May 12

Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker found much to enjoy in David Cameron's and Nick Clegg's inaugural press conference as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/hendrikhertzberg/2010/05/boys-will-be-men.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/video/2010/may/12/coalition-government-general-election-2010

Holding the event outdoors in a garden was a stroke of genius, emphasizing the freshness and invigorating youth of the two men. I can be cynical about politicians, Lord knows, but I also frequently find them personally engaging, and I am quite sure that would be the case with these two. I wish them all kinds of success. I am "British" by virtue of heritage (partially) and an abiding Anglophilia, and I will be following their progress with intense interest. May they not disappoint as Obama has done.

Since the mainstream media seem to be trying to minimize the stories of the Gulf oil spill, citizen journalists have had to step in, and they are doing an excellent job. John Wathen has shot a sobering video from the sky above the gulf, and also devotes a blog to the unfolding events:

http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/05/12/for-the-first-time-in-my-environmental-career-im-using-the-word-hopeless/

http://bpoilslick.blogspot.com/

Two Yuris: Animalrium shares the delightful work of Russian illustrator Yuri Vasnetsov and Russian animator Yuri Norstein:

http://theanimalarium.blogspot.com/2010/05/fox-and-hare.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Norstein

Lemony Snicket's collaboration with composer Nathaniel Stookey, The Death of the Composer, sounds like great fun for music-lovers of all ages:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-classical-beat/2010/05/in_performance_nso_family_conc.html

More plays that it is good to see revived: Jules Romains's classic comedy Doctor Knock is on at the Mint Theater in New York:

If you've heard of "Dr. Knock, or the Triumph of Medicine," you probably come from France, where Jules Romains's most successful play is known to all educated citoyens, or England, where it's been telecast twice by the BBC and revived on numerous occasions, most recently in 1994. In America, by contrast, the play is unknown save to especially well-informed specialists. Yet "Dr. Knock," written in 1923, is a knockout, a saber-toothed satire of the medical profession that could scarcely be more timely now that health-care reform is No. 1 with a hashtag on the list of hot political topics.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703866704575224280938569458.html

http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/theater/reviews/12doctor.html

Across the ocean, Shakespeare contemporary Thomas Middleton's bloody tragedy Women Beware Women is scorching the National Theatre stage in London:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/film-reviews/women-beware-women-theater-review-1004087642.story

http://westend.broadwayworld.com/article/BWW_Reviews_WOMEN_BEWARE_WOMEN_National_Theatre_May_6_2010_20100510

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85dc5eac-5327-11df-813e-00144feab49a.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/london-shows/7657244/Women-Beware-Women-National-Theatre-review.html

http://blogs.whatsonstage.com/2010/04/28/magnificent-middleton-shows-the-way/

William Taylor Jr. rediscovers a long-forgotten story by the underrated William Saroyan, and is floored (hat tip to The Rumpus):

http://williamtaylorjr.blogspot.com/2010/04/unpraying-but-religious-with-joy.html

The Mookse and the Gripes is similarly knocked out by John Williams's 1960 novel Butcher's Crossing:

I expected Butcher’s Crossing to be great, I expected it to be well written — people told me so — but I was shocked at how much it contained, at how well it balanced jubilance and heartbreak, innocence and depravity, all while reinventing the western to expose the fault lines the American Dream is founded upon....Butcher’s Crossing deserves to be sitting on the shelf with the great books of American literature, even those that speak with the authority of the American conscience.

http://mookseandgripes.com/reviews/2010/05/11/john-williams-butchers-crossing/

Among notables born on this date are novelists Albert Murray and Marco Denevi (Argentina), crime novelist Leslie Charteris, poets Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Lear, and Andrei Voznesensky (Russia), nature writer Farley Mowat, broadcasters Howard K. Smith and Tom Snyder, composers Jules Massenet, Gabriel Faure, and Burt Bacharach, rock singer Steve Winwood, artists Joseph Beuys and Frank Stella, architect Daniel Libeskind, comedian George Carlin, nurse/activist Florence Nightingale, baseball player Yogi Berra, film director Gavin Hood, golfers Jim Furyk and Mike Weir, and actors Katharine Hepburn, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Tony Hancock, Susan Hampshire, Gabriel Byrne, Emilio Estevez, and Ving Rhames. German artist Norbert Tadeusz, a student of Joseph Beuys who seems to be little-known in the English-speaking world, has a new`exhibition of drawings at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich:

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=11&int_new=37855

http://www.german-embassy.org.uk/norbert_tadeusz.html

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Tadeusz

http://www.tadeusz.de/