Artsjournal.com, which hosts “About Last Night,” linked to a hair-raising story
in Backstage about a recent NEA report
predicting that “not-for-profit dance companies may see as much as a 30% loss of earned income in the next few years, and even a heavier fall in contributions.” I haven’t yet seen the whole report (which is coyly titled “Raising the Barre”), but it clearly demands a closer look.
The “Leisure & Arts” page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal carried an abridged version of a detailed briefing given last week by Col. Matthew Bogdanos, the Marine officer in charge of the official investigation of the looting of the Iraq National Museum. No matter what you think you think about this event, you need to go here
and read what Col. Bogdanos has to say about it.
In other news, The Minor Fall, the Major Lift, who is both cleverer and funnier than I am (that’s not news), actually managed to come up with a clever and funny way to explain why he wouldn’t be posting anything yesterday.
Meanwhile, Maud Newton passed along some famous and not-so-famous first sentences from novels (presumably they’re favorites of hers, though she didn’t say). This happens to be one of my own preferred games, so I am embarrassed to admit that she snagged one from a book I love by an author I love…and I never noticed it until now. Do you recognize it?
It was about eleven o’clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills.
If not, go here
and scroll down to behold the source of my shame.