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Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes Michener Art Museum
46th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show Penn. Convention Center
Ancestral Intersection New Hope Arts
8 | Crafts in the Meadow, Juried Invitational Fine Art and Craft Show Tyler Park Ctr. for the Arts
93rd Juried Art Show Phillips’ Mill
The 5 x 5 Show Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission
On her spare, Grammy-nominated 2019 album Close to Me—now a new set of intimate orchestra arrangements from the Metropole Orkest—Mendes flits across rhythmic divides and glides through her homeland’s ingenuous indigenous brand of folk, Fado, like a falcon in flight.
The intersection of art, entertainment, culture, nightlife and mad genius.
Since 1992
215-862-9558 icondv.com
PUBLISHER & EDITOR Trina McKenna trina@icondv.com
On stage (Speed-the-Plow at the National Theatre, London) and on-screen (Heist, Bird Box), with her clear, cutting diction that leans toward a sneer and her sly, icy stare, actor Rebecca Pidgeon radiates wily intelligence and gutsy gall.
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PRODUCTION
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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
A.D. Amorosi
Ricardo Barros
Robert Beck Susan Caputo Pete Croatto
Geoff Gehman
Susan Van Dongen Grigsby Fredricka Maister David Stoller Keith Uhlich
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Rebecca Pidgeon.THIS PAINTING CAME FROMmultiple sources: an artist’s interpretation of Mother Goose in Central Park, which I walk past on occasion when going to the East Side; the annual Lambertville Halloween extravaganza, largely fueled at its inception by one person’s artistic passion and obsession; and there was what was happening in the world while I was putting the other two together.
The statue in Central Park of Mother Goose is one of my favorites. It is a large stone sculpture of the lady herself astride a goose. She is dressed as you would expect a Halloween witch, with a pointy, wide-brim hat, surrounded by characters from the nursery rhymes (Mother Hubbard, Old King Cole, the Little Lamb, etc.), on top of the large bird in flight. She is smiling.
It is well-sculpted, highly creative, and delightful. Not scary at all. I recom-
Robert Beck is a painter, writer, lecturer and ex-radio host. His paintings have been featured in more than seventy juried and thirty solo gallery shows, and three solo museum exhibitions. His column has appeared monthly in ICON Magazine since 2005. www.robertbeck.net
STORY & PAINTING BY ROBERT BECK
T-strap evening sandals, ca. 1940s, Leather, silk, rhinestones
Stuart Weitzman Collection, no. 99
Walk This Way: Footwear from the Stuart Weitzman Collection of Historic Shoes
Michener Art Museum
138 S. Pine St., Doylestown, PA 215-340-9800 Michenerartmuseum.org
September 24, 2022—January 15, 2023
Walk This Way presents over 100 pairs of shoes from the extensive private collection by iconic designer, Stuart Weitzman, and businesswoman and philanthropist, Jane Gershon Weitzman.
Focused on the women who designed, manufactured, sold, and collected footwear, the exhibition explores how shoes have transcended their utilitarian purpose to become representations of culture—coveted as objects of desire, designed with artistic consideration, and expressing complicated meanings of femininity, power, and aspiration.
This exhibition has been organized by the New York Historical Society. Walk This Way has been generously supported by Joyce B. Cowin. Additional support is provided by The Coby Foundation, LTD; Bank of America; The Schram Family Foundation; and Bloomingdale’s.
46th Annual Philadelphia Museum of Art
Craft Show
Penn. Convention Center, Philadelphia Pmacraftshow.org
November 11-13
Preview Gala on November 10
Experience in person the best in contemporary craft and design by 195 artists from across the United States. Objects made of clay, glass, metal, fiber and wood, as well as jewelry and art-to-wear, are available for purchase at this festive event. The show’s sole beneficiary is the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
A fashion event will be held on Saturday, November 12 at 1pm on the show floor. Featured will be wearables and accessories by exhibiting artists.
Sign up Friday to Sunday for Meet & Greet, a 30-minute guided tour at the show with three select artists. See details on the website (pmacraftshow.org) for individual and group options.
To purchase tickets and learn more, visit the Craft Show website at pmacraftshow.org.
Ancestral Intersection New Hope Arts, 2 Stockton Ave., New Hope 215-862-9606 Newhopearts.org Fri., Sat., Sun. Noon–5 (Free) Through October 30
The 2022 Legacy Exhibition, Ancestral Intersection, is an invitational art exhibition highlighting work by 11 individuals and two group projects curated by artist-educator Dalissa McEwen- Reeder
The artists come from various cultural/ethnic backgrounds to reflect the nature of the population in US today. The group projects were created by CCATE, whose mission is to develop the talents of the Latinx community in and around Norristown, PA.
Baskets by Jill Heir Jewelry by Ayesha Mayadas Unidentified maker Photo credit: Glenn Castellano, New York Historical Society Seymour Weitzman (1910-65), designer Pointed-toe lace-up pumps, ca. 1964 Suede, grosgrain ribbon Stuart Weitzman Collection, no. 269 Photo: Glenn Castellano, New York Historical Society Chad Cortez Everett, The Ice Cream Man Virginia Mallon, Rose and the Sparrow
Tyler Park Center for the Arts
10 Stable Mill Trail, Richboro, PA 267-218-0290 TylerParkArts.org
October 15, 10–5; October 16 10–4
Members & children under 12 free.
Tickets $10
Artists representing a variety of highly juried works including fine art, photography, ceramics, jewelry, wearable art, fiber, wood, metal, basketry and more. Surrounded and immersed in the beauty of Tyler Park Center for the Arts’ historic barn and grounds, patrons explore indoor and outdoor booths, live demonstrations, community partner exhibits and exceptional live music. Food vendors and Warwick Farms Brewing offer gastronomic delights while shoppers take advantage of the opportunity to support local artists and learn about their inspirations and processes. More details about this community art center event at Tyler Park Center for the Arts FB including daily artist spotlights and information about workshops and classes.
93rd Juried Art Show
Phillips’ Mill, 2619 River Rd., New Hope, PA 215-862-0582 PhillipsMill.org
Through October 30
Open Daily 1–5
This year's exhibition, the Mill’s 93rd, is the “must-see” stop for leaf-peepers out for a drive along River Road.
The show features over 100 framed pieces and sculptures plus a bounty of unframed portfolio pieces in a range of media. All works are for sale at the Mill, and online at phillipsmill.org/art/juried-art-show
A quintessential 18th-century Bucks County stone grist mill, Phillips’ Mill is considered the birthplace of Pennsylvania Impressionism where the New Hope School artists instituted this historic show in 1929.
The 5 x 5 Show
Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission
Bethlehem Town Hall Rotunda Gallery 10 East Church St., Bethlehem, PA
Through November 6 Mon.-Fri., 8–4
Reception October 2, 2-4 PM
In its seventh edition, The 5 x 5 Show brings together 5 talented artists working in 5 different media. Each has their unique vision and style, demonstrating their skills and versatility while celebrating the distinctive nature of their respective media. The participating artists are photographer Richard Begbie, printmaker Pat Delluva, painter James A. DePietro, sculptor Barbara Kozero, and pastelist Jacqueline Meyerson. The exhibit is a diverse celebration of the arts.
