It’s Friday, time again for my weekly Wall Street Journal drama-column teaser. I reviewed two musicals this week, one out of town (Goodspeed Musicals’ revival of The Boy Friend, directed by Julie Andrews) and one not (the Public Theater’s Shakespeare-in-the-Park revival of
Two Gentlemen of Verona). The first was good, the second wasn’t:

Ms. Andrews, who no longer performs, made her Broadway debut in “The Boy Friend” 51 years ago (sorry to be ungallant, but it’s no secret). Now she’s elected to pass on a half-century of accumulated stage wisdom to her youthful charges, and it shows, not least in the singing of Jessica Grov

My Wall Street Journal colleague Eric Gibson reviews Hilary Spurling’s Matisse the Master, the second volume of her masterly biography of Henri Matisse, in today’s paper:

Ms. Spurling’s second volume is a worthy successor to her first, “The Unknown Matisse.” That earlier book revealed an artist impelled toward modernism almost in spite of himself. It also raised the bar for artist-biographies, so splendid were Ms. Spurling’s gifts as an interpreter and chronicler….

Ms. Spurling’s book–like Matisse’s art, in fact–is poised and measured, though charged with intense emotion. Her narrative gifts, combined with her extensive quotations from the family’s correspondence, give the book an immediacy that makes us silent witnesses to a long drama of creativity and ordeal. When the last page is turned, we are likely to feel as emotionally drained as the artist did when he finished a painting. And then we are left to weigh it all up, on one side the surpassing artistic achievement and on the other its terrible price.

Read the whole thing here.

September 2003:

If we think a house or painting or photograph or ballet is beautiful, we want it with us always. But the catch is that the more pieces of the past we succeed in preserving, the less space and time we have in which to display and contemplate the present. Too many lovers of art live exclusively in the past. I understand the temptation–I feel it myself–but it strikes me that we have an obligation to keep one eye fixed in the moment, and that becomes a lot harder to do when you’re pulling a long, long train of classics of which the new is merely the caboose. Needless to say, this is a problem without a solution. The only thing you can do is fiddle with the proportions and try to get them right, or at least righter….

(If it’s new to you, read the whole thing here.)

– Samuel Clemens’ average net share of the box-office take for one of his 1884-85 lectures: $155.34

– The same amount in today’s dollars, courtesy of Inflation Calculator: $3,073.59

(Source: Ron Powers, Mark Twain: A Life)

“You see them on the bus in the morning: girls reading the newspaper, girls with lending-library novels and girls simply staring off into space. If it is not a rainy day and the bus is not crowded with strap-hangers pushing one another up the aisle you can see each face clearly. Each of them is a self-contained little mask, decorated with cosmetics, keeping its private thoughts secluded in a public vehicle. Some of these girls are going to their offices because each day is another step to the success they dream of, and others are going to work because they cannot live without the money, and some are going because that’s where they go on weekdays and they never give it another thought. They go to their typing pool or their calculating machines as to a waiting place, a limbo for single girls who are waiting for love and marriage. Perhaps the girl reading her plastic-covered lending-library novel is reading of love, or perhaps she is simply looking at the page and thinking of herself. X meets Y and there is magic. Or X meets Y and there is nothing; it might not have been that kind of year, maybe a year or two from now Y would have looked much more desirable to X. Or perhaps X meets Z and falls desperately in love, a kind of self-hypnosis, when a year or two later if X had only then met Z she might have been spared.”

Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything

Regular twice-daily updates to “Live from Katrina” come to an end tonight. On Sunday morning Terry will be traveling to Washington, D.C., and from there to Wisconsin (about which more in due course). He’ll be blogging from the road as often as possible, but posting of all kinds will be unpredictably intermittent until his return to New York on September 15.

As of Monday, “Live from Katrina” will no longer appear at the top of “About Last Night”‘s front page, but the URL will remain active indefinitely, along with all our links to Katrina-related blogs and other Web sites.

Our thanks to everyone who’s written in recent days with words of praise and encouragement. What we did wasn’t much–not compared to the valiant efforts of those on the ground in New Orleans and on the Gulf Coast–but we did our best to spread the word.

If you haven’t made a donation to relief for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, scroll down and do it now. Dig a little deeper in your pocket and give a little more than you think you can afford. The more it hurts you, the more it’ll help them.

