VIDEO: Matchmaker, Matchmaker – Shidduch and the Modern Yenta
Posted on 28. May, 2009 by Rachel Geizhals in Multimedia
MULTIMEDIA: A video by Rachel Geizhals explores shidduch and examines matchmakers and matchmaking in Orthodox Jewish society.
A Journey into Uganda’s Deadly Malaria Zone
Posted on 27. May, 2009 by Rebecca Harshbarger in News Features, Travel
The buses going upcountry in Uganda are bright, advertisement-covered spectacles that rattle through landscapes of cassava, banana and coffee farms. When they stop for a moment, hindered by traffic, wandering livestock or passengers seeking a bathroom break, people who live in the small towns and villages along the road run to the side of the vehicles and set up a mini-market. They’ll try to sell you anything- livestock, goat meat, glass bottles of Fanta soda–even after your bus starts moving.
New York Cemeteries Face Grave Shortages
Posted on 26. May, 2009 by Robert Voris in Business & Economics, News Features
By Robert Voris
You are going to die. Of the more than 8 million people now alive in New York City, all will be dead, eventually. That’s a lot of bodies: 44 million feet of cadaver when laid end to end, assuming average height. And in New York City, where space is always at a premium, there’s not enough earth to grant them all eternal rest.
At a Fine Arts Auction House, the Artists (and Buyers) Go to the Dogs
Posted on 22. May, 2009 by Craig Thompson in Arts & Culture
By C.W. Thompson
At a generous estimate, about half of the 60 folding chairs set up in the main bidding room of Doyle’s New York were occupied. It was the auction house’s 11th Dogs In Art auction and on this recent midweek afternoon, with New York in the throes of a trickle-down recession, empty seats were not unexpected. But even in a recession, the niche world of sporting art auctions saw a few brave souls come away with their own prized purchases.
The auction’s offerings ranged from lower-priced porcelain, ceramic, cast iron and marble dogs to higher-priced etchings and paintings featuring dogs, horses and birds. For the most part, the dogs presented in hunting scenarios fetched the highest asking price, peaking at $20,000 for a breed portrait of a pointer from William Harnden Foster, an avid sportsman and pointer specialist. The other paintings showed dogs sniffing out their prey, dogs clamping down on birds, and dogs portrayed with one paw raised expectantly above the ground, as the animal waits for a bird to fall out of the sky. Other paintings featured men on horses, men firing guns, dogs in portrait, and fox hunts.
Want Fries With That? Adults Taking Teens’ Jobs
Posted on 19. May, 2009 by Rachel Geizhals in Business & Economics, News Features
Working the counter at the neighborhood ice cream shop is not the most sophisticated or glamorous of jobs, and it’s one teenagers usually take. But early this year – for the first time in his five years as the manager of a Carvel’s ice cream shop – William Betancourt was fielding calls from grownups begging for a job that pays $7.15 an hour.
In the past, adults called from employment centers looking to place high school kids in Betancourt’s store. Now, they’re calling for themselves – and they’re desperate for income. “They were like, ‘Do you have anything?’” said Betancourt, who manages a Carvel’s in Forest Hills, a neighborhood in Queens in New York City. “They just wanted to work.”
Twittering Through American History
Posted on 17. May, 2009 by Ben Fractenberg in Offbeat
By Ben Fractenberg
“The British are coming! OMG! Wake up the militia! Sound the church bells! Update your Facebook status!”
Amid the flutter over Twitter, it’s a reasonable question: What if people had been Tweeting for the past 300 years? How differently might we have experienced American history? What could be said about the American character in 140 characters?
City Hospitals Moving Away from the Poor
Posted on 16. May, 2009 by Loren Bonner in Business & Economics, News Features
The 200 people gathered in a conference room at the Intercontinental Hotel on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland talked until late afternoon about the problems the city’s uninsured face when accessing care. But the meeting didn’t include only medical representatives from Cleveland’s four health systems. Eighty people in attendance were uninsured. Since they were the very people being hurt by the system, health professionals figured it was about time the uninsured have a voice in discussions about how to improve health care.
Snickering at Puns: A Rewording Experience
Posted on 15. May, 2009 by Sergey Kadinsky in Offbeat
By Sergey Kadinsky
“Would you like to save cold cash on heating bills?”
“Dogs who drink bottled water prefer Scottish Perrier.”
“Nudist colonies are usually clothed until May.”
Yes, those puns were intended. Did you groan? If you had come up with them, would you have said, “No pun intended,” beforehand?
Julie and Julia: In Retrospect
Posted on 05. May, 2009 by tim.harper in Arts & Culture
By Jenni Avins
At some point, I could ignore the Julie and Julia phenomenon no longer. I had dodged Julie Powell’s blog, and subsequent book, but the media onslaught that led up to the movie was impossible to avoid.
Vanity Fair provided appetite-whetting details about Julia, a spy who shagged her husband on her lunch break from Le Cordon Bleu. Michael Pollan wondered, in The New York Times Magazine, how Americans find less and less time to cook, and more to watch cooking shows (and, it would seem, read articles about movies about cooking show-hosts and the bloggers who love them). Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed the film, explained on NPR, that today’s food television exhibits cooking as an inaccessible spectacle, unlike Julia’s encouraging French Chef, and she then elaborated for Vogue’s Jeffrey Steingarten, as she browned the beginnings of a beef bourguinon for the camera.
