“We’re taking kids and giving them a skill and teaching them to make better decisions. If they can just get better grades and get a high school diploma, they provide $1.2 million in taxes over their lifetime. What this program costs, they would pay back to society in just four to six years. I think we’re saving the community lots of money, but we’re also playing a high level of music, and sharing that. We want to have pockets of communities all over the city celebrating their kids.”
Tag: 12.06.11
The Voices Of Former Slaves, Caught On Record
One of the US Works Progress Administration’s projects in the 1930s was a collection of interviews of the last surviving freed slaves from the American South. Some 27 of those interviews were caught on tape (including one conducted by Zora Neale Hurston), and the Library of Congress has now made those recordings available.
Has Our Culture Stalled Out? (Plenty Of Evidence It Has)
“Try to spot the big, obvious, defining differences between 2012 and 1992. Movies and literature and music have never changed less over a 20-year period.”
How The Brain Fills In Music When There Isn’t Any
“If we were able to record your brain while you watch a silent movie, we would see your auditory cortex activate, even though there’s not a single sound that impacts your eardrum. There’s a creative process involved. The brain is filling in auditory information by drawing on memories.”
Why Art Is So Expensive
“At this moment, when the 1 percent has the cash to burn, buying art is less about finance than about the cultural value of money, and of art.”
St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre Cancels Productions
“Penumbra Theatre has cancelled two of the five plays in its current season, the St. Paul company announced Tuesday. The programming cuts come as the theater disclosed that it has a $500,000 shortfall on its $3.2 million budget.”
Plan To Rename Miami Art Museum Angers Many
“Four board members have resigned in protest. Several are threatening to rescind their contributions. Protest e-mails to museum officials have complained that an institution being built on public land and largely financed by taxpayers should not be named for an individual, no matter how generous.”
Kevin Spacey Goes All Patti-LuPone On Noisy Audience Members
“Kevin Spacey has won praise for a series of in-character attacks as Richard III on unruly audience members in Sydney, including a cutting rebuke of the owner of a ringing mobile phone.”
Where Are Today’s Angry Young Playwrights?
“How to write about these scoundrel times? WH Auden dubbed the 1940s ‘the age of anxiety’, but it feels a better term for now than then. … Hard times can generate great writing, but they can also freeze the imagination in a rictus of fear.”
The Bad Sex In Fiction Prize 2011 – We Have A Winner!
“An over-reliance on coy terms such as ‘family jewels’, ‘back door’ and ‘front parlour’ has won acclaimed American novelist David Guterson the dubious accolade of the Literary Review‘s bad sex in fiction award.”