“The idea of a bunch of guys sitting around a living room, or in a restaurant or bar, and not talking only about the Sox or their sex lives or their mortgages, but also ruminating on something as abstract as evil while sipping Cabernet, might be hard to imagine. … Men’s book groups are coming of age, digging deeper and acquiring a seriousness of purpose commensurate with these serious times.”
Tag: 06.02.09
San Francisco Ballet To Make First Chinese Tour
“San Francisco Ballet will announce plans today for its first trip to China, including appearances in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing. … Though the presenter,” which approached the ballet only two months ago, “is footing most of the bill for the trip, the Ballet needed to raise nearly $1 million to cover transportation and other expenses.”
San Francisco Ballet To Make First Chinese Tour
“San Francisco Ballet will announce plans today for its first trip to China, including appearances in Shanghai, Suzhou and Beijing. … Though the presenter,” which approached the ballet only two months ago, “is footing most of the bill for the trip, the Ballet needed to raise nearly $1 million to cover transportation and other expenses.”
Blushing: It’s Mortifying, But It Can Work In Your Favor
“Jane Austen heroines may pink endearingly at a subtle breach in manners; millions more glow like a lava lamp in what feels like a public disrobing: the face, suddenly buck-naked.” But researchers have some good news for blushers. “In a series of recent studies, psychologists have found that reddening cheeks soften others’ judgments of bad or clumsy behavior, and help to strengthen social bonds rather [than] strain them.”
Reconstructing The Past In A Different Sort Of Primitive Art
“Picasso never had to explain that his mistresses weren’t actually cubic, but [Viktor] Deak has taken grief over as little as a flexed knee.” Such is life when you’re a high-profile paleoartist. “If you find yourself face to face in a museum with Homo habilis, Australopithecus afarensis or Paranthropus boisei, you may be looking at his work. Many of the images of hominids in the new Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History are his….”
Salinger Sues To Block Catcher Sequel
“Author JD Salinger is taking legal action to block the publication of a book billed as a follow-up to his classic novel The Catcher in the Rye. According to legal papers filed in New York, the 90-year-old’s lawyers called the book a ‘rip-off pure and simple’. 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye features someone similar to Holden Caulfield from Salinger’s work, which he says only he is able to use.”
How One Author Smashed Romance Novels’ Color Barrier
“Some people sneer at paperback romance novels, but they’re the most prolific, profitable arm of the publishing industry — even despite the recession. And before 1980, all the damsels being clasped to hard male chests had been white. Lots of passion, zilch diversity. Then, under the pen name Rosalind Welles, journalist Elsie Washington published Entwined Destinies.”
After 60 Years With NY Phil, First Clarinetist Says Goodbye
Stanley Drucker, the New York Philharmonic’s first clarinetist, “has played with the Philharmonic for the past 60 years, or nearly one-third of the orchestra’s history. When he retires at the end of June, he will have played in more than 10,200 concerts. And Drucker will be going out with a bang, including with one of his signature pieces, the Clarinet Concerto by Aaron Copland.”
Smells Like Green Spirit: How The Scent Opera Played Out
“In a comic touch, it was announced that the character of Fresh Air was indisposed, and since no replacement existed in New York, the role would be performed by Clean Air, which combined a bracing, clinically pure scent with wistful music, rather like Copland in his bucolic Americana mode.”
Does Lincoln Center’s Redesign Go Too Far?
“Having lost the battle against transforming the campus’s north plaza in front of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, laid out in 1965 by the celebrated landscape architect Dan Kiley, some preservationists say they fear that the rest of the $1.2 billion redevelopment project could end up compromising the original 1960s composition of Lincoln Center as a whole.”