Category: people

“A lawyer for Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra conductor Paavo Järvi this morning entered a plea of not guilty to a charge of drunken driving on behalf of his client.” He was arrested after being found asleep at the wheel of a stopped but running car and failing the “walk-the-line” sobriety test.

When her son killed himself last week, the event made headlines worldwide. “Why, of all the stories of creative, brilliant people who have suffered from fatal depressions, does Plath’s tragic legacy resonate so widely? Here, Joyce Carol Oates, Peter D. Kramer, Erica Jong, Andrew Solomon and Elaine Showalter offer their thoughts.”

“Nicholas Hughes had suffered for years from depression. He had had a long and distinguished career as a marine biologist, a professor at the University of Alaska. But of course that is not the story people want. ‘Depressed person commits suicide’ is not a headline. A headline is ‘The Curse of Plath!’ Yet the ‘curse’ idea is repellent.”

“It’s not unusual for a student to do a little life modelling to make ends meet. But what happens when that student goes on to marry a man who becomes Prime Minister and interest in your naked form reaches (no disrespect to Mrs B) unnatural heights?”

“A police officer said he found Järvi asleep behind the wheel of a running car at 1:35 a.m. at Columbia Parkway and Wooster Pike. Järvi failed a field sobriety test, and refused a breath test at the police station, police said. Anyone who refuses to take a breath test loses his license for one year.”

The city of Verona “wants to strengthen its romantic reputation by offering love-struck couples the chance to tie the knot in the courtyard right below the famous stone balcony.”

A priest “who was like a grandfather to generations of Quebec’s classical music performers,” Lindsay created what became the province’s flagship summer outdoor music festival in 1978.

“Whenever an actor dies unexpectedly in the midst of a fruitful career, it’s impossible not to mourn the future possibilities that have been suddenly and cruelly foreclosed. Natasha Richardson, who died Wednesday after suffering a head injury in a skiing accident Monday, was only 45 and should have had more opportunities to show us the range of her talent, which was always surprising. One could say she made a career of overturning expectations about what she could and could not do.”

Morgan Monceaux, a troubled Vietnam vet, walked into a Long Island gallery one day in 1992, looked at the American primitive paintings on the wall, and said “I can do this.” Within a few weeks his portraits of 40 U.S. presidents were on that wall. It’s been a bumpy ride since, but he now has a one-man show in Baltimore and three paintings in the National Portrait Gallery.

Chad Lindsey, who on Monday rescued an injured man who had fallen onto the subway tracks, “said almost everyone seems to be an aspiring actor nowadays, but in this case, it is a critical point to the story: Mr. Lindsey currently appears in an Off Broadway show called ‘Kasper Hauser,’ in a role that requires him to repeatedly lift a character who cannot walk.”