Beyond Pittsburgh’s pretty downtown, transformation and momentum reign, with former industrial areas giving way to restaurants, shops and art venues.
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Tag Archives: New York Times
SLS Hotels Hopes To Seize Upon Philadelphia’s New Cachet With Broad St. Project
SLS Hotels puts its chicly designed, lavishly appointed lodgings in the U.S. cities most associated with luxury travel and youthful, free-spending abandon: Beverly Hills. South Beach. Las Vegas.
Philadelphia is now on that elite list.
After years of planning, work is set to begin in the fall on the 152-guest-room SLS Lux Philadelphia Hotel & Residences. It will rise 47 stories a few blocks south of City Hall and could open as soon as spring 2018.
The California-based hotel chain, part of hospitality mogul Sam Nazarian’s SBE Entertainment Group, is betting on Philadelphia’s budding sophistication as a shopping, dining, and sightseeing destination as it targets moneyed visitors seeking less-staid alternatives to the city’s existing stock of high-end accommodations.
Plane Safety Questioned By Pilots At Allegiant Air, Which Serves LVIA, Report Says
Allegiant Air pilots, who are locked in tense contract negotiations with the low-cost carrier, say they are worried about repeated safety problems with the carrier’s fleet, according to a report.
The carrier serves Lehigh Valley International Airport and maintains major hubs in Orlando, Phoenix, Tampa and Las Vegas. The pilots authorized a strike last month but later agreed to stay on the job while a federal judge reviews arguments from their union and the airline’s management.
The pilots are now saying they’re concerned about mechanical problems with the airline’s fleet of older planes, poor maintenance and “a culture where profits come before safety,” according to a story published Monday on the New York Times website.
Read more:
http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/breaking-news/index.ssf/2015/04/plane_safety_questioned_by_pil.html
All-Female Cast Brings Feminist Sensibility To Molière’s Comedy ‘The Learned Ladies’
Logo of Muhlenberg College (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Allentown, PA — In directing Molière’s “The Learned Ladies,” opening Feb. 20 at Muhlenberg College, James Peck had two choices.
He could either let Molière’s 17th century sensibilities take the reins, and produce a play about the absurdity of its female characters’ efforts to educate themselves. Or he could dig a bit deeper, and find the ways in which Molière’s comedy reveals a nobility and bravery in those efforts.
“I can see two versions of this play being produced,” Peck says. “It could certainly be done as a misogynist satire, and some directors really want to steer clear of the play because of that. But I think it more fundamentally — and the version we’re trying to do, certainly — is a play about the ridiculous lengths that men have sometimes gone to in order to keep women from educating themselves.”
In other words, it’s the sexism that’s absurd, rather than the ladies themselves — at least most of the time. In support of this perspective, Peck has cast women in all of the roles, male and female — including his faculty colleague Francine Roussel in the role of Belize.
“I think having an all-female company of women who are themselves ‘learned ladies’ underscores the point,” Peck says. “And to be fair to Molière, often his female characters are the savviest people on the stage. As soon as you start thinking that the women are ridiculous, they do or say something that’s really kind and beautiful and insightful.
“The play is also blindingly funny,” he says. “I mean, these intellectual ideas are important to me, but the humor is as well.”
“The Learned Ladies” runs Feb. 20-23 in the college’s Dorothy Hess Baker Theatre. Broadway lighting designer Rick Fisher, winner of the 2009 Tony Award for his work on “Billy Elliot: The Musical,” is designing the lights for the show as part of a semester-long residency.
For Peck, the project also represented an opportunity to work with Roussel, who returns to the Muhlenberg mainstage for the first time since “Cabaret” in 2005. A native of France, Roussel was among the founders of the Actors Studio in Paris. She has written and performed her own shows, and continues her acting career in France and America. Her numerous film and television credits include “Sex and the City,” “Saturday Night Live,” and Sydney Pollack’s feature film “The Interpreter.” Roussel directs frequently for the Muhlenberg mainstage and teaches acting at Muhlenberg.
“Working with Francine has been an incredible pleasure,” Peck says. “She’s a truly skilled actress. She has really penetrating insight into what’s happening in the scene, as well as tremendous comic timing.”
In his 1672 satire of culture pretentiousness, Molière asks whether a woman can be both a devoted wife and a devoted scholar. Henriette and Clitandre wish to marry. Henriette’s father and uncle are in favor of the match, but the women of her family are obsessed with the allure of salon culture, and wish for her to marry Trissotin, a pompous but mediocre poet. Henriette must decide whether she should live life as a highly educated but unhappy woman, or whether she can continue her education without sacrificing love.
The production features a 1978 translation by acclaimed poet Richard Wilbur, in which “words dance delectably,” according to The New York Times.
The set for the play, designed by Muhlenberg design professor Curtis Dretsch, is a giant armillary sphere — a model of celestial objects consisting of a series of concentric rings that spin around one another. The design concept reflects the characters’ desire literally to map the heavens, and more broadly, to come to a greater understanding of the universe around them.
“The sphere provides unusual playing spaces for the action of the show,” Peck says. “It also serves as the perfect image for the women’s learned enterprises.”
