In Luxurious Vrbov and Living in a Shoebox

Old man watches La Peruse clouds

Drift above his patio

And thinks of Tatraish childhood

Cover your sneezes, cover your coughs - man, 

if you have to be told at this point, there's no hope.

Mash and the Coronavirus

Authors re-imagine how famous characters from books would have behaved during the lockdown

These 5 Decidedly Weird Animal Butts Are The Distraction We All Need Right Now Science Alert

 

Bald eagles, eaglets found nesting in arms of Arizona cactus Arizona Sun

SATURDAY’s GOOD READING AND LISTENING FOR THE WEEKEND 

What people in other forums are saying about public policy Continue reading →

What Are The Thieves Who Stole That Van Gogh Going To Do With It?

Earlier this month, with the Netherlands under COVID lockdown,raiders broke into a small museum and took van Gogh’s Parsonage Garden at Nuenen in Spring. Writer Daniel Dumas talks to two experts in the recovery of stolen art about where the painting might be now, how and where they might try to sell it, who likely buyers might be, and how art thieves get caught. – Esquire

Actor Brian Dennehy, 81

“Standing 6-foot-3, Mr. Dennehy had a booming voice and an often intimidating screen presence. … [He] was celebrated for his work as a character actor in Hollywood and on television, where he earned six Emmy nominations. But he received even greater acclaim for his performances on the stage, starring in revivals of classic plays including O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo,” as well as the two productions for which he won Tony Awards, Miller’sDeath of a Salesman and O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night. “‘If it doesn’t scare me,’ he once said of theatrical roles, ‘I’m not interested.'” – The Washington Post

Thomas Nagel (New York) reviews Are We Bodies or Souls? (Oxford), by Richard Swinburne

“A year ago, ‘TT or bust’ was a common but ill-advised attitude toward the job market. That attitude should be unthinkable today.” — Samuel Kampa, a philosophy Ph.D., encourages others to look for work outside of academia and provides advice on how to do it

The Natural World Is Changing Around Us As We Lock Down. It’s Pretty Great

“People are suspended between terror and wonder. They’re terrified that this is all so fragile, but they also realize there are things we have been missing — the birdsong everyone is noticing, the beautiful skies — and that those things are important.” – Los Angeles Times

Dick Cavett greatest interviewer

Tom Hanks, In His Kitchen, With A Camera, Defines The Spirit Of The Time

It seems unthinkable thatSaturday Night Live could go on right now, but April 11’s show may mark something of a milestone – and a cultural record that should prove to be invaluable for the future. As is normal withSNL, some sketches were good and some went on way too long. But “what carried the entire experiment through was the can-do, show-must-go-on spirit, a reminder that comedy can still thrive under the strangest of circumstances.” – The Atlantic

*Best 25 movies about journalism. If you haven't read it, check it out. Most have seen the ones at the top of the list — “All the President’s Men,” “Broadcast News” and “Spotlight” — so tried to find one that maybe you haven’t seen. I recommend “His Girl Friday,” on Amazon Prime, or “Kill the Messenger” on Netflix. “Kill the Messenger” is based on San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb and his series about CIA involvement in Contra cocaine trafficking.

What Have We Learned About Wellbeing So Far In Our Isolation?

Wellbeing isn’t individual; it’s social. And in this, the Great Pause, we see that “It’s not quite a revolution, but it’s an epic conceptual awakening. … In some ways it’s like a blissed-out stoner’s dream of what the world might be.” – The Observer (UK)

The Ceramics Sculpture Studio That Starts With Making Garden Pots

Now it’s pretty much stopping with the garden pots as well as the artists can’t mentor young proteges in the studio. But the already created ceramics are serving a purpose: “We hope that by arranging contact-free delivery and collection we can help people get on with their gardening at home during this strange spring. … That’s a nice transfer from the work of people making pots to something that can entertain people at home.” (And the youth get paid, too.) – The Guardian (UK)

Three paranoid thriller series on Netflix and Prime to make you feel better, not worse

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, out Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'

With butlers in isolation, the wealthy learn housekeeping

Wealthy households are taking online housekeeping classes as their butlers and nannies are in self-isolation, a domestic staff company has said.