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Last Fall Aaron Sorkin Suffered A Stroke

“For about a month afterward, was slurring words. He had trouble typing; he was discouraged from flying for a few weeks; and until recently, he couldn’t sign his name (he has just discovered, thanks to ‘Camelot’ autograph seekers, that that’s improving). - Variety

Scott Timberg And What Happened To Culture

“Scott was just so present, and then he exterminated himself,” says Dana Gioia, former California poet laureate and a friend of Timberg for many years. “Why did he do that? Because the culture was exterminating too. He just went along with what the outer world was telling him.” - Los Angeles Times

Oscar Wilde’s Irishness (Which So Many People, Including Oscar, Seem To Forget)

Everything about the man said London, but he spent 20 of his 46 years in Ireland, including seven years at a grim Ulster boarding school in Ulster about which he was unusually closed-mouthed. And an acquaintance from his Irish childhood was a key figure in his downfall. - Literary Hub

Caught On Video: Is This Banksy?

A UK TV crew spotted the man — who was also seen wearing a long black coat and glasses — as he took phone pics soon after news emerged that the famous street artist’s latest stencil had just been destroyed in Herne Bay in Kent. - New York Post

Virginia Zeani, Soprano And Teacher Revered By Colleagues, Is Dead At 97

"The conductor Richard Bonynge ranked her among the top four sopranos of the 20th century. And according to Ms. Zeani, Maria Callas's husband, Giovanni Battista Meneghini, confided to her that she was 'one of the very few sopranos that my wife is frightened of.'" - The New York Times

The Museum Director Who Stayed In Ukraine To Protect Culture

Her ideas of war had come from art—from photographs of the devastated city of Warsaw, which appeared deserted in the still images; from books that described battle and carnage. In real life, people got used to war quickly. - The New Yorker

Adam Sandler Wins The Mark Twain Prize

“As I look at this goofy award, I can’t help but think that one day it just might be the weapon used to bludgeon me to death,” Mr. Sandler said in his familiar silly cadence during his acceptance speech. - The New York Times

Bollywood Actor Attacked By Hatchet-Wielding Man Outside Southern California Area Gym

Aman Dhaliwal is an actor who has appeared in Punjabi, Hindi, and Telegu films. "The suspect approached the victim in the parking lot ... and began to attack him with a hatchet and knife." - Los Angeles Times

Lance Reddick, Star Of The Wire, Bosch, And The John Wick Series, Has Died At 60

Reddick "was a distinctive, instantly recognizable presence, even if he was not quite a household name. His voice was distinctive, too, as players of Horizon Zero Dawn, Destiny 2 and other video games on which he could be heard know." - The New York Times

Kazuo Ishiguro On The Art Of Writing And Medium

Over the decades I’ve learned a huge amount about writing novels. I feel like I’m just learning on the job about screenplays. One key difference is that a screenplay is a contribution to something that a team is going to work on, so it’s necessarily a collaborative document. - The Millions

Mexico’s Greatest Living Writer Is 90, And She’s Not Done Writing Yet

"Elena Poniatowska has chronicled every major social movement in Mexico over seven decades, her 40-plus books a one-woman time capsule of a country's modern history. … (She) still writes a weekly column, showcasing her uncanny ability to get her subjects — presidents, murderers, victims of unspeakable crimes — to crack open." - MSN (The Washington Post)

Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mother Was An Enslaved Woman, Says Historian

A series of papers, discovered in Florentine archives, concerns the emancipation in 1452 of an enslaved Circassian woman, probably abducted as a girl, named Caterina, which was the name of Leonardo's mother. All of the documents are linked to his father, who wrote some of them himself. - NBC News

The Ballerina That Captured Ismene Brown’s Heart

Lynn Seymour’s death last Wednesday undammed an outpouring of truly wrenching sadness from those whom this extraordinary ballerina injected with her poison - as the choreographer Frederick Ashton memorably said about his enslavement to Anna Pavlova. - The Arts Desk

John Jakes, Whose American History Novels Became Huge Hits, Is Dead At 90

"(He) wrote some 60 novels, including westerns, mysteries, science and fantasy fiction, and children's books. But he was best known for two series of novels with enormous mass-market appeal: The Kent Family Chronicles, eight volumes written in the 1970s ..., and the North and South Civil War trilogy." - The New York Times

Disney’s Oldest Animator

Burny Mattinson became a messenger at Disney, beginning a career that would eventually make him the longest-tenured employee of the company (just shy of seventy years) and one of the last still at the company to have started there when Walt Disney himself was running it. - The New Yorker

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