(To skip directly to Friday’s art-related postings, go here.)

* * *

Here’s a list of bloggers who’ve been posting from/near/about New Orleans and the Gulf Coast:

– Beans…It Happens (reports on conditions in St. Charles Parish and elsewhere)

– Black Cat Bone (blogging by a Mississippi artist familiar with New Orleans)

– Josh Britton (an essential source for news updates and LSU-related information)

– DeadlyKatrina.com

– Electric Mist (first-person blogging from Baton Rouge)

– Everything and Nothing (blogging from Jackson, Miss.)

– A Frolic of My Own (blogging from the New Orleans area)

– Eyes on Katrina (a newspaper blog from South Mississippi)

– Rex Hammock (blogging from Nashville)

– Hurricane Harbor (blogging from Miami)

– Hurricane Katrina (blogging from Baton Rouge, with new posts appearing at the bottom of the page)

– Hurricane Katrina–First Reports (a Web page from the American Association of Museums containing information on the post-Katrina condition of museums and other cultural institutions in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast region)

– Insomnia (excerpts from postings by New Orleans LiveJournal users)

– Katrina and the Arts (a regularly updated posting at Tyler Green’s “Modern Art Notes” blog, covering “Katrina’s impact on cultural institutions and the like in Louisiana and Mississippi”)

– Katrina Help Wiki Portal (a how-to-help info site)

– Katrinacane’s Friends* (more New Orleans LiveJournal entries)

– Kaye’s Hurricane Katrina Blog (sporadic postings from Baton Rouge)

– Lone Star Times (live blogging from the Astrodome in Houston)

– Brendan Loy (an essential source for Katrina-related local newslinks and summaries and other information, including e-mail from readers in the affected areas)

– Michelle Malkin (a wide-ranging source of links to Katrina-related stories)

– Jeff Masters (a highly knowledgeable weatherblogger)

– Metroblogging New Orleans (a group blog)

– mgno.com, a/k/a “The Interdictor” (frequently updated reports from New Orleans, plus extensive comments)

– One Hand Clapping (blogging from Tennessee)

– Overtaken by Events

– paultwo (a Baton Rouge-based photoblog)

– Pitch & Green

– Slidell Hurricane Damage Blog (updates from New Orleans)

– a small victory (blogging “good-news” stories from New Orleans)

– Storm Digest (frequently updated)

– Tulane University Emergency Information

– Updates as They Come In on Katrina (WWL-TV’s news blog, constantly updated, an essential source for bulletins from the only New Orleans TV station that has been able to stay on the air continuously throughout the crisis)

* * *

Artsjournal.com, which hosts “About Last Night,” has a separate page called “Hurricane Katrina & The Arts” with links to sites and stories about the effects of Katrina on the arts community.

* * *

Here’s a link to the AP’s national wire, to which Katrina-related stories are being posted around the clock.

Here’s the breaking-news page from the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which also has an in-house blog, “Notebook from the Hurricane Bunker,” that is now posting messages from evacuees and those searching for them. Both pages are must reading for anyone wanting to know what’s happening on the ground in New Orleans.

Also on the paper’s Web site is a missing persons forum.

Two other sites are serving as clearinghouses for those trying to get information about friends and family, looking for temporary shelter, or looking for opportunities to volunteer: craigslist New Orleans and katrinacheckin.org. NowPublic is a message board with photos of missing persons. N.O. Pundit is a group of message boards for Orleans Parish survivors, family members, etc., organized by neighborhood.

Hibernia Corporation is requesting that all of its employees who live in areas impacted by Hurricane Katrina call the following toll-free number: 1-800-707-0489. They want to find out where you are and how you’re doing. If you need help, they will put you in touch with the right resources. If you see anyone you know who works for Hibernia, please pass along this message to them. Please identify yourself as a Hibernia employee when you call.

Here’s a page of Katrina-related e-mail received by the BBC and updated regularly.

Here’s an automated aggregrator page of Katrina-related bloglinks.

Here’s a transcript of a 2002 radio documentary detailing a worst-case scenario for Category Five hurricane damage in New Orleans.

And here’s a feature from the Times-Picayune on the same subject. (This one will make your hair stand on end.)