Monique Perry, Monique’s Art Jewelry at work Patricia Allingham Carlson, Lights at Night Luiz Vilela, On Nantucket Sound Richard Begbie, Camouflage, Archive Ink Jet Print, 30”x24" James A. DePietro, (24) Long Time Passing: We Shall Rise, Oil/Acrylic, 20”x16"
I walked the worn trail
To a stone ridge, strangely shaped, Human-like, I thought.
I climbed up and gazed below,
A sight I won’t soon forget.
A pool, black as night, Perfectly framed and bordered,
Of fitted stone slabs,
By whose hand I could not say,
No living thing to witness.
The cloud-studded sky,
A pale sun held in the reach
Of a trees’s bleached bones …
How such a thing might be Desolate and beautiful.
A modern landscape, Objects reduced to essence … Or apparition,
Of a blighted land, reduced To unnatural stillness.
This is a painting by Bror Julius Olsson (B.J.O.) Nordfeldt (1878–1955), entitled Fall, Minnesota, drawn from his days teaching art at the University of Minnesota, where he met his wife, the artist Emily Abbott. Later, he painted in his Lambertville studio—where art historian Roy Pederson and his wife Jennifer now reside. B.J.O. Nordfeldt, at his best, was one of America’s most original and rewarding (of close attention) artists. This painting is indicative of the unique artistic vision that enabled him to find his way to the edge of abstraction but not to non-objectivism. His originality lay in the way he gave the subject full and vigorous expression, even while the abstract design became the more compelling reason for the picture. “A bit of magic belonging to this world or some other,” said noted art critic Sheldon Cheney.
David Stoller has had a career spanning law, private equity, and entrepreneurial leadership. He was a partner and co-head of Milbank Tweed and led various companies in law, insurance, live entertainment, and the visual arts. David is an active art collector and founder of River Arts Press, which published a collection of his poetry, Finding My Feet
DAVID STOLLER
Courtesy Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
THE PROBLEM WITH A critical discussion of art, or even defining what the word “art” means, is that art isn’t any one thing. It is iridescent. The color one perceives depends upon the current illumination and one’s perspective. A minor change in either can dramatically alter one’s impression. While meaningful conversations about artwork are possible, they require, at minimum, a shared understanding of intent.
Why does the artwork exist? For some, beauty may be a sufficient reason. Or insight might be the key. And for still others, the message may be most important. The possibilities are endless. Evaluating an artwork by one set of criteria when the artist invested in another assures the artist and audience will be disconnected.
I like to think of context as illumination. Context doesn’t tell you what to see, but it does offer to place what you see in a particular set-
ting.This placement, in turn, helps the viewer fathom artistic intent. One can still see what one will, but we open doors to new understanding.
Annee Spileos Scott is haunted by genocide. I photographed Annee in her installation “Bloodlines: Remembering Smyrna, 1922,” where she recreates what one wishes were only a nightmare. The Ottoman Turks penned the city’s Christian population into a quay, where an international fleet of battleships were anchored in the harbor. Then the slaughter began. In her art installation, Annee recreates the sailors’ view from their ships as the victims, represented by familial possessions, bobbed in the water like flotsam. The horror extends beyond the massacre itself. These armed sailors were under strict orders to not intervene. Now we viewers join those sailors as voiceless witnesses. n
PHOTOGRAPH AND ESSAY BY RICARDO BARROS Ricardo Barros’ works are in the permanent collections of eleven museums, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the author of “Facing Sculpture: A Portfolio of Portraits, Sculpture and Related Ideas.”
The Allentown Art Museum has enjoyed two newsworthy years, first establishing that a long-owned portrait was painted by Rembrandt, then premiering free admission on all open days, courtesy of a local foundation’s legacy gift. Rembrandt’s sublime oil of a lady, once owned by French royals, hangs in the Kress Gallery, which showcases Renaissance and Baroque works donated by a charity launched by Samuel H. Kress, a Valley native and nickel-anddime store mogul who decided that small-city museums deserved big-city masterpieces. The newly rearranged American galleries are brighter and roomier, with more room for pieces by non-whites, nonmen, and non-U.S. citizens. My new favorites range from Kara Walker’s five-act silhouetted drama of a child enslaved to Rigo Peralta’s frame-filling painting of his grandmother smoking a cigar. The best news is a vow to change a third of the 148 American works every six months, the sort of refreshing infusion that prevents a museum from feeling like a mausoleum. (31 N. 5th St., between Linden and Hamilton streets; 610-4324333; allentownartmuseum.org).
Main Street in Bethlehem has a European air and flair. Three blocks encompass four centuries of history, six architectural styles, seven cuisines, and a whopping 15 indoor/outdoor eateries. Strolling, eating and eavesdropping are enhanced by brick-and-slate sidewalks with Victorian lamps and views of everything from an 18th-century blacksmith’s shop to a Latin restaurant that housed a Woolworth’s. Hot spots include Tapas, which serve savory meats, cheeses, and fries dipped in aioli. Cool spots include the brick patio at the Sun Inn, which hosted such dignitaries as the Marquis de Lafayette and, yes, George Washington. The street’s casual buzz ramps up during a host
CONTINUED ON PAGE 32
Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the LongLost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry). He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net
October is mostly good for one thing only: Halloween. Other than that, it is the month that is NOT autumn’s leafy arrival, NOT Thanksgiving and NOT Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanza, and New Year’s Eve.
Just saying this makes me wish that the month was over already.
So let’s start at Halloween, work backward, and state categorically that—when it comes to celebrating the spooky, sexy, costumed, candy-filled holiday of All Hallows’ Eve along the east coast—nobody does it better than Henri David. Since the tail end of the 1960s, David’s decadent dressed-up (or not at all) affairs have been the stuff of legend. Mostly due to its host, the twirling mustached David, who lives Halloween every day by serving up tony handmade jewelry from his Pine Street gem salon of the same name and dedicates himself wholeheartedly to the holiday by preparing and making at least four costume changes per party, all without telling a soul in advance. “Not even the people who make my costumes with me know what I’m doing as I keep its secrets close,” says David, who, again this October 31, will bring his annual Halloween Ball to the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown (207 N. 17th St., 215-732-7711). And again, David lives by his Ball’s motto, “Come as you wish to be and not who you are.”
Back to reality, did you know that Post Malone is coming to the Wells Fargo Center on October 6? Why that is fun, even if you don’t have a total lock on what it is he does, is because the rapper-singer with the sketchy, patchy beard and the weirdest Osh-Kosh-Be-Gosh hip-hop fashion sense ever seems to exist on a fluffy cloud with zero edge. Seriously. Listen to songs such as his new hit with Doja Cat, “I Like You.” Even its title seems soft and lame, but sweet nonetheless.
