“It’s weird, isn’t it? Parents lie to their kids about a mysterious, bearded gift-giver, only to set them up for inevitable heartbreak. Except, it’s not so simple.”
Tag: 12.19.13
The Peculiar Grammar of Christmas Songs
Linguist Arika Okrent explains what “round yon Virgin” is about and why we “troll the ancient Yuletide carol”.
Meet Germany’s Top Contemporary Composer: He’ll Communicate Only By Fax
When David Patrick Stearns set up his interview with Wolfgang Rihm, these were the conditions he was given: “No phone calls. No e-mail. Only questions submitted (in English) by fax and returned by fax, on handwritten pages – in German.” Says Donald Nally, who’s conducting a major work of Rihm’s this weekend in Philadelphia and New York, “I envy someone living in a different century like that.”
Valery Gergiev Says That Of Course He’s Against Anti-Gay Discrimination
He even says that allegations to the contrary “hurt me very much”. And well they might, since those allegations have had his next employers a bit concerned.
What’s The Buzz? (Swamped With Audience Data, We’re Trying To Figure Out What It All Means)
“What better way to understand your customers than to pay close attention to what they are saying publicly about you. But what’s going to have to become a crucial yet complicated sub-specialty of this corner of big data is figuring out what to do when you don’t like what they’re saying about you.”
Bankruptcy Judge Says NYC Opera Can’t Return Ticket-Buyers’ Money
“When City Opera was forced to cancel the rest of its season on Oct. 1, after its last-ditch effort to fund raise failed, customers had already purchased $323,000 worth of tickets for the canceled performances.”
Thieves Have Systematically Looted A 16th Century Library
“Our investigations found that there was a true criminal system in action. A group of people… carried out a devastating, systematic looting of the library.”
Jerry Saltz Talked About George Zimmerman’s Painting (Oops!)
“Almost instantaneously, I was attacked by progressives from the art world arguing that I should ignore Zimmerman — since ‘Silence is a weapon.’ Funny, I thought that in the art world people believe that Silence = Death.”
This Year In Publishing – Lots Of Lawyers, But Some Stability Too
“With e-book sales leveling off, and independent stores relatively stable after a long era of decline, little changed for the vast majority of people who buy or borrow books, beyond, of course, the books themselves.”
The Walker Art Center’s Good Year (Don’t Mind The Cuts)
The report emphasized several nonfinancial “measures of success,” including six Walker-organized exhibitions, a half-dozen performing arts commissions, and 41 film and video premieres. The center added 80 pieces to its permanent collection. It also sent four exhibitions to nine U.S. cities, where they were seen by more than 190,000 people.