Originally published on Tue April 16, 2013 3:11 pm
UPDATE, 4:08 p.m.: In addition to the institutions mentioned below, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has announced that admission will be free on Wednesday, April 17.
Tell Me More celebrates National Poetry Month with the 'Muses and Metaphor' series — where listeners submit their own poems via Twitter. Today's poem comes from mother — and doctor — Kaya Oyejide.
In his slim but beguiling novel Equilateral, Ken Kalfus places us inside the heads of his characters with such deftness that the line between what is true and what they believe to be true fades to obscurity. It's no coincidence that the heads in question belong to scientists who pride themselves on their evidence-based worldview; Kalfus delights in having readers continually gauge and recalibrate the distance between the world and his characters' seemingly objective observations of it.
In The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy In Retreat, former State Department adviser Vali Nasr describes veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke being all but frozen out by President Obama's inner circle, for whom Nasr believes diplomacy was a "lost art."
Instead of engaging civilians to find political solutions in Afghanistan and beyond, they would look first to the military and intelligence agencies for solutions that were politically popular — that includes getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.
Literary magazine Granta has just released its latest Best of Young British Novelists issue. It's a hefty volume that comes out only once a decade, so making the cut is a major feat, putting its chosen in the company of modern literary legends like Salman Rushdie and David Mitchell.
The Juliet Club (Club di Giulietta) mailbox in Verona, Italy. Volunteers answer by hand every single letter that the club receives.
Credit Tatiana Schranz / Courtesy of the Juliet Club
The Juliet Club (Club di Giulietta) receives more than 6,000 letters letters of heartbreak and unrequited love a year. Some envelopes include the club's address; others simply say To: Juliet.
Each year, the town of Verona, Italy — home of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet — receives thousands of letters of heartache and unrequited love addressed to the play's star-crossed heroine.
The tradition of sending letters to Juliet very likely goes back centuries. People started by leaving notes on a local landmark said to be Juliet's tomb. Later, many started sending mail directly to the city. By the 1990s, Verona was receiving so many letters, it created an office to deal with it. And each letter — the Juliet Club office gets more than 6,000 a year — is answered by hand.
Originally published on Mon April 15, 2013 6:36 pm
Once every decade, the literary magazine Granta publishes an issue called "Best of Young British Novelists," with short excerpts from the novels of 20 emerging authors. In the past, the list of names has proved unusually prescient, with authors such as Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis and Zadie Smith featured before they were widely read.
"The Monkeys caught Dorothy in their arms and flew away with her."
Credit W. W. Denslow / W. W. Norton & Company
"'I was only made yesterday,' said the Scarecrow."
Credit W. W. Denlsow / W. W. Norton & Company
Chapter VII. The Journey to The Great Oz.
Credit
Credit W. W. Denslow / W. W. Norton & Company
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"
Credit Dana Hull / Library of Congress
Before The Wonderful Wizard of Oz secured his place in American letters, L. Frank Baum worked as everything from a traveling salesman to a breeder of fancy thoroughbred fowls. "To write fairy stories for children," he wrote, "to amuse them, to divert restless children, sick children, to keep them out of mischief on rainy days, seems of greater importance than to write grown-up novels."
Credit / W. W. Norton & Company
The illustrator W.W. Henslow was the first to draw Dorothy's now-iconic companions, pictured on the cover of the first edition of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
It's safe to say that most Americans are familiar with the classic film featuring a stumbling Scarecrow, a rusted Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and Dorothy, played by actress Judy Garland, clad in gingham and braids.
The paying and collecting of taxes might not be the sexiest plot point in an industry that depends on sizzle. But that doesn't mean revenuers haven't made their mark on screen.
Credit 20th Century Fox / Getty Images
Death And Taxes: In 1964's What a Way To Go!, Paul Newman plays a successful artist married to a woman (Shirley MacLaine) who's got so much money she's decided to give it away to the IRS. The film is one of three pictures in which Newman gets entangled with widows and the tax code.
Credit MGM / Photofest
Window Dressing: In 1939's Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) dresses to impress Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) so he'll help her pay off back taxes on the family plantation.
It's fair to say that the bakery employees who hooted and jeered "tax maaaaaan" when mild-mannered auditor Will Ferrell showed up in Stranger than Fiction were no fans of the Internal Revenue Service. In that, they're like a lot of us, no?
So it's intriguing that Hollywood generally treats tax inspectors as nice guys. On the big screen, it's typically their IRS bosses who are the bad ones.