A.D. Amorosi is a Los Angeles Press Club National Art and Entertainment Journalism award-winning journalist and national public radio host and producer (WPPM.org’s Theater in the Round) married to a garden-to-table cooking instructor + award-winning gardener, Reese, and father to dogdaughter Tia.
Photo: Al Stegeman (2013), Al_in_Philly Rigo Peralta (American, b. Dominican Republic 1970), Doña Negra, 2016, acrylic on linen. Allentown Art Museum: purchase, The Ardath Rodale Art Acquisition Fund, 2019. (2019.7)
“I had long resisted Portuguese folk music. Its mournful, downbeat tone seemed incompatible with my passionate approach to song, forged in operatic training and the spirited jazz improvisation I’ve learned from such formative influences as Carmen McRae, Betty Carter, and Shirley Horn. It took leaving home and putting down new roots in as vastly different a locale as the Netherlands to grant me the perspective to discover a wholly original approach to music in general.”
MMARIA MENDES IS A dreamer. Or so she says in conversation about her newest album, Saudade, Colour of Love. Featuring her breathy, expressive vocals nestled against woozily intense melodies first heard on her spare, Grammy-nominated 2019 album Close to Me—now a new set of intimate orchestra arrangements from the Metropole Orkest—Mendes flits across rhythmic divides and glides through her homeland’s ingenuous indigenous brand of folk, Fado, like a falcon in flight in an elegantly nuanced voice not far from earlier solo albums such as Along the Road (2012) and Innocentia (2015).
“Yes, I am a dreamer, a spiritual person and often nostalgic, but quite optimistic about life and why certain happenings have a reason for their existence,” says Mendes. “I love romance, so my heart tends to listen to and sing ballads.”
Thinking of the differences between singing and acting intuitively and innately—the dream actualized and improvised - instead of setting sights like a sniper and nailing her target, she believes that the two ideas walk side-by-side and hand-in-hand.
“At times, music flows intuitively from me, as a spiritual call on, say, the aspect of writing and composing,” she says. “Other times, it is easier for me to establish a storyline or a specific aesthetic direction for my musical pieces to flow. On stage, all the study and preparation from my instrument and way of listening/feeling music comes alive intuitively, connected dot by dot on the energy that flows from me, my band, and the audience.”
]As an artist, much of who Mendes is has to do with location-location-location and how she navigates its metaphorical waters. Although she’s been living in the Netherlands for several years now (due to the Erasmus exchange student program during her time searching to get her Bachelor then Master’s degree in jazz), her connection to Portugal remains strong, especially where Fado is anchored, in the soul of the country. “Bringing together jazz and Fado has been the most important and artistically fulfilling work I have done so far, really feeding my soul,” says Mendes.
18 ICON | OCTOBER 2022 | ICONDV.COM /2 The mood colors the music with Saudade
conversationFado has a profound melancholic longing attached to each note and word. This allows her “to embrace vulnerability and celebrate it.”
“Interpreting and arranging Fado has been an awakening for me to connect with this beautiful legacy of my ancestors. I had long resisted Portuguese folk music. Its mournful, downbeat tone seemed incompatible with my passionate approach to song, forged in operatic training and the spirited jazz improvisation I’ve learned from such formative influences as Carmen McRae, Betty Carter, and Shirley Horn. It took leaving home and putting down new roots in as vastly different a locale as the Netherlands to grant me the perspective to discover a wholly original approach to music in general.”
Mentioning as she does some of jazz’s greatest vocalists at the forefront of her inspiration, I can’t help but ask: did Mendes find jazz, or did jazz find Mendes?
“Jazz found me,” she says. “I was destined to become an opera singer. My mother tells me that I firmly expressed my desire to become an opera singer at the age of three. I started studying music and devoting myself to its classical studies in several subjects (voice, piano, history of music, composing, music analysis, acoustic, and choirs) from age 12 onward. When I was 17, I came across an opportunity to record “My Romance” and “Over the Rainbow” in a home studio recording of a friend. Just like that, I learned the songs on the spot and had so much fun singing them. It was a blissful feeling of freedom, and that kick never left. Then I started to dig some lost music treasures I found at home; plenty of Count Basie, Sinatra, and Nat King Cole albums that my father would rarely listen to. It was common to hear Chopin, Vivaldi, and Beethoven at home.”
Walking through the trajectory of her recorded output—how Close to Me leads directly into Innocentia into Along the Road into Saudade—Mendes pragmatically sees her work as an “honest result of the artist and person I was” at the moment that she and her collaborators created it. “As a composer, arranger, and vocalist, I hear the evolution. All of my albums express a true
OHow the singer-songwriter, art-pop auteur, found a new focus through yoga, with Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound
n stage (Speed-the-Plow at the National Theatre, London) and on-screen (Heist, Bird Box), with her clear, cutting diction that leans toward a sneer and her sly, icy stare, actor Rebecca Pidgeon radiates wily intelligence and gutsy gall.
However, on her albums as a singing songwriter, in the folk-ish Ruby Blue ensemble, and recordings such as 1987’s Glances Askances and a solo career that begins in 1994 with The Raven, those same lit-witty smarts are imbued with a richly burnished emotion and poignancy without ever stooping to sentimentality.
“For instance, everyone knows the mantra ohm. Her impression is that the ohm mantra is the sound of the universe, a primordial sound. That was impressive to me, that the universe is reverberating with sound, like dark matter. And that same sound is reverberating within each of us as well.”
If wartime Noel Coward and Jeff Buckley ever got together, they might come up with a Rebecca Pidgeon all their own.
On her new album, Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound, Pidgeon comes up with another form of intelligence, emotion, and even reverence as the singersongwriter allows her preoccupation with and devotion to yoga take hold of her craft. And with that, she blossoms and opens more than any of her albums passed.
Inspired by yogic scholar Sri Prashant Iyengar and her participation in remote online classes originating in Mumbai during the pandemic, Pidgeon explored the spectral realms, existential equations, and mind-bodyspirit connectivity in ways she had never attempted or thought possible before in yoga. Yet, though it sounds holy, sonically (blame its drones) and lyrically (blame its connection to that which is sacred in us all), Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound does not sound like the calming music of meditation. Instead, it is alive with loops, electricity, and new prayerful ideas.
Tesla would be proud.
ICON’s A.D. Amorosi caught up with Rebecca Pidgeon in Los Angeles before returning to New York City’s Joe’s Pub for the first live showcase of her new album
A.D. AMOROSIA.D. Amorosi: Pop stars revealing themselves as actors—such as Harry Styles and David Bowie—are almost always revered. Actors making music—think Kevins Bacon and Costner—are often eschewed. Why?
Rebecca Pidgeon: That’s sad. What’s funny is how, in the past, artists like Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland were praised for doing both and taken seriously for working within both genres. Something’s changed, and people aren’t so used to it these days.
A.D. Amorosi: You grew up doing both professions at the same time.
