“Without a written constitution in place, statutes are the U.K.’s highest form of law, and its unwritten constitution is a combination of legislation, conventions, parliamentary procedure, and common law. To some this setup may be odd or confusing, but my book’s conclusion is that unwritten constitutions can perform just as well as written ones, and that Britain’s unwritten constitution may be just as good as America’s esteemed document.” – The Atlantic
Publishing Insider Joins A Books-To-Prisons Pipeline
“When he isn’t promoting books for W.W. Norton, Peter Miller, publicity director of Norton’s Liveright imprint, moonlights as the owner of Freebird Books, a small used bookstore he operates in Brooklyn. … A year after buying the store, Miller heard that Books Through Bars, which donates books to prison inmates around the country, needed a space for its collection operations.” – Publishers Weekly
The Man Who’s Saving India’s Rural Folk Music And The People Who Perform It
“Live and festival-centric performances, which is all these musicians have known through generations, barely bring in money, and an online presence has become mandatory for creative mileage. Many music traditions are dying out, with practitioners taking up menial labor to make ends meet.” Enter Abhinav Agrawal. – Ozy
Henry Golding On The Classic Actor Narrative Of Playing A Role And Finding Yourself
The actor who found fame in 2018’s Crazy Rich Asians talks about making indie movies before he hit it big. “It was magical as an actor to be able to sit in a character’s feelings and confusion and history. I’ve been trying to find great material to work from like this, much more independent styles of movie making.” – The New York Times
U.S. Supreme Court Says Developer Who Painted Over New York’s Graffiti Mecca Must Pay Artists
“The real estate company that whitewashed graffiti works at 5Pointz in Queens will still have to pay millions in damages to the affected artists, the United States Supreme Court decided on Monday, October 5. … The [justices] declined G&M Realty’s petition to review the case, upholding a 2018 federal court ruling that awarded $6.7 million in damages to 21 artists at the site.” – Hyperallergic
A Veteran Broadway Dancer Laments What May Be The End Of His Career
“I wondered, but didn’t ask, if, like mine, my castmates’ bodies had already grown thicker and felt shorter and moved slower. I wondered if, like me, they didn’t recognize themselves without choreography to move through and other people to move with; if, like me, they were hoping this wasn’t the moment they’d always known would come: the moment they would have to redefine who they are and who they’re going to be.” – Dance Magazine
Soprano Erin Wall Dead At 44
A finalist at the 2003 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, she went on to perform with symphony orchestras and major opera houses throughout Europe and North America. She was diagnosed with cancer in 2018. – CBC
Why People Believe In The Unbelievable
“You don’t have to be a big believer in the power of survey data to see that behind the monster stands meaning. Belief in the existence of monsters rarely starts with a chance observation in the woods. It requires psychological preparation. Often, a sinuous neck, a flipper, is just the tip of something that sits much deeper in the waters of culture and history.” – Los Angeles Review of Books
How Much John Steinbeck Hated Criticism (Of Any Kind)
“Over the course of a long writing life, Steinbeck had won many prizes, among them the Pulitzer and then, remarkably enough, the Nobel, but no matter how many hundreds of critics and millions of readers declared him a national treasure, he not only raged at those who refused to extend him the accolades he hungered for, he scorned those very accolades when they came his way.” – The New Republic
Why Science Didn’t Become A Thing Until The 17th Century
“Science has produced some extraordinary elements of modern life that we take for granted: imaging devices that can peer inside the body without so much as a cut; planes that hurtle through the air at hundreds of miles an hour. But human civilization has existed for millenniums, and modern science — as distinct from ancient and medieval science, or so-called natural philosophy — has only been around for a few hundred years. What took so long?” – The New York Times
The Case For Local Diversity Versus Globalism
It boils down to two concepts that sound simple but have profound implications: First, shorter distances are healthier than longer distances for commerce and human interaction; second, diversification — one farmer growing a dozen crops, for example — is healthier than monoculture, which is what globalization tends to create, whether it’s bananas or mobile phones. – The New York Times
In Paris, Fashion Mavens Wonder If Their Art Can Provide Hope In A Dark Time
Another lockdown may be looming as the virus spikes in Paris again, but Fashion Week still had about 20 in-person runway events. Designer Andrew Gn: “We have to project ourselves towards better times. We, designers, are the core and the driving force of the whole fashion ecosystem. The weavers, printers, embroiderers, ateliers, all depend on our creative work. We must keep on.” – NPR
The Cleveland Orchestra Restarts Recording With Its Own Label
