I get this magazine every week, but only sometimes do I feel like writing about it.
You've heard about the leaning tower of Pisa? Here's an article about the leaning tower of Manhattan, an apartment building so narrow it only has space for one-room apartments, and which was built on infill without drilling down to the bedrock, so this is what happens when you do that. It's still not finished and probably never will be.
Alex Ross, the classical critic, writes about Alma Mahler. Mostly biographical, says only a little about her music. Her first husband, the renowned Gustav, made her stop composing to be a housewife - why would a musician marry a woman who composes if he wants her to stop? - until he actually looked at her music and discovered to his surprise that it was good. I've heard some performed and would rather agree. But by that time she'd lost her creative juices and never got started up again.
Tests the proposition, it is possible to write an article about Alma Mahler without mentioning Tom Lehrer? Answer here, no it is not. Ross only mentions the song to chide its premise and call it "a sniggering ballad." What would he think of Lehrer's song about Wernher von Braun?
Articles about the shortage of soldiers in the US military - proposed solution, lower recruiting standards, which makes one wonder whether they needed to be so high in the first place - and on the shortage of blood available for medical transfusions - proposed solution, artificial blood, but they're still working on that; it's complicated. Includes numerous quotes from a medical researcher actually surnamed Doctor. Surprised me by noting that only 38% of Americans are even eligible to donate blood. That makes me feel less bad about not being one of them. After the mad cow scare I was deemed ineligible because I've eaten beef in Britain.
Article about an artist I'd never heard of (Giorgio Morandi) that actually includes a reproduction of one of his paintings, a useful feature the New Yorker rarely bothers with in its articles on art.
"a medical researcher actually surnamed Doctor" — At my alma mater there was a professor whose surname was Nurse: i.e., Dr. Nurse. And, we were told, his wife was a nurse; so....
ReplyDeleteThe difference between Doctor and Nurse is that I've heard the surname Nurse before (Rebecca Nurse of the Salem Witch Trials).
DeleteNo doubt people were often running up to Dr. Doctor asking him to "Give me the news!"
DeleteThe having-lived-in-England restriction no longer applies, as of October 2022: https://www.redcrossblood.org/local-homepage/news/article/why-there-are-travel-related-restrictions-for-donating-blood-.html .
ReplyDeleteI was told that I was prohibited not because I'd been in England, but because I'd eaten beef there. The new regulations permit people who've lived in England, but they don't say anything about having eaten beef. I suspect I'd be still prohibited.
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