Rebecca Pidgeon: Yes. I didn’t really choose one over the other. I may have been more active in one than the other at times. The derision? It’s something that you have to live with, I suppose. If people can’t accept you, so be it. You just play to the audience that you have. And I happen to like Kevin Bacon. I played on a bill with him and his brother, their rock band, and they were great.
A.D. Amorosi: Your lyrics are always tender, tough, and intelligent. Whether you’re writing from the mind and the body, as you are on your newest album, Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound, or from a place, time, and person as you seem to do through most of your previous songs, you lead with a sense of poignancy in your lyrics, without much sentimentality. Who inspires your writing beyond you taking your own counsel?
Rebecca Pidgeon: I admire great lyricists such as Bob Dylan and Randy Newman, try to read as much great writing as I can, and hope that THAT rubs off. I try not to be cliché or sentimental, in my writing, yet I do believe that I often fall short of that wish. I’m never totally satisfied, but I do my best to relay stories or characters that I find interesting. I do struggle a bit with all that.
A.D. Amorosi: Is lyric writing more automatic now, than it once was for you?
Rebecca Pidgeon: I have to think about it a lot—writing lyrics. It doesn’t just pour out of me. I’m not someone who journaled my whole life and had that at my
Blonde.
Blonde (Dir. Andrew Dominik). Starring: Ana de Armas, Adrien Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Julianne Nicholson. Writer-director Andrew Dominik’s nearly three-hour adaptation of Joyce Carol Oates’s novel about the life of Marilyn Monroe is a true horror show. Norma Jeane (Ana de Armas), the woman who would become the blonde bombshell to end them all, is here presented as a foredoomed, literally fallen star. “A sack of meat,” as she re-
marks at one point, to be auctioned, sold, exploited. Pick your debasement—it’s likely the film will show it. Screwed from behind by studio heads? Forced into having abortions, complete with Interior: Vagina camera angles? Orally raped by President John F. Kennedy? Come one, come all! You’ll see that and more. Dominik clearly thinks he’s making a statement about the dark side of celebrity, and he tarts up the film with aspect ratio
Keith Uhlich is a NY-based writer published at Slant Magazine, The Hollywood Reporter, Time Out New York, and ICON. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle. His personal website is (All (Parentheses)), accessible at keithuhlich.substack.com.
shifts and eerie sound design, while de Armas gamely gives her all in an effort at channeling Monroe’s tormented essence. Yet Blonde feels most like a vandalization, less interested in illuminating a lost soul than in reproving her (and us) for even trying to find a sense of purpose in work and in life. [NC-17] H
The Woman King (Dir. Gina Prince-Bythewood). Starring: Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch. Viola Davis gets a star’s entrance in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s rousing
KEITH
Fantômas (1913, Louis Feuillade, France)
Binge-watching being the new normal, why not point and click (and click and click again) on this classic silent-film serial from master of the form Louis Feuillade. His most popular production, spread over five, cliffhanger-laden parts, tells the thrilling story of master criminal Fantômas (René Navarre), whose exploits attract the attention of a police inspector, Juve (Edmund Breon), and a crusading journalist, Fandor (Georges Melchior). There are murders and thefts and daring escapes (including from the guillotine), and the general characters makeups— the obsessive law-abiders and the elusive transgressors—will be familiar to anyone who enjoys a good, ceaselessly involving thriller. In the process, you’ll also get an education on how many of the motion-picture formulas that we now take for granted came to be. (Streaming on Filmatique.)
Fat City (1972, John Huston, United States)
A prime 1970s drama directed by one of the Hollywood Golden Age’s most reliable hands, Fat City tells the story of past-his-prime boxer Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) who befriends and mentors up-and-coming pugilist Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges). Theirs isn’t the realize-your-dreams character arc of Sylvester Stallone’s four years in the future Rocky, but a more boozy, trance-like shuffle from place to place, from ring to barstool and back again. Keach and Bridges are both exemplary, as is Susan Tyrrell as the barfly who Tully gets sweet on. Director John Huston, meanwhile, easily adapts to the early-’70s American cinema’s emphasis on flawed characters and downbeat outcomes, helming this quiet symphony of disappointment with an old master’s confidence and a young man’s (re)invigoration. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.)
The Fly (1986, David Cronenberg, U.S.) One of Canadian cult filmmaker David Cronenberg ostensibly mainstream efforts, The Fly is in reality a most distressing and upsetting treatise on death disguised as a creaturefeature scare flick. Jeff Goldblum is nerdy scientist Seth Brundle, who seduces Geena Davis’ journalist, Veronica Quaife, with his massive intellect and the promise of a teleportation device that will change the face of humanity. One night, when testing the machine with himself as subject, a fly gets in the works and transfers its DNA to Brundle’s body. He slowly begins to display the fly’s sensory powers and topsy-turvy abilities, though his human body decays in the process, leaving Veronica increasingly terrified and at a loss what to do. Made at the height of the AIDS epidemic, the film resonated deeply with those who watched loved
KEITH UHLICH
Jeff Bridges in Fat City.
historical epic, rising from a field of reeds into a full-on warrior’s pose. She’s Nanisca, leader of the all-female army of the African country of Dahomey, a steely soul whose emotions have been buried deep within due to several undealt-with traumas. With the arrival of a new recruit, the innately rebellious Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), Nanisca feels the stirrings of a long-forgotten motherly fervor, a reaction that may not be entirely metaphorical. The action scenes are fun, if strangely bloodless, as if there was some contractual obligation to avoid an R-rating. But Prince-Bythewood is more interested in, and proves an adept handler of, the melodramatic aspects of the tale, particularly in how Nanisca and Nawi’s personal longings interweave with the larger political structures of the slave-tradetolerating Dahomey regime. All the actors are terrific, but it’s Davis who anchors the proceedings, which play to her emotive strengths while also allowing her to show off a commanding physical prowess that she has until now rarely been able to display. [PG-13]
Tár (Dir. Todd Field). Starring: Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss. Never less than compelling, the first film in sixteen years from writer-director Todd Field (Little Children) follows megastar conductor Lydia Tár (Cate Blanchett) as her rarefied existence comes under increasing scrutiny. The character can turn on a dime from mentor to monster, something evident in an early scene, captured in a brilliantly choreographed single take, in which she gradually alienates a black pansexual student over his dislike of the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. The power she’s attained over years of cultivating public image and private connections has made her the worst sort of human, and one extremely vulnerable to our modern vogue for vengeful accusation and takedown. So Lydia’s life slowly unravels, which allows Blanchett to do the sort of capital-A acting that’s frequently lauded with praise and gold statuettes. It’s impressive at times, certainly. But there’s some crucial bit of humanity missing in Blanchett’s performance, in addition to Field’s overall approach to the materi-
al, which requires more of a mordant wit than this rather humorless artist possesses. Tár is still very much worth a look for Florian Hoffmeister’s chilly cinematography, as well as a movingly naturalistic performance by Nina Hoss as Lydia’s long-suffering personal and professional partner. [R] HH1/2
HHH1/2 Pinocchio (Dir. Robert Zemeckis). Starring: Tom Hanks, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Cynthia Erivo. The latest live-action adaptation from Walt Disney Studios is interesting mainly for the poison-tipped provocations conjured by cowriter-director Robert Zemeckis. While adhering generally to the structure of the 1940 animated film (save for one major change to the ending that is quite the thorny note to go out on), this Pinocchio is noticeably its own beast from scene one, in which Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) engages in a schizophrenic dialogue with himself. That’s an apt embodiment of a movie that seems to hate its own existence. From there, Zemeckis spends nearly half-an-hour in the workshop of lonely Geppetto (Tom Hanks) as he builds the wooden boy (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) who will be given life by the Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo). This effective, and affecting, one-act drama is the film’s high point, after which Zemeckis seems more and more constrained by his Mouse House masters. Yet there is a distinctive vision at play here, one that quite evidently enjoys biting the hand that feeds. [R] HH1/2 n
Solution to IN OTHER WORDS
FILM
The Woman King
desire to interpret songs as creatively as I am committed to arranging them. Even my own compositions end up going through an arranging process. My last studio album, Close to Me, led to the new album, a live recorded album Saudade, Colour of Love.”
