Orlando’s Philharmonic, Opera And Ballet Companies Say They Can’t Afford The Rent On The Venue Being Built For Them

“Although the downtown Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts has long touted itself as the future home of the Orlando Philharmonic, Orlando Ballet and Opera Orlando, arts leaders say their nonprofit groups are being priced out of … the center’s new Steinmetz Hall, which was designed with those groups in mind.” – Orlando Sentinel

Oakland’s Beloved Green Monster, Once Faded, Is Now Better (And Greener) Than Ever

The Mid-Century Monster, a children’s play structure created in 1952 by artist Robert Winston for the shores of the city’s Lake Merritt, had by 2015 become “a washed-up husk. Its chartreuse color had faded to a drab white. Several of its knobbly concrete limbs had begun to crack. … But this year, after a long restoration project, the monster has finally been let out of its cage.” – Atlas Obscura

How Erdogan Purged Turkey’s Intellectuals

“An authoritarian state can do many things to get rid of these democratic types — put them in jail, put them on trial — but ultimately the government must attack the institutions that produce and sustain them. Newspapers can be easy to buy. NGOs are easy to shut down. Universities are much harder to dismantle. But this is what, through the great purge, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his allies sought to do.” – New York Times Magazine

Sasquatch Books’ Gary Luke Retires After 25 Years: The Secret To Regional Publishing

“I think that it was possible to thrive as a regional publisher in the Northwest because we have a very healthy bookstore ecosystem. In other parts of the country, you don’t have that. Like in Los Angeles for example, they don’t have stores like Powells, and Elliott Bay, and Village Books, and Third Place. They’re, I think, predominantly served by chain bookstores like Barnes and Noble. So that’s a big piece of the ecosystem that has to be in place in order for regional publishing to survive.” – Seattle Review of Books