These principals of the architectural firm WORKac found it challenging to design their own home. The psychological complexity of domestic life? The culmination of years of thought? “The hardest thing about designing our house was that we just haven’t designed a lot of houses.” Produced with the Center for Architecture. Photo: Harry Willks.
The artistic director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company summarizes his aesthetic: “The curtain goes up, twenty minutes happen, the curtain comes down, and it is transformative.” Easy to say, brilliant to achieve. And they do.
Observe the world with “the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist,” urges the writer and environmental advocate Miriam Horn, citing Nabokov. She is describing not just how to see but how to be. Her other philosophical advice: live like the Ponderosa pine. Is this metaphor or pantheism? A conversation at the … Continue reading »
Some silicon valley companies make grandiose claims, but Chieh Huang, founder of the online retailer Boxed, is more modest: ”We’re not changing the world by selling toilet paper.” But perhaps he is – not with the products he sells but through the benefits he offers his workers. He calls Boxed, “a new-school tech company … Continue reading »
The children of immigrants can be embarrassed by their parents’ ties to their homeland: “Speak English, Mama. We’re Americans now.” Freedom means shedding the oppressive past. But playwright NSangou Njikam sought freedom by embracing his history, tracing his roots to Cameroon, and taking an African name. Two historical contexts, two routes to the same goal. … Continue reading »
Blindfold a child, put a bat in her hand, and promise her candy, a lot of candy. What could go wrong? Nothing, says the author of the darkly delightful Mister Monkey, in a deft defense of pinatas. Plus: what to do when a neighbor has automatic weapons, poetry from Bob Holman who was entirely … Continue reading »
Things have changed since she moved to a small town in the Hudson Valley. Now there are scented-candle stores to the left of her, a neighbor with a grenade launcher to the right of her, volleyed and thundered. Gentrification and odder incursions go rural. Plus memories of Spalding Gray, poetry from Bob Holman, music … Continue reading »
Having led The Environmental Defense Fund for more than 3 decades, he knows its history. “The founding motto, informally, of EDF was ‘Sue the bastards,” he recalls. Today its guideline is, “Environmental problems are solvable if people would just get on with solving them and stop shouting at each other.” Has he mellowed or … Continue reading »
Does a sense of humor make you a better person? Bill Persky thinks it might, and he should know. He wrote for the Dick Van Dyke Show, co-created That Girl for Marlo Thomas, and directed 100 episodes of Kate and Allie. He says this about the president: “Nobody’s ever seen him laugh. He sneers, … Continue reading »
He trained in pediatrics, was the acting head of the CDC, the chief medical editor for ABC News, and is now the CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Some people just can’t hold a job. Along the way, he’s had a run-in with deadly tainted apple cider and courteous but critical Diane Sawyer. … Continue reading »
Surely a Muslim TSA agent will be sensitive to the feelings of Muslim travellers. And by “surely,” I mean “surely not.” Writer Marwa Helal and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed describe their encounters with the TSA, disheartening stories delightfully told. Plus tales of the weight room and the irrational fear of Egyptian pumpkin seeds. A conversation … Continue reading »
A performer has obligations to her audience, of course, but jazz singer Tierney Sutton believes that the audience also has obligations to the performer: to be alert, to be present, to listen acutely. “And if I can’t be in that state,” she says, “I don’t go.” For her, music is a spiritual act, an … Continue reading »
It is generally disappointing to meet someone whose work you admire. Or is it? Chris Benz, design chief at Bill Blass, tested this precept when fate put him in a voice-over studio with film-maker Wes Anderson. Benz’s conclusion: Project Runway was a force for good. No, wait: he does make this curiously persuasive assertion, … Continue reading »
Is there a Henry Higgins of movement? We can often tell where people are from by the way they talk, but can we do that from the way they walk? Choreographer Yvonne Rainer says no. Dance writer Wendy Perron says yes. A conversation about the dance world of the sixties, with some amiable disagreement. … Continue reading »