“Right now Brian Williams is receiving the scorn and contempt of the world at large, which, I can tell you, feels like thousands of bloodthirsty strangers cutting you with tiny invisible knives. I know it has to hurt. I remember clearly how tempting it was to hide. I didn’t, and from the other side of it, all I can say is that it is one of the first good decisions I made.”
Category: people
The First Writer From North Africa To Be Elected To The Academie Française Has Died
“In an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro in 2005, [Assia] Djebar reflected on her status as a female author in the Arab world. ‘I am not a symbol,’ she said. ‘My only activity consists of writing.'”
Prolific British Composer And Pianist John McCabe Has Died
“A gifted artist, he had composed 13 symphonies by the age of 11, and his recordings of Joseph Haydn’s piano sonatas are considered definitive. His own compositions included orchestral and chamber music, and he was director of the London College of Music between 1983 and 1990.”
Philip Levine, Former U.S. Poet Laureate And Pulitzer Prize Winner, Dies At 87
“In spare, realistic free verse, Mr. Levine explored the subjects that had animated his work for decades: his gritty Detroit childhood; the soul-numbing factory jobs he held as a youth; Spain, where he lived for some time as an adult; and the Spanish anarchists of the 1930s, a personal passion since he was a boy.”
A Brilliant, Progressive Woman Invented Monopoly – And Then A Man Stole The Idea And Sold It
“Magie filed a legal claim for her Landlord’s Game in 1903, more than three decades before Parker Brothers began manufacturing Monopoly. She actually designed the game as a protest against the big monopolists of her time — people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.”
The Composer Of The Opera ‘Mourning Becomes Electra,’ Who Went To Prison For Pot Smuggling, Dies At 82
Marvin David Levy “was at midcentury an American composer of seemingly limitless promise, compared by Leonard Bernstein to Benjamin Britten.”
When American Malls Were About To Die, This Architect Rescued Them And Made Them Fantasylands Of Joy
Jon Jerde “constructed thrilling, multi-levelled worlds connected by spiral staircases and swooping ramps, supercharged urban stage sets that sampled styles from across time and place with promiscuous glee. His brand of ‘place making’ has become the ubiquitous strategy for retail-led urban regeneration around the world.”
Prosecutor Asks For Suspended Sentence For Picasso’s Electrician
French media have called this the “€60 million trial”, an allusion to the estimated value of the hoard of art they (the electrician and his wife) kept in their garage for almost 40 years: 271 unsigned Picasso collages, drawings, sketches or lithographs, dating from the first third of the 20th century.
Four Arts Leaders Killed In Car Crash In Saskatchewan
The arts communities in Regina and Calgary are in shock with the news that four of their own have been killed in a devastating highway crash in Saskatchewan. Emotional tributes about the four artists poured out on social media Wednesday.
Iconic Japanese Designer Kenji Ekuan, 85
“Mr. Ekuan was a prolific and widely lauded designer whose work shaped products closely associated with modern Japan, including Yamaha motorcycles and a bullet train used in the country’s Shinkansen high-speed rail network. He was also an evangelist for a potent national ethos, combining pacifism and materialism, which Japan embraced after the devastation of World War II.”