Category: people

Beverly Allen, a longtime professional dancer who joined the Fabulous Palm Springs Follies late in life and at 87 was the oldest showgirl regularly performing in a chorus, according to the 2005 Guinness World Records, has died. She was 90.

President Nicolas Sarkozy saluted Gracq’s memory, describing him as “one of the greatest French writers of the 20th century, who far from the worlds of fashion and society built up a system of original thought and a powerful body of work.”

“Bly, of St. Paul, had a milelong curriculum vitae that reflected a lifetime of writing, teaching, mentoring, editing and pamphleteering — even designing personalized crossword puzzles.”

“Death changes people. We have no idea who anyone is going to be until they die. In Hughes’s case it was partly the nature of his ambition that made it difficult for his readership to deal with him when he was around.”

“Her archive spans 40 years and includes journals she has kept since she was a teenager, drafts of many of her works of fiction — including “The Color Purple,” which also won the National Book Award — and correspondence between Walker and editors, friends and family.”

“Mexico’s country music stars are being killed at an alarming rate — 13 in the past year and a half, three already in December — in a trend that has gone hand in hand with the surge in violence between drug gangs here.”

“Why would a novelist who has written so powerfully about the land of his birth pack up and leave? Were his 2002 move and his taking of Australian citizenship last year a betrayal of his homeland, or a rejoinder to a country whose new government had denounced one of his most important novels as racist?”

“Franco Zeffirelli would like to make over what he called Pope Benedict XVI’s “cold” image and his “showy” clothes, an Italian newspaper reported Saturday, saying the film, stage and opera director offered his services in an interview.”

Oscar Niemeyer, the last surviving founder of architecture’s Modernist movement, turned 100 on Saturday. The grandfather of Brazilian architecture is a living legend, and plans to remain so for a while.

Beauty has been out of fashion with serious artists since the early-20th century, he says, but “the concept of beauty has migrated to popular art, and to design. We are surrounded by objects that want to be beautiful.”