The subject of collaborators, past and present, brings up one constant in her musical life, John Beasley and Metropole Orkest. Why does Mendes put such trust into Beasley’s orchestrations, and why is this musical teaming and meeting of the minds always empathetic to her voice and its goals?
“When partnerships are filled with good energy, love, and respect, they tend to last,” says Mendes. “Close to Me was a result of these values, and that is why Saudade, Colour of Love, came after. I believe curiosity has its own reason for existing, therefore seeking to create together, valuing the input of who I’ve trusted to work with as a learning process, and developing myself as an artist. Beasley has 30 to 40 years more experience on the road and in music than I do, which makes his vision and expertise different than mine. We had great creative and challenging moments together.”
As Saudade is a live recording and expansion of her previous effort, the challenge of getting things “right,” came down to one song.
“As a vocalist and arranger, I would say that one song is Quando Eu Era Pequenina, the 7/4 song. It’s one of the oldest Portuguese folk songs , so it was challenging to take it far from the repetitive and simple original melody. The fact that Beasley and I have given a continuous modulated melody on a 7/4 groove helped revive this song’s spirit. It took me time to feel this 7/4 integrated into my flesh and bones. These arranging tools— modulation, odd meters—tend to, in the moment of playing or singing, be very intellectual, making it sound robotic. So, my main goal was to have a great refreshing, inventive and playful rhythmic result.”
Returning to the jazz that centers her Fado roots in the past and present, Mendes says that jazz is the epiphany of freedom and the purest form of connecting with one’s fullest expansion as a human being and as a creator. “Jazz shows me every day the reality that slowly is the fastest way to get me where I want to be. I devoted myself to being at ease with the regular study of music and my instrument. That is why it always feels so refreshing and joyful whenever I make music on a studio recording or stage, and playing the same song always feels different.” n
mend a visit when you are next in the city. It’s just north of the Central Park Zoo.
That sculpture has been residing in my consciousness for years. Why? Because of the language. The sculptor, Fredrik Roth, was able to draw a direct line from the form he created to a place of enchantment using not just his interpretation but pretty-much everybody’s common cultural understanding. He created the sculpture in 1938, a time when the world was heading toward war.
It’s interesting that when I searched the sculpture to refresh my memory for this essay, it looked different than I remembered. But the feelings it evoked were the same. That’s because art is a language, and it doesn’t matter what is said; it matters what is heard.
References to Mother Goose have been around since the origins of the fairy tale genre and children’s poetry in the 1600s. There was an actual Mrs. Goose, but her role is murky. An 1860s chapbook shows her wearing the witchy hat and astride a goose. Artists and illustrators had to deal with the ergonomic impracticality of mounting a bird, and a flying one is even more problematic. Fredrick Roth planted Mrs. Goose on top of the goose’s back, but the swirls of her robe obscure how she manages to stay there.
That is something I deal with when trying to describe a feeling or create an impression in a studio painting done from imagination. While I might eliminate or add elements to a life painting, the mechanics are there for me to examine right in front of me. Not so in something I have to imagine, like a lady riding a flying goose.
When creating an image of something that doesn’t exist, or in this case, can’t exist, I need to keep the impracticality from interfering with the overall narrative. I doodled propor-
FILM CLASSICS / CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24
tions and viewer angles until I located a way to present it in a manner that felt plausible, or at least not impossible.
I also needed to determine where this gooseflying would be happening. Obviously, in the air, but possibilities are wide-ranging, each presenting a different narrative based on the viewer’s location, the setting, what Mrs. Goose is doing at the time, and pretty much everything else in the painting.
I could take you through hundreds of considerations, but in the end, we find ourselves up with the woman on the bird, flying over Lambertville at night, broom in hand. The elevated and tilted horizon puts you above and floating independently of Mrs. Goose, with a scattering of bats trailing behind, which seems a Halloweeny thing to be happening. Lambertville likes its Halloween—thank you, Deloris—and you can’t have too many bats.
The name of the painting, Lambertville Gooseride, comes from a whaling term, “Nantucket Sleighride.” That’s what they called it when a whale was harpooned, and it would take off at high speed, dragging the whaleboat behind, sometimes for miles. It was a perilous and often disastrous experience.
Speaking of which, this image was coming together along with the news from Washington that a little more than half of the Supreme Court had dismantled the Roe vs. Wade decision. The one they swore was established law. That put an edge on all my thoughts and considerations, and I gravitated toward having her hold her straw broom as if she is leading a charge. (Soundtrack: “Gooseriders in the Sky.”) I see the broom as something that can be used to deliver a twohander across the back of a hypocrite’s head. I don’t want to encourage more violence here, but a guy can dream. n
ones literally broken down by disease. Few horror movies are as tragically romantic and moving as this one. (Streaming on HBOMax.)
Funny Girl (1968, William Wyler, U.S.)
The recent Broadway revival of the musical that made Barbra Streisand a star garnered much catty gossip for a miscast Beanie Feldstein, as well as a mid-run recast with controversial Glee alum Lea Michele. So what better time to go back to the film adaptation of Funny Girl, in which Streisand recreates her stage role as Ziegfeld Follies girl/comedienne Fanny Brice and gives the loosely biographical material her own astounding here-I-am-world! spin. Whether singing or speaking, Streisand owns the screen throughout. You could say she upstages her costars, such as Omar Sharif as Fanny’s scamming inamorato Nicky Arnstein, but really, how could anyone compete with a star being born to this degree? Not even Lady Liberty can hog the spotlight from resplendent Babs as she belts out “Don’t Rain On My Parade” from the bow of a tugboat. (Streaming on Criterion Channel.) n
MARIA MENDES / CONT. FROM PAGE 18 GOOSERIDE / CONT. FROM PAGE 5
disposal. I will say, however, that the new songs of Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound came to me in one flow. So quickly did it come that halfway through the process, I looked up and realized that I might be writing an entire album.
