RIP Pauline Kael. I took a writing class once where Kael’s movie reviews were assigned reading. I remember thinking “what the heck are we going to learn from reading movie reviews?” A heck of a lot, as it turns out. Probably the best lesson is to not be afraid to write what you really think — at least if you can phrase it and back it up as well as she could.
Yippee for the wedding of Steve and Lyn! I heard their cake was scrumptious, which is wonderful. I made sure ours was yummy and I’m on a mini-crusade to abolish dry, yucky wedding cakes. I think the worst thing I heard someone say during our wedding planning was “you mean you actually expect us to eat the cake?” Well, YES.
Andante is all about classical music, with online articles, music, a publishing label, searchable events calendar, and much more info on all things classical. (via Yahoo’s Daily Picks)
The Atlantic Monthly’s September issue has an interesting, lengthy article on the early admissions process for college and how it has placed top schools at a disadvantage to … Harvard. Because Harvard is typically the top choice for a student applying to the top notch colleges, the early acceptance and early decision processes have made life difficult for the other top schools. Also, the article supplies data to show how early acceptance has made the admissions process unfair for students and colleges (that aren’t Harvard), and claims that some colleges are depending more on SATs instead of less so that their rankings and reputation can go up. I can’t begin to try to explain it all here, but it was an interesting, if somewhat scary, look into the college admissions process. The Atlantic has also republished an article from 1892, The Present Requirements for Admission to Harvard, which was meant to assure people that Harvard’s shift from memorized knowledge to assessment of reasoning ability in their admission criteria did not mean that the college had lowered its standards. I hope they didn’t have to write something similar when they started finally giving women diplomas with Harvard on them instead of Radcliffe.
Sister Wendy has made it to the United States, and she presents artwork from six U.S. museums in the latest installment of her PBS series. Her knowledge of the art and its creation is full of depth. And she’s amusing too. It’s difficult to believe that she lives in solitude amongst the cloistered Carmelite nuns (she’s a sister of Notre Dame herself).
A legendary airplane ends its Air Force One life. Yesterday, Bush took his first and only ride in the historic Boeing 707, a short hop from San Antonio to Waco where others who had been on more memorable rides greeted it for a retirement ceremony. Nixon’s pilot, Reagan’s pilot, and George Bush’s pilot bid the plane farewell. Airliner.net photos of the plane.
I have been slowly accumulating girls’ series books, trying to stay away from the very well known ones and instead picking up more obscure ones. Of course nothing is obscure on the ‘net, so I’ve found bits of info on each of them. My rationale for collecting these books was reflected clearly in the statement made by the Powell’s bookbuyer who rang us up. He said “I couldn’t figure out who would want to buy these and read them.” They are, indeed, incredibly dated, and that is why they are so interesting to me. The blatant sexism and racism of earlier eras is fading now, but in order to appreciate where we are, it’s important to remember where we came from. My latest finds include The Meadow-Brook Girls In the Hills, Betty Wales Junior, the Peggy Lane Theater series (surprisingly well written), and my favorite series title of all (though the writing seems to make use of an overly abundant gush of adverbs) Polly the Powers Model and The Puzzle of the Haunted Camera.
The New Yorker has a nice item about David Letterman’s cue card guy. He inks and holds the cue cards. And he always laughs at the jokes, because he’s in Letterman’s line of vision.
How do colleges select roommates? At UT Austin, students fill out an online form of preferences. Davidson College goes beyond the call of duty, using a Myers-Briggs personality type test and family backgrounds, in addition to the usual preferences. My first year at college, we discovered that the incoming students in our dorm had been assigned to rooms alphabetically. We were in perfect alphabetical order within the dorm (not within the entire incoming class though). Our theory was that since we were in the “co-ed” dorm (Wellesley, a women’s college, had male students living on campus through the college exchange program), and we had all checked off the “I don’t mind living in a dorm with male students” question on the roommate form, we had been quickly lumped together and roomed alphabetically. It wasn’t any better or worse than other rooming systems. (via LTSeek)
Between packing boxes and gift boxes I think the cat has sat inside more boxes this past month than she’s ever seen in her life. And right now she’s sitting inside a glass bowl. Too darn cute.