Albert Fuller, R.I.P.
Albert Fuller has died. I enjoyed his playing a lot and, the one time I met him—we shared the elevator to Weill Recital Hall—he was gracious enough to tell me about the night he met Igor Stravinsky.
Wes Phillips
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Blood at the Root
Caryl Phillips named his first play <I>Strange Fruit</I>. It had nothing to do with lynching, US race relations, or anything concerning Billie Holiday's famous song.
Do Parallel Universes Exist?
Oxford quantum scientist David Deutsche thinks he's proved they do. BTW, he thinks time travel is possible, too. Calling Dr. Who . . . .
Becoming Carlos Acosta
"When the news reached my father's ears that I was running around the streets with gangs, he said to my mother, 'We have to do something, Maria, otherwise we're going to lose the boy.' Our neighbour Candida, whose nephew was one of the principal dancers with the Cuban National Ballet, had a suggestion: 'You say he likes dancing? Why don't you send him to ballet school?'
Lovers of the Press, Liberty Must Root for Cubs
Dean Starkman posits: "As a Burkean liberal and paleo-librarian of longstanding, like many of you, The Audit has long understood that the Chicago Cubs represent all that is good in this life: the sun (day baseball); nature (ivy); tradition (a mechanical scoreboard); openness to alternative points of view and information from foreign, underdeveloped cultures (inning-by-inning out-of-town scores, even from the American League); transparency (W or L flags run up the scoreboard after games); nourishment (smokey links); democracy (I’m sure George Will or someone can help with that); free market capitalism (ditto) and prudent market regulation (see: Krugman)."
Brooklyn's Books of Wonder
Melvin Jules Bukiet thinks NY's biggest borough has a soft gooey center. <I>Oh yeah? I got yer soft gooey center right heah!</I>
Marceau Speaks
<I>The Christian Science Monitor</I> took the occasion of Marcel Marceau's death to reprint its 1974 interview with the mime.
My Hero
Well, one of 'em anyway. Make that <I>two</I> of 'em. Alex Ross interviews Yo-Yo Ma.
At the Pub with the Inklings
<I>The Lord of the Rings</I> would have ended quite differently if Tolkien's drinking buddies hadn't talked him out of it.
Known Space
Graphic representations of every object in our solar system with a diameter greater than 200 miles: One star, four gas giant planets, four terrestrial planets, three dwarf planets, 21 moons, four asteroids, and 51 trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs).