Confabulation does seem to be innate: consider the stuff that people imagine they’ve done when they have brain damage, and that children come up with while the prefrontal cortex is developing. Neurologist Jules Montague writes about the phenomenon and the “doubt tags” people use to keep it in check – and how they can be induced to miss those tags and develop false memories.
How Construction Workers Accidently Found The Coffins Of Four Archbishops Of Canterbury
“Last year, during the refurbishment of the Garden Museum, which is housed in a deconsecrated medieval parish church next to Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s official London residence, builders made the discovery of a lifetime: a cache of 30 lead coffins that had lain undisturbed for centuries.”
The 93-Year-Old Jazz-Singing Nun Of Ethiopia And Her Extraordinary Life
She was the first Ethiopian girl to be sent abroad to study, the first woman in the country’s civil service, and the first female to sing in an Ethiopian Orthodox church service; she raced a horse and carriage around Addis Ababa and sang for Haile Selassie; she was thoroughly trained in Western classical music, but spent a decade as a barefoot nun at a hilltop convent; she fled from the Communist junta and settled in Jerusalem, where she’s spent decades creating music like no one else’s. Meet Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
Philadelphia Orchestra Goes To Prison, Led By Its Composer-In-Residence
Reporter Peter Dobrin follows Hannibal Lokumbe as he takes four of the orchestra’s musicians to the Philadelphia Detention Center to perform a new piece about Anne Frank.
How Michelangelo And Sebastiano’s Roman Chapel Was Recreated In London
An exhibition at the National Gallery includes “an almost-life size reconstruction of the domed Borgherini Chapel from Rome’s Church of San Pietro in Montorio, painted by Sebastiano, with the originating Michelangelo drawings displayed adjacent.” The model was made by the Madrid firm Factum Arte, which has created widely-admired replicas of several Caravaggio paintings and Tutankhamun’s burial chamber.
Roman Mosaic Discovered And Taken Away To Lab For Conservation – As Townspeople Flip Out
The ancient decorative floor, recently uncovered in the French town of Uzès, was transferred to a specialist government facility in Nîmes, and local groups had no faith that the mosaic would ever be returned. (The regional government has promised that it will be.)
Three More NY City Ballet Stars Are Headed To Broadway
“Today, principal Robert Fairchild is currently headlining the West End production of An American in Paris, [having been nominated for a Tony in the Broadway production,] while soloist Georgina Pazcoguin has been on a leave of absence this past year to play Victoria in the Broadway revival of CATS. When the just-announced revival of the Rodgers & Hammerstein classic Carousel opens on Broadway in March 2018, we’ll be adding three more names to the list: …
Indian Tribe Develops Traditional Dance Workouts As A Health Prescription
There are some real health challenges in this community, says Terry O’Toole, senior health advisor with the division of nutrition, physical activity and obesity at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC has given the Coeur D’Alene tribe $2 million to develop “Powwow Sweat.” It also supports a community garden on the reservation and a project that stocks the gas station market with healthy food options.
Why The Cannes Film Festival Is Now Including TV
“It just seems inevitable. Cannes has always been auteur driven, and they are showing episodic work by directors whose work they’ve supported and loved. Those of us who are programmers, are always looking for great work. In this day and age, why would anyone still restrict to one time format?”
How Today’s Philanthropists Are Different Than Yesterday’s
“Philanthropy has changed greatly from the days when wealthy people donated to a museum or hospital and got their name on the wall (though that still happens). The big money now is going to a battle over ideas shaping political discourse, education policy, health care research and more.”
At 94 Norman Lear Is Still Working On Projects And Reflecting On America
“I am the peer of whoever I’m talking to. If I am talking to a 15-year-old, that’s who I am. If I’m talking to a 50-year-old, that’s who I am. I see too many 75-year-olds who seem much older than I feel. I’m aware I’m an older person, and I wish my back didn’t hurt and my legs didn’t weigh 1,000 pounds. But I go to bed at night and can’t wait for the first taste of coffee in the morning.”
The Couple Who Owned A Greenwich Village Building And Rented Only To Creative Artists
When the Frosts moved into their building, the Village was still a thriving creative enclave. The neighborhood became a sort of engine for Western culture after World War II, with Beats, artists, musicians and oddballs flooding the cheap, drafty rooms in rundown brownstones. On Ninth Street alone lived Dawn Powell, Marianne Moore, Astor Piazzolla, Barbra Streisand, Maurice Sendak and Jimi Hendrix.
Is Shen Yun Nothing More Than Falun Gong Propaganda?
“To be sure, the persecuted Falun Gong movement is within its rights to promote its agenda. Through The Epoch Times and other means, it has worked hard to expose human rights abuses at the hands of the Chinese government that has mercilessly suppressed the movement’s spread. Many of the goals of Falun Gong followers are laudable, and its religious tenets – while perhaps striking Westerners as odd – seem to be generally focused on meditation and moral teachings. But none of that excuses its creation of one of the most brazen and deceptive theatrical infomercials ever conceived.”
Vanessa Redgrave Directs Her First Film
“The sight of a Syrian toddler’s lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach was among the horrors that drove Vanessa Redgrave to make her directorial debut with a feature documentary about the refugee crisis, she said.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 04.17.17
The Met’s new Rosenkavalier: Hello Robert Carsen, goodbye (maybe) to Renée Fleming
So personal is the relationship between Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier and its admirers that the arrival of a new production at the Metropolitan Opera is like having your living room redecorated: It has to happen every so often but disrupts your inner and outer world … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2017-04-17
American Watercolors: Excellent Exhibition, But…
American Watercolor In the Age of Homer and Sargent, now on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is an exhausting exhibition, in a good way. It displays more than 170 artworks and covers the … read more
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2017-04-17
Monday Recommendation: Mosaic’s Savoy Bebop Treasury
Classic Savoy BoBop Sessions 1945-49
Just a quick run-through of the names involved in this ten- CD set might be enough to whet the curiosity of the uninitiated and the appetites of … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-04-17
Life As A Brand, Or, What Volkswagen Vanagons Mean To Instagram
Social media has made an entirely new job possible: Driving around and taking Instagram-likeable photos of the “ideal” life in a van, preferably a Vanagon. (It helps if you’re a thin, white, yoga-doing naked woman.)
Learning Egyptian Arabic From The Tahrir Square Revolution
Peter Hessler recounts how the language classes he and his wife took in Cairo in 2011 and ’12 changed, in terms of vocabulary and outlook, because of the Arab Spring.
Margaret Atwood And The Artist’s Role In Our Current Circumstances
“Artists are always being lectured on their moral duty, a fate other professionals—dentists, for example—generally avoid,” she observed. “There’s nothing inherently sacred about films and pictures and writers and books. ‘Mein Kampf’ was a book.” In fact, she said, writers and other artists are particularly prone to capitulating to authoritarian pressure; the isolation inherent in the craft makes them psychologically vulnerable. “The pen is mightier than the sword, but only in retrospect,” she wrote. “At the time of combat, those with the swords generally win.”