Does this seem like a headline from before the pandemic? Think again. The first recording was released in June, with more on their way. (But it may be a while before the orchestra can record live again in Severance Hall.) – The New York Times
Writer Elif Shafak On Leaving, And Loving, Your Homeland
Shafak, who says she can likely never return to Istanbul, says, “We do not give up on the places we love just because we are physically detached from them. Motherlands are castles made of glass. In order to leave them, you have to break something—a wall, a social convention, a cultural norm, a psychological barrier, a heart. What you have broken will haunt you. To be an emigré, therefore means to forever bear shards of glass in your pockets.” – LitHub
The Royal Ballet Leaps Back On Stage
“No one was ready, no one could even think that it would be possible that one day they would have to readjust ballet so that it would be social distancing in between,” say some Royal Ballet dancers. And yet, with various bubbles between dancers and “work spouses in the bubbles,” the ballet is going on at the Royal Opera House. – BBC
Writing As A Material Art
A book “is a fluid path from an idea, along a stream bed whose variations, detours and eddies are unknown until the water that flows into it finds itself moved.” – LitHub
If Cinemas Survive The Pandemic, A Glut Of Blockbusters Await Fans
Assuming we get a functioning vaccine and that some cinemas survive the pandemic, and that audiences ever trust again the idea of being stuck in a room with hundreds of other people for two or three hours, there’s going to be a lot to see. “Perhaps fans can look forward to a geeky bonanza, where a new tentpole arrives in multiplexes every other week. Or perhaps some of these films will end up moving to the small screen instead.” – The Guardian (UK)
Roxane Gay, Margaret Atwood Sign Open Letter In Support Of Trans And Nonbinary People
Who had “Margaret Atwood versus J.K. Rowling” on their 2020 bingo card? Because that’s part of what’s happened since the author of the Harry Potter series went on an anti-trans jaunt in the past few years, culminating in her latest mystery plot. The open letter reads, in part, “We are writers, editors, journalists, agents and professionals in multiple forms of publishing. We believe in the power of words. … We say: nonbinary people are nonbinary, trans women are women, trans men are men, trans rights are human rights. Your pronouns matter. You matter. You are loved.” – Los Angeles Times
The Man Reshaping Gothic Classics For 21st Century Netflix Watchers
After all of the brouhaha – love, hate, reexamining, reevaluation, and a lot more – for Netflix’s series of The Haunting of Hill House, here comes an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, called The Haunting of Bly Manor for the streaming service. That’s down to Mike Flanagan. And the challenges are similar: “Both series are fundamentally incompatible with the literary works on which they’re based.” – Slate
The Museum Of Chinese In America, Beset By Fire And Much More, Gets A Chance At Recovery
When a fire hit the New York Chinatow museum and the staff worried priceless archives were lost, that wasn’t the only issue facing the institution: The coronavirus shutdown and anti-Asian harassment were ever present threats as well. Now the Ford Foundation has stepped up to help stabilize the institution, which is small but vital to the history of New York. – The New York Times
Carol Paumgarten, Co-Founder And Longtime Artistic Director Of Steps On Broadway, 76
Paumgarten opened Steps in 1979, in a dingy one-room studio. She “went on to nurture three generations of New York dancers, becoming an instantly recognizable presence with her long silver hair and stylish black outfits as she presided over roomfuls of bodies in motion.” – The New York Times
Black Museum Trustees, More Ready Than Ever For Institutional Change, Join Forces Formally
They’re tired of tokenism and ready for actual progress, so they’re joining together to become a stronger force. “Often the only Black people on the boards of major museums, these trustees are pooling their efforts to help institutions identify new talent and insist on diverse perspectives to better reflect the communities they serve.” – The New York Times
A Texas Grand Jury Indicts Netflix Over ‘Cuties,’ Showing No Understanding Of The First Amendment
That’s because Texas is, of course, special (in terms of its own laws), but also, perhaps the grand jury didn’t watch the actual film? “The Miller test says that works are protected by the First Amendment if they have what could be characterized as ‘serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value’ when the works were each ‘taken as a whole.'” With Cuties, it would be hard to argue otherwise. – Slate
What ‘Angels In America’ Means During The New Pandemic
The play means something different now than it did a year ago. “The light of Covid-19 turns out to be especially harsh and revealing, turning the play, so concerned with prophecy, into a prophet itself. How, it now seems to ask, can we have squandered in just a few months the decades’ worth of suffering and organizing and scientific advances invested in the struggle against AIDS?” – The New York Times
Kansas City Has A Brand New Classical Music Station
Using foundation and individual funding, the Curators of the University of Missouri purchased 91.9-FM from William Jewell College, which had owned the frequency since the 1970s and had leased it to various groups over the years. – KC Independent