A.D. Amorosi: It had to do with the experiences of yoga—thinking it. Doing it. Living it. Rebecca Pidgeon: Parts of yoga practice, yes. It had to do, also, with being inspired by the teachings of Sri Prashant Iyengar. I was a student of Iyengar when we went on lockdown online during the pandemic, and I believe that
dark matter. And that same sound is reverberating within each of us as well. Then she taught us about this instrument, the tanpura, which I had never heard of before, but is an Indian drone instrument. I looked it up, and it reminded me of the bagpipes. I was born in, but I grew up in Scotland, in Edinburgh, and with Scottish folk music. That was a major part of my upbringing and influenced me a lot going forward. So, I felt very at home with that sound—like my lyrics, the music, and the melody flowed from the tanpura. So, on this new album, I worked with drone sounds and drum loops and approached its writing on a keyboard rather than my usual guitar. That’s all very unusual for me. So anyway, the yoga practice was like music, observing its own inner dance—all of which I found very joyful. That in and of itself was inspiring as well. Presehakar once said that we are all inhabited by celestial bodies. In the tradition of yoga, its
me about the use of the drones you mentioned and the concept of art pop is that that idea goes directly to Welsh composer, violist, and Velvet Underground co-founder John Cale. Not Scotland, but Wales, so close enough. Cale’s drone made what Lou Reed was writing so much more dramatic. Now, I might not call what they or he did ‘pop’ per se, but his use of drones, too—like yours—would never fall under the rubric or meditation.
Rebecca Pidgeon: I would put what Cale does within the category of ‘art,’ and what I do, art pop, I guess. And the drone is ancient and goes throughout so many cultures, and that is also a sound, a reverberation, common to all.
A.D. Amorosi: Is it easy finding musicians to do this particular brand of music with? Who understood the subtleties and points you were working toward?
Rebecca Pidgeon: My producer and I were working on one album when I shifted gears and wanted to do this album. He thought this new album had visions or feelings of world music. He then invited our violinist, a table player, and a dynamic drummer because rhythm is the heart of everything. Lucky me, all of these musicians were up for it, very open to hearing and playing. Five of us concocted this thing. You are right, though. When I was sitting in my home studios with the original demos, I couldn’t help but wonder who would be able to play this with me. But, you find people through networks. Plus, I know lots of people. During the thousands of years that we are on this planet, you meet others. I was just being a bit shy.
I benefitted from that intimacy, and am still benefitting from all that time. I drew on that primarily. And all the lyrics that came from that experience—just came flowingly.
A.D. Amorosi: Can you guess why the whole mind-body-soul experience of yoga, or at least THIS experience of yoga, had that effect on your work—be it their teachings or the vibrations that you may have felt from it?
Rebecca Pidgeon: Because it was musical. The teacher was informing us about mantras with a technique through pranayama, and within that technique, you’re working with inner sound. It is as if you’re speaking a mantra silently in your mind. Apparently, that helps produce subtle vibrations within. For instance, everyone knows the mantra ohm. Her impression is that the ohm mantra is the sound of the universe, a primordial sound. That was impressive to me, that the universe is reverberating with sound, like
philosophies, Hinduism, and its gods and goddesses, we’re very peopled inside. All of our organs, the presiding deities, are like a courtly dance going on within me.
A.D. Amorosi: Within all of us.
Rebecca Pidgeon: Yes. And I found that quite inspiring and a lot of fun and joyful. Having said that, I’m making it sound as if this is a YOGA record.
A.D. Amorosi: You mean all New Age-y and blissed out.
Rebecca Pidgeon: Right. And this record is not that. It is not meditation music. It is not music to do yoga to. It is pop art, or art pop contemporary music—that is what I write.
A.D. Amorosi: One of the things that struck
A.D. Amorosi: I hear something prayerful and reverent in Parts of Speech Pieces of Sound Can you talk about this album being a more holy work than your previous recordings without being connected to something directly religious?
Rebecca Pidgeon : Oh yeah. Definitely. Throughout my writing, I have tried to do it from the point of praise to express gratitude. Everything before this that I attempted in that vein, I threw away. I believe it was because I had not yet experienced anything of life to make such praise. Now I have that experience or have experienced more of life. I think, so I feel as if—even though I am not a yogi, a fullyrealized person, or a saint—that I am wise, that I have a deep feeling of communion with something beyond me, other than myself. And, I feel as if I can express that in ways that are true. And I’m glad you recognize that in me because I wanted that to happen. n
Stephen Louis Grush and Rebecca Pigeon in Sex With Strangers at the Geffen Playhouse in L.A. Rebecca Pidgeon and playwright David Mamet have been married since 1991
of special events (Musikfest, the Celtic Classic, Christmas) and at night when the Hotel Bethlehem’s Palladian windows glow and Central Moravian Church’s bell tower doubles as a lighthouse. And there’s no better place in the vicinity for scouting people and pups. At least twice a day, Jake, my Schnoodle companion, scarfs rolls at Mama Nina’s and scoots for treats at the Moravian Bookshop, America’s oldest seller of what I write for a living. (visithistoricbethlehem.com; getdowntownbethlehem.com)
Many serious senior actors consider King Lear a holy grail of a role, their Great White Whale. Bill George’s Lear is Odysseus, whose epic quest ends with him finding home, himself, and humanity’s many complexes. Next month the veteran soloist will solo as Homer’s hero, accompanied only by an ambient musician, at Touchstone Theatre, the adventurous, experimental ensemble he founded in 1981with his wife, Bridget. In this new adaptation, George skips those harrowing encounters with the Cyclops and the Sirens and focuses on the many moods and revelations of Odysseus, his loved ones, and his comrades. The character is an ideal vehicle/crucible for exploring and embracing the fears and hopes of a performer in his eighth decade who hasn’t shared a stage in three years. Expect all of the trademarks--elastic movements, wry humor, volcanic eruptions, bone-marrow sorrow— that George has displayed in characters as disparate as Don Quixote and a shopping-cart Christmas philosopher, the narrator brother in The Glass Menagerie and an unemployed steelworker chained to a 27-ton ladle in a ruined iron works and named for Prometheus, another mythic pilgrim. (Odysseus, Nov. 2-6, Touchstone, 321 E. 4th St., Bethlehem; 610-867-1689; touchstone.org)
The Valley’s plushest park anchors the greenest belt. Lehigh Parkway in Allentown is a 629-acre, five-mile-long crown jewel set into an urban suburb’s rural valley. The lovely Little Lehigh Creek, a paradise for fly fishing, winds among six-plus miles of graceful paths for walking, running, and biking; an arboretum of magnificent trees; seven bridges, including a covered one, and grassy hills begging to be rolled down and sledded. Unusual attractions for a park abound: log cabins, hex-signed barns, a trout nursery, and a museum of Native American artifacts. A drive-thru display of Christmas lights illuminates an already spectacular sanctuary. (allentownpa.gov; “Lights in the Parkway” runs Nov. 26-Dec. 31)
I grew up in downstate New York with great ocean beaches and terrific antique stores. The Valley makes me accept lakes with merely pleasant shores and fair-to-middling co-ops specializing in old bric-abrac. A rare exception is S. Seem Antiques & Artisans, which offers a relatively diverse selection of relatively high-quality furniture, jewelry, pictures, and curios. Especially pleasing are an Underwood typewriter—a true-blue letter-piano—and a whirligig with two characters sawing a log. Even more satisfying is a charmingly stripped brick building with beckoning windows and heavily worn floorboards, the residue of an original role as a 19th-century purveyor of dry goods. The corner structure stands out on a magnetic street with two pristine, handsome 19th-century Germanic stone houses, the former site of the country’s first homeopathic hospital, and two large, rugged bars with porches that could be mistaken for Wild West saloons. (100 S. Chestnut St., Bath; 610-390-0403) n
tober 8 at Wells Fargo Center when WWE Extreme Rules hits the mat. Are there rules? Did you know that Lincoln Financial Field will host Wrestlemania in 2024? This is disturbing.
