-career] artists over 10 years … The program was intended from its inception to end this year – the technical term is a ‘wasting endowment,’ created to be spent and then concluded – so the 2017 recipients will be its last.”

Though there were women in the Beat movement, not many knew of them. “Along with Diane di Prima, Anne Waldman and several others, Ms. Kyger made her mark not only as a writer, but also as a member of the male-dominated post-World War II cultural movement.”

Pigott-Smith is well known for being a constant hard worker both on stage and on screen. “Just before his death, he finished work on a television adaptation of the critically acclaimed play King Charles III, in which he plays the title role of a stubborn King Charles, rebelling against the government in the wake of his mother’s death. His performance in the play’s run in London and New York won him nominations for Olivier and Tony awards.”

The Lehmans have filled up not only their high-ceiling floor-through in Brooklyn, but also a house in Maine and an apartment in Miami. So they’ve finally slowed down. “Collecting is a lot easier now that we’re not collecting anymore,” said Mr. Lehman, who also formerly led the Baltimore Museum of Art.

“I never said that I was stepping away from the opera stage for good. Never, never, never did I say that to anybody,” Fleming insisted in a phone conversation from her home in New York City earlier today. “I think it misleads people,” she added. “They sort of imagine that I’m an opera singer and I’m now retiring. So I just want to make sure that gets cleared up.”