* * *

Here’s an extensive list of flood-aid links recommended by bloggers throughout the ‘sphere.

Our Girl and I recommend the McCormick Tribune Foundation in Chicago, which is matching donations to its Hurricane Katrina Relief Campaign, $1 for every $2 given. Contributions can be made here.

The Southeastern Museums Conference has started a “Hurricane Katrina Fund” to help support post-Katrina repair and conservation efforts at museums affected by the hurricane and its aftermath. For information on how to contribute, go here.

Ben Jaffe, manager (and bass player) at Preservation
Hall, has announced a fund to help support New Orleans musicians who have been left
destitute by the storm. For information, go here.

HurricAid is a group blog devoted to disseminating information about aid efforts.

NBC-TV will be broadcasting a hurricane-relief benefit tonight at eight p.m. EDT (live on the East Coast, via tape delay on the West Coast).

* * *

Here’s a sad and beautiful elegy for the New Orleans that used to be, written by a man who knew it well and holds out hope for its eventual restoration.

For a more pessimistic view, go here.

* * *

Finally, a personal word from Terry to all those bloggers posting from the Gulf Coast, and everyone else who was caught in the path of Katrina: we New Yorkers know about disasters, and our hearts are with you. May the world reach out to you as it did to us.

In response to this posting, another reader writes:

The story is getting major
coverage in Prague: large page 1 articles in the major dailies, and
it’s the lead story on the television news. When I met my Czech teacher
this morning for my language lesson, she (a wonderful 77 year-old
granny) expressed her heartfelt condolences to me and America generally
(of course, she has also got a granddaughter living in Panama City, FL,
so she may be paying slightly more attention to it than most people
here.) She also expressed her withering contempt for the Czech
President, who apparently has yet to express his condolences to his
American counterpart.

As part of “New Europe,” the Czechs are generally pro-American but are
certainly more ambivalent in their relationship with the US than the
Poles. Still, the fact that the Katrina stories have displaced the
usual summer political scandals from the media shows the Czechs’ innate
sensitivity and interest in the wider world around them. It could also
have to do with the fact that, three years ago at this time, Prague
endured its worst flooding in 500 years, so that very fresh and painful
memory has generated considerable sympathy for what the beleaguered Gulf
Coast residents are now going through.

Many thanks and all the best to you and OGIC as you keep up this
important work!

And thanks to you for writing….

If you came here in search of information about Hurricane Katrina and are curious to know what else this blog has to offer under normal circumstances…

Welcome to “About Last Night,” a 24/5 blog hosted by Terry Teachout, who writes about the arts in New York City and elsewhere, and Laura Demanski, who writes from Chicago under the no-longer-a-pseudonym “Our Girl in Chicago.”

In case you’re wondering, this blog has two URLs, the one you’re seeing at the top of your screen right now and the easier-to-remember www.terryteachout.com. Either one will bring you here.

All our postings from the past week are visible in reverse chronological order on this page. Terry’s start with “TT,” Laura’s with “OGIC.” In addition, the entire contents of this site are archived chronologically and can be accessed by clicking “ALN Archives” at the top of the right-hand column.

You can read more about us, and about “About Last Night,” by going to the right-hand column and clicking in the appropriate places. You’ll also find various other toothsome features there, including our regularly updated Top Five list of things to see, hear, read, and otherwise do, links to Terry’s most recent newspaper and magazine articles, and “Sites to See,” a list of links to other blogs and Web sites with art-related content. If you’re curious about the arty part of the blogosphere, you’ve come to the right site: “Sites to See” will point you in all sorts of interesting directions, and all roads lead back to “About Last Night.”

As if all that weren’t enough, you can write to us by clicking either one of the “Write Us” buttons. We read our mail, and answer it, too, so long as you’re minimally polite. (Be patient, though. We get a lot of it.)

The only other thing you need to know is that “About Last Night” is about all the arts, high, medium, and low: film, drama, painting, dance, fiction, TV, music of all kinds, whatever. Our interests are wide-ranging, and we think there are plenty of other people like us out there in cyberspace, plus still more who long to wander off their beaten paths but aren’t sure which way to turn.

If you’re one of the above, we’re glad you came. Enjoy. Peruse. Tell all your friends about www.terryteachout.com. And come back tomorrow.