Really back to really real reality in October: there are two massive outdoor autumn celebrations in the South Street Fest, the Meet Me on South Street Thursdays and the Midtown Village Fall Festival. The last time I was on South Street during the evening, bullets whizzed by me. I’m not saying don’t go. I’m just saying listen for the whirr, look for the flash, and duck. If you don’t hold those skills, Pumpkinland at Linvilla Orchards may be a better fit.
Did you know that October is American Pharmacists Month? Take your druggist to lunch.
Did you know that October is Country Music Month? Take Morgan Whallen to lunch. And leave him there.
Did you know that Delco has an Arts Week, October 1-9? See, it is only because I saw Mare of Eastown again that I laugh at what seems to be an oxymoronic idea for an art fest. I could have thought the same thing about the Lansdowne Arts on the Avenue Festival (October 2, 2022) or the Fall Into the Arts Festival in Glen Mills (October 8, 2022). None of these places seem like tony Gallery Row in Old City or New York. It’s just me. I’m probably crabby about Modigliani at the Barnes and Matisse in the 1930s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Reprobates. n
VALLEY
CITY / CONTINUED FROM
And yeah, I know, Post can rock out with Ozzy Osbourne and do the street thing when he needs to. But he doesn’t really seem to need to as of late, and we get this amorphous blob of music that is somehow, well, just nice. I like it. Two days after Post Malone, things get harder on Oc-
Post Malone.
Midtown Village Fall Festival. Photo: A. Ricketts.
The increasing conservatism that comes with age is largely a consequence of raising children; small children, but not macaques and capuchins, can perceive faces in inanimate objects; and psychopathic traits, particularly meanness and disinhibition, protect against PTSD. Cooperation among strangers in the United States increased slightly between 1956 and 2017. Americans and Chinese who are considered to possess superior morality by their acquaintances report greater than average happiness, and condomless intercourse among metropolitan Chinese men who have sex with men has more than doubled since the start of the pandemic. An evaluation of natal males and natal females using the Core Autogynephilia Scale found low autogynephilia among the non-autogynephilic. A survey of five cultures found that laughter shared by romantic partners sounds warmer, more feminine, and more submissive than laughter shared by friends. Researchers proposed that the concept of “lesbian bed death” be replaced with “lesbian bed intimacies,” and pointed out that in their most recent sexual encounter, lesbians were more likely than straight women to have said “I love you.” Further study was recommended on the adaptive function of cunnilingus in preindustrial societies.
Children in imperial Roman Thessaloniki were weaned in a manner consistent with the precepts of Soranus’s Gynaecology, the presence of Nile crocodile remains in the mortuary complexes of Nebhepetre Mentuhotep II’s courtiers were analyzed with reference to the spells of the Coffin Texts, and archaeologists at Unguja Ukuu in Zanzibar found a crystal cabochon seal engraved with the words “for God.” A new study on self-control found that children in Kyoto wait three times as long for food as for gifts, while children in Boulder wait nearly four times as long for gifts as for food. Americans pervasively view vegetarianism as white. Doctors recommended banking one’s own stool for gut rejuvenation in old age, and the loss of Y chromosomes among aging men leads to premature death. Solitariness was observed among elderly female red deer on the Isle of Rum. Crowdfunding saved a Cambridge corvid intelligence lab, which now plans to gauge the birds’ responses to mirrors and magic. Researchers concluded that more research is needed to understand sighing.
The World Organisation for Animal Health unveiled a new acronym, WOAH. Lumpy skin disease was spreading among Gujarati cattle, Rift Valley fever was suspected among Burundian cattle, African swine fever was detected in a Moldovan pig, an unvaccinated Floridian donkey tested positive for strangles, a miniature filly in Tennessee tested positive for Potomac horse fever, a German wild boar tested positive for pseudorabies, and a second Zurich elephant died of herpes. The threat of highly pathogenic avian influenza induced France to launch a vaccination trial among its ducks. Cases of Japanese encephalitis were reported in India, of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever in Iraq, and of Q fever among Russians along the Ukrainian border. QX disease threatened the rock oysters of Port Stephens. Children in India tested positive for tomato flu. Tomato brown rugose fruit virus was spreading, and unidentified diseases were afflicting onions and cabbages in Uganda, which was on the verge of being overrun by banana bunchy top virus. Australian authorities urged the public to report banana freckle and advised growers of oats to report red leather leaf. Following the spread of monkeypox to dozens of non-endemic countries, positive orthopoxvirus tests were assumed not to indicate cowpox or camelpox. A Thai veterinarian was presumed to have contracted COVID-19 when a cat sneezed in her eyes.
