Essays
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Page 102
Fringe's New Deal walking tour
The Fringe Festival claims to be about openness to new ideas that erase the artificial lines that separate art, theater, dance and community. I took a chance and was rewarded with an enlightening tour of Depression-era Queen Village and Bella Vista.
ActivisTour. Through September 9, 2008, conducted by Design For Social Impact, 525 S. Fourth St. (215) 413-1318 or www.livearts-fringe
ActivisTour. Through September 9, 2008, conducted by Design For Social Impact, 525 S. Fourth St. (215) 413-1318 or www.livearts-fringe
Essays
4 minute read
The Harmony Society, revisited
Alchemy was supposedly consigned to the dustbin by the Age of Enlightenment. But a group of prosperous 19th-Century Pennsylvania Pietists revived it— not for wealth, but for eternal life. Too bad they were undone by a female lab assistant.
Essays
3 minute read
Discovering Dessau
Dessau had its moment of glory as the home of Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus in the 1920s. But this East German city today remains is a very modern city with great medieval credentials.
Essays
5 minute read
Olympic (and artistic) geeks
The geeks of Beijing Let us now praise the obscure sports
Once every four years, table tennis sharks and air rifle sharpshooters emerge from obscurity and become the standard bearers of mighty nations, just as great writers emerge from obscurity every four years or so with a new book. The true spirit of the Olympics is the force that has shaped much of the modern world: the relentless drive of the obsessive-compulsive personality.
Essays
5 minute read
Home design: My ideal kitchen
The kitchen has become the social center of the American home. But most designs fail to satisfy homeowners’ yearning for beauty, relaxation and personal identity. Why not take a lesson from those 17th-Century Dutch kitchens celebrated by Rembrandt and Vermeer?
Essays
5 minute read
Letter from Iceland
Can Broad Street Review’s irrepressible octogenarian curmudgeon cheapskate professor survive a week alone in Iceland? Does a bear sleep in the woods? And if he can make Reykjavik into Paris, why not you?
Essays
5 minute read
Liberal arts, Balkanized
Tenney L. Davis was a noted chemist who took pleasure in attending lectures on non-scientific subjects like aesthetics. Today he’s forgotten, which says something about how far along the road of compartmentalizing knowledge we have traveled.
Essays
5 minute read
Mayakovsky and the Russian soul
At a time when Russia is beating up on the Republic of Georgia, it helps to know that Vladimir Mayakovsky, the brawling boisterous laureate of Russian Futurism, is as Russian as Pushkin.
Night Wraps the Sky. By Vladimir Mayakovsky; translated and edited by Michael Almereyda. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008. 304 pages, $27.00. www.amazon.com
Night Wraps the Sky. By Vladimir Mayakovsky; translated and edited by Michael Almereyda. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2008. 304 pages, $27.00. www.amazon.com
Essays
4 minute read
A watershed election (not)
This year’s election should be the left’s opportunity, but the conventional liberal alternative is timid and palsied. And Barack Obama’s performance is increasingly disappointing, not to say alarming.
Essays
6 minute read
China's "humiliation,' reconsidered
Forget the Chinese obsession with their national “humiliation.” We are just beginning to feel the power of this vast and brilliant people as they gather themselves, and us, along with the rest of the world.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. By Simon Winchester. HarperCollins, 2008. 336 pages; $27.95.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. By Simon Winchester. HarperCollins, 2008. 336 pages; $27.95.
Essays
4 minute read