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The Real Nomads Of Nomadland

One says, "It's kind of simpatico with Fern's story . My husband died, and we don't have kids, so I just sold everything and just thought that I would travel for a bit, and fell in love with it." And, just like Fern, she says, "I can't see me living a different way now." - BBC

Jazz Musicians Remember Chick Corea

He left behind "thousands of audio and video recordings; the countless notes scrawled on countless piles of music manuscript paper; and, of course, the memories of family, friends, and fans." Just about everyone who plays jazz today owes something to Corea, whether they know it or not (and most do). - Jazz Times

Bob Porter, Producer And Broadcaster Who Rescued Jazz History, Dead At 80

"As a record producer guided the reissue of vast swaths of the classic jazz canon, and … as a broadcaster helped build WBGO into the largest jazz radio station in the New York City area." - The New York Times

Tempest Storm, Last Of The Great Old-Time Striptease Artists, Dead At 93

"Routinely named in the same ardent breath as the great 20th-century ecdysiasts Lili St. Cyr, Blaze Starr and Gypsy Rose Lee, Ms. Storm was every inch as ecdysiastical as they, and for far longer. … continued plying her craft until she was in her 80s — not because she had to, but because she could." (And, by the...

Harriet Tubman’s Lost Family Home Discovered In Maryland

The site, on land recently added to the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore, includes ten acres that Tubman's father, Ben Ross, was given when he was freed. What's been discovered are the remains of Ross's cabin, where he brought his wife (whose freedom he purchased) and sheltered Harriet, when she was aged 17 to 22, and...

Literary Scholar And Critic Denis Donoghue Dead At 92

"First at University College Dublin and later at New York University, Professor Donoghue carved out a middle ground in the contested landscape of late-20th-century literary studies, standing opposed to both the politicized theories of the left and the traditionalist pieties of the right. He was an ardent opponent of deconstruction, and … fierce aversion to the impositions of...

Composer Wayne Peterson, 93 — Was At The Center Of A Pulitzer Prize Controversy

For 30 years, Mr. Peterson had been a composer, pianist and professor at San Francisco State University, respected by most musicians who knew his work and highly regarded by his students. The Pulitzer — and the ensuing squabble — changed his life. Another composition, Ralph Shapey’s hour-long piece for orchestra, “Concerto Fantastique,” had been the unanimous choice of the...

Carol Prisant, Elegant Writer About Design For The World Of Interiors, 82

Prisant was a 51-year-old antiques dealer with no professional experience writing when she wrote to the autocratic editor of the British magazine The World of Interiors, asking for a job. There wasn't one open in New York, but the editor created one for her. "'She told the truth, but always with subtlety and lashings of wit,' Rupert Thomas, Ms....

Daniel Kaluuya’s Rise To Movie Stardom Came From Talent, And Britain’s Public Funding For The Arts

Kaluuya grew up on a council estate - the rough equivalent to "the projects" in the United States - the son of Ugandan immigrants to Britain. He took advantage of every possible free arts program, and, at 18, ended up bot a writer and an actor for the program Skins. And, years later, came Get Out. "By the time...

Joye Hummel, The First Woman To Write ‘Wonder Woman,’ 97

Hummel was 19 when she began working as an assistant for William Moulton Marston, the psychologist who had created the character and the comic a few years earlier. Jill Lepore writes in The Secret History of Wonder Woman: "At first, Hummel typed Marston’s scripts. ... Soon, she was writing scripts of her own." - The New York Times

Vartan Gregorian, Savior Of The New York Public Library, Has Died At 87

Gregorian, an immigrant from Armenia who became a scholar and leader of Brown University and the Carnegie Corporation, "was best known for resurrecting the New York Public Library from a fiscal and morale crisis. It was a radical, midcareer change from the pastoral academic realm, and a risky plunge into the high-profile social and political wars of New York...

Helen McCrory, Star Of Peaky Blinders And Harry Potter, Has Died At 52

McCrory's husband, actor Damian Lewis, announced the news of her death on Twitter. "I’m heartbroken to announce that after an heroic battle with cancer, the beautiful and mighty woman that is Helen McCrory has died. ... We love her and know how lucky we are to have had her in our lives. She blazed so brightly. Go now Little...

The Forgotten Land Artist

Nancy Holt was always serious. Her journals show how other artists loved talking through ideas with her. She was very close to Michael Heizer, Richard Serra and Joan Jonas. She exchanged concrete poetry by post with Carl Andre and Sol LeWitt. But when I ask Le Feuvre if the men saw her as a peer, she answers: “Yes, but.”...

Key Arts Figure In Belarus Freed From Prison After International Campaign

"Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska, the director of the Watch Docs Film Festival in Belarus, has been released from prison and had charges against her dropped following an international outcry from film festivals and human rights organizations. was arrested in Minsk on April 5, allegedly for her role in organizing an underground photo exhibition celebrating Belarusian health workers." - The Hollywood...

Louis Menand On The Pragmatism Of Lionel Trilling

As Menand puts it in his new book, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, “Trilling thought that people’s literary preferences tell us something about the kind of human beings they wish to be and about the way they wish other human beings to be—that is, something about their morality and their politics.” - The Point

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