%change since 2019 in the portion of Americans who believe environmental laws are worth the cost: −23
% of voters who view climate change as the most important problem facing the country: 1 Of U.S. voters under thirty who do: 3
% by which American men are more likely than women to support nuclear power: 47
By which men are more likely than women to have donated blood: 32
% by which Trump voters are more likely than Biden voters to have donated sperm: 50
By which more Democratic than Republican congress members have announced testing positive for COVID-19: 48
% by which Democrats are more likely than Republicans to be afraid of crowded spaces: 40
By which women are more likely than men to be afraid of crowded spaces: 59
% of Americans who say they aren’t afraid of anything: 16
% by which Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say they would fight if the country were invaded: 52
% of Americans who could correctly identify Ukraine on a map in February: 34
Factor by which this percentage has increased since 2014: 2
Minimum number of cigarette packs Philip Morris has donated to the Ukrainian army: 500,000
Portion of American young adults who have considered enlisting in the military: 1/10
Portion of those who are ineligible to enlist: 3/4
Portion of U.S. millennials who have pretended that they don’t know how to cook to avoid having to help: 3/5
% of Americans who don’t drink the daily amount of water recommended by the USDA: 78
Portion who say they don’t drink enough water because they are too busy: 3/10 Because they forget to: 1/4
Portion of U.S. adults who are on a diet: 1/4
% decrease since 2004 in the sales of diet books: 59
% increase since 2019 in the number of independent bookstores in the United States: 34
Portion of independent bookstores that experienced higher sales last year than in 2019: 2/3
% of undergraduates who say they encounter at least moderate difficulty with online learning: 94
% of U.S. adults who think video gaming should be taught in schools: 54
% increase since 2009 in the average movie score on Rotten Tomatoes: 43
% of cannabis consumers who use it daily: 46
Minimum number of robots New York State will distribute to the elderly this year to combat loneliness: 834
Portion of American workers who would rather find a new job than return to the office full-time: 2/3
% increase in the past year in the number of U.S. complaints about unfair labor practices: 16
In the number of filings for union elections: 58
Portion of U.S. parents who can’t afford diapers: 1/3
% of Republicans that Democrats believe make more than $250,000 per year: 44
% that do: 2
% of Democrats that Republicans believe are atheist or agnostic: 36 % that are: 9
Portion of pastors who have seriously considered quitting the ministry in the past year: 2/5
% of them who attribute the thought to stress: 56 Who attribute it to loneliness: 43
SOURCES: 1 Pew Research Center (Washington); 2,3 Siena College Research Institute (Loudonville, N.Y.); 4 Gallup (Washington); 5,6 YouGov (NYC); 7 GovTrack (Washington); 8–10 YouGov; 11 Quinnipiac University Polling Institute (Hamden, Conn.); 12 Morning Consult (Washington); 13 Joshua D. Kertzer, Harvard University (Cambridge, Mass.); 14 Philip Morris International (NYC); 15,16 Department of Defense (Arlington, Va.); 17 OnePoll (NYC); 18–20 Evian (Paris); 21,22 The NPD Group (Port Washington, N.Y.); 23,24 American Booksellers Association (White Plains, N.Y.); 25 Richard Harvey, San Francisco State University; 26 OnePoll; 27 Franchise Entertainment Research (Santa Monica, Calif.); 28 New Frontier Data (Washington); 29 New York State Office for the Aging (Albany); 30 ADP Research Institute (Roseland, N.J.); 31,32 National Labor Relations Board (Washington); 33 National Diaper Bank Network (New Haven, Conn.); 34–37 Douglas J. Ahler, Florida State University (Tallahassee); 38–40 Barna Group (Ventura, Calif.).
1 Aircraft carriers?
5 Work well together
9 Office initials
13 Milk, cheese and such
14 Maize cultivator of the 15th century
15 Ballet class handrail
17 North, south, east and west
21 “Citizen ___” (1941 classic)
22 “How can you ___?”
23 Crocus container
24 In ___ land (daydreaming)
26 Snake oil salesman’s practice
28 Rodent given drugs
31 They’re called Italian tomatoes despite not originating in Italia
32 Request earnestly
35 Noise after the home team scores a touchdown
36 Taps on kegs
38 1929 novel by William Faulkner, or a hint to 17 Across’s circled words
41 Whup
42 Not glossy
43 “Would you like to check your balance?” device
46 Pine Tree State town with the same name as a European capital
51 Slide down powder
54 Pejorative used in proselytization
57 Synthesizer brand
58 Knight who loved Isolde
61 Variety of chile pepper
62 Not on the premises
63 Booze cruise brews
64 1952 novella by Ernest Hemingway, or a hint to 46 Across’s circled words
71 Public discussion venue
72 Endurance event for Olympic gold medalists Gwen Jorgensen and Flora Duffy
74 Chow chow checker
75 Destroy, as a developer would
76 Puts down turf
77 ___ out a narrow victory
78 6, for Big Bird
79 ___ Gobb, love interest for Mr. Bean
80 Granola cereal grains
82 Stuff glistening on blades
83 Diner dish served in the morning
89 Energy field
91 Lily family plant
by EVAN BIRNHOLZ92 Part of the eye beneath the sclera
95 1995 western starring Sharon Stone and Gene Hackman, or a hint to
83 Across’s circled words
102Pacific giant
103 Stringing along
105 Drum setting
106 “Let us not look back in ___, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness”: James Thurber
107 Like “The Haunting of Hill House”
108 Distinctive period
109 Org. filling in the blanks of “cla_de_tine oper_tions”
110 High garden locations
111 Fails to include
112 House party, briefly?
DOWN
1 They touch hot coals while firewalking
2 ___ and abet
3 Courage in the face of hardship
4 Last word of a Jan. 1 song title
5 President before Franklin
6 Index’s place in a book
7 Comp ___ (aspiring programmer’s major)
8 Lampoon locale
9 Preschool education lessons
10 Fill to excess
11 “For a Good Time, Call ...” actress Graynor
12 Opening statement?
13 Pastry with cherry and cheese filling, perhaps
16 Captivate with love
17 Proofreading mark for inserting a word
18 Final word in the Pledge of Allegiance
19 Have couscous, say
20 Grayish in color
21 Secret service that dissolved in 1991
25 Bottom’s head turns into the head of this beast in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
27 John who wrote the song “Roundball Rock”
29 Soft, feathery accessory
30 Campaigned for a seat
31 Split between friends
33 Type of car from the French
for “cut”
34 One in several billion
36 Quaint, negative contraction
37 With 65 Down, Joel Cairo’s portrayer in “The Maltese Falcon”
39 Org. whose website allows listeners to access “StoryCorps” stories
40 “OK, I really did not need to hear the details there”
43 “Ooh, look at this!”
44 Spike in a forest
45 Cutter in a jungle
47 “Sure, that’d be fun!”
48 Second word of 9 Across
49 “___ Lisa” (Louvre attraction painted in the early 16th century)
50 Negotiators for actors and authors
51 Made resolute, as for a difficult task
52 Bar numbers?
53 ___ and outs
55 “Suddenly ...”
56 Feature of a goat
59 Skeptical or understanding reply
60 Jam ___ (informal musical gathering)
65 See 37 Down
66 Play area?
67 Tunes played while you’re on hold
68 Hang like the leaves of many an unwatered plant
69 Pertaining to some waves
70 “___ la vista, baby”
71 Fertility clinic eggs
73 Word before blood or moon
79 Conflict in Ahmed Saadawi’s novel “Frankenstein in Baghdad”
81 Crams for an exam
83 Activist and community organizer Newsome
84 Phony sorts
85 Cherry pie ___ mode
86 Pugsley, to Morticia and Gomez
87 Rocker who sings with the Pharmacists
88 “Don’t ___ go there!”
89 Country shower
90 “Star Trek” role for Nichelle Nichols
93 Showing great interest
94 Be smitten with
96 “Yeah, see, that’s ridiculous”
97 “And what’s he then that says I play the villain?” speaker of a Shakespeare play
98 Staff symbol
99 Abound (with)
100 “Mata ___ at the Moulin Rouge” (musical about a spy)
101 Change the subject, say?
102 Wall Street Journal language columnist Zimmer
104 Time out on a hammock
Solution on page 26
