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The Wonders of the Beggar’s Kingdom

With its 2012 album, The Wonders of the Beggar’s Kingdom, Lithuania's Sutaras went beyond cheery celebrations of its native land’s music and culture and addressed the reality of the outside world where most live in 'uncerta...
by David McGee
 

 
 
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Ride Lonesome (1959)

It's back to the old west for Deep Roots Theater, as we present the penultimate film in director Budd Boetticher's 'Ranown Cycle,' RIDE LONESOME, starring Randolph Scott and written by Burt Kennedy. With the 1959 cartoon, 'Pill...
by David McGee
 

 

 
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In Her Own Words: Up-and-Coming Illustrator Sairom Moon

Our heralded kids' lit blogger JULES interviews up-and-coming illustrator Sairom Moon, and kicks off the new year by blessing us with a couple of new illustrations from the redoubtable illustrator Elisa Kleven.
by David McGee
 

 
 
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‘As long as you can look fearlessly at the sky, you’ll know you’re pure within’

Introduced on stage in 2005, James Whitbourn's Annelies, the first adaptation of Anne Frank's diary into a large-scale choral work, will at last be released on CD on Jan. 22. Here's our preview of the first important recording ...
by David McGee
 

 

 
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Man, Dog, Rooster, Love: Brian McGrory’s Shaggy Story

Boston Globe editor BRIAN MCGRORY says his dog Harry and his inherited-through-marriage rooster Buddy have made him a better man. In fact, he crows about all this, so to speak, in a terrific new book and in a new Talking Animal...
by David McGee
 

 
 
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Dancing the Dance of Stars and Space

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides a spectacular image of the bright star-forming ring that surrounds the heart of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1097. Also: Like a ship plowing through still waters, the giant star Zeta...
by David McGee
 

 

 
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A Day With Robert Schumann

IN this month's PLEASURES OF MUSIC, an 1884 report by May Byron on A DAY WITH ROBERT SCHUMANN. In this account, the author chronicles a day spent with the arch-Romantic composer, which includes some vivid scenes with Schumann's...
by David McGee
 

 
 
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From Earth’s Caves, A Better Understanding of Mars

Dr. Penny Boston is exploring some of the most extreme environments on earth--the Snowy River Cave, the Cave of Crystal Giants--both in New Mexico, n the land where Billy the Kid once roamed--on the educated guess that those re...
by David McGee
 

 

 
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What Christmas Is As We Grow Older

Writing in his twopenny weekly, Household Words, in 1851, CHARLES DICKENS penned one of his most thoughtful Yuletide pieces, 'What Christmas Is As We Grow Older,' comprising thoughts arising against a backdrop of great personal...
by David McGee
 

 
 
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GMO Labeling: Just Give Us Some Truth

ON Nov. 6 California voters rejected Prop 37, an initiative that would have required food manufacturers to label most foods containing GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms), but that has not deterred the pro-Prop 37 movement. A...
by David McGee
 

 

 
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Auroras

In 1879 John Muir went to Alaska for the first time. Its stupendous living glaciers aroused his unbounded interest, for they enabled him to verify his theories of glacial action. Again and again he returned to this continental ...
by David McGee
 

 
 
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A Classic Animated Christmas

From the vaults, classics indeed: 1939's 'Peace on Earth,' the only cartoon ever nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize; from 1913, Ladislas Starevitch's pioneering and amazing stop-motion animated 'The Insects' Revenge' (plus a pr...
by David McGee