“The Learned Ladies” will be performed Feb. 20-23: Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $8 for patrons 17 and under. Performances are in the Dorothy Hess Baker Theatre, in the Trexler Pavilion for Theatre & Dance, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown. Information and tickets are available at 484-664-3333 or www.muhlenberg.edu/theatre.
Muhlenberg College’s Theatre & Dance Department offers one of the top-rated college performance programs in the country, according to the Princeton Review rankings. Muhlenebrg is a liberal arts college of more than 2,200 students in Allentown, Pa., offering Bachelor of Arts degrees in theatre and dance. It has been named annually among the Fiske Guide to Colleges’ top 20 small college programs in the United States.
Crossword Creator Marks 100th Birthday With Puzzle
Solution to crossword puzzle (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
PHILADELPHIA, PA — What’s a nine-letter word for a significant event? Try MILESTONE.
Longtime crossword constructor Bernice Gordon is marking two big ones: She turned 100 on Saturday, and The New York Times will publish another one of her puzzles on Wednesday — making her the first centenarian to have a grid printed in the newspaper.
“They make my life,” Gordon said. “I couldn’t live without them.”
Gordon has created crosswords for decades for the Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and others, including puzzle syndicates and brain-teaser books from Dell and Simon & Schuster. She still constructs a new grid every day.
Gordon is nearly as old as the crossword puzzle itself. The first “word-cross” appeared in the New York Sunday World on Dec. 21, 1913; it was diamond shaped and didn’t even separate clues into “Across” and “Down.”
Read more: http://www.pottsmerc.com/lifestyle/20140113/crossword-creator-marks-100th-birthday-with-puzzle
Lehigh Valley Arts Council Presents Fashion Writer, Editor, And Exhibition Curator G. Bruce Boyer
The Lehigh Valley Arts Council is pleased to present the first program in the Arts Alive 2014 series, titled Curating Fashion, on Saturday, January 18, 2014, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. at the Payne Gallery, Church & Main Sts. Bethlehem PA 18018, Moravian College. The event features noted men s fashion writer and editor G. Bruce Boyer, who will speak about his career in fashion and his upcoming exhibition, Elegance in an Age of Crisis: Fashions of the 1930’s, at the Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology from February 8-April 19, 2014.
G. Bruce Boyer has lived most of his life in Bethlehem an alumna of Moravian College, he went on to do graduate work at Lehigh University and taught literature for eight years at Moravian and DeSales University.
“The Lehigh Valley is fortunate to be home to so many artists whose work is respected around the world,” says Arts Council executive director Randall Forte.
For more than thirty-five years, Boyer has been a dynamo in the fashion media; internationally recognized for his articles in Esquire, The New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Forbes, among others. He was the men s fashion editor for Town and Country magazine for fifteen years and currently serves as their Consulting and Contributing Editor. Boyer has written several books on men s fashion history; one of his most recent, Gary Cooper: Enduring Style (PowerHouse Books, 2011) was co-authored with Gary Cooper s daughter Maria Cooper Janis. His extensive knowledge of the fashion industry has led him to image consulting and public relations for clothing manufacturers and retailers from Ralph Lauren to Bergdorf Goodman. He has also appeared on national TV, National Public Radio, and as a commentator on the TV documentary series, The Hollywood Fashion Machine.
His current exhibition, Elegance in an Age of Crisis, was organized by Patricia Mears, deputy director at the Fashion Institute of Technology, and co-curated by Boyer. They have written an accompanying book that provides a historical overview, examining how the Great Depression and political upheaval influenced the restrained style of the era. The best of both men’s and women’s fashion from the 1930’s are represented among the eighty outfits and thirty accessories from the finest dressmakers and men’s clothiers.
The exhibit examines the beginnings of modern fashion when cutting-edge technology meets fine hand-craftsmanship. Tailors and dressmakers were inspired by classicism to experiment with new techniques, creating designs that highlighted movement, proportions and the classically idealized body. The 1930’s glamorous new look spread internationally and revolutionized the fashion industry.
Arts Alive 2014 is a three-event series designed by the Lehigh Valley Arts Council for members and their friends who are eager to rub shoulder with the creative process. The fee for each session is $10 for members; $15 for nonmembers. Attendance is limited and reservations are required. Tickets are available at www.LVartsBoxOffice.org. For further information, contact 610-437-5915.
FIT Elegance in an Age of Crisis: Fashions of the 1930s Web Link:
www.fitnyc.edu/21807.asp<http://www.fitnyc.edu/21807.asp><http://www.fitnyc.edu/21807.asp
FIT Elegance in an Age of Crisis: Fashions of the 1930s Web Link: www.fitnyc.edu/21807.asp
G. Bruce Boyer Interview: www.ivy-style.com/bruce-almighty.html
President Obama’s Dragnet
With his family by his side, Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States by Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr. in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2009. More than 5,000 men and women in uniform are providing military ceremonial support to the presidential inauguration, a tradition dating back to George Washington’s 1789 inauguration. VIRIN: 090120-F-3961R-919 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Within hours of the disclosure that federal authorities routinely collect data on phone calls Americans make, regardless of whether they have any bearing on a counterterrorism investigation, the Obama administration issued the same platitude it has offered every time President Obama has been caught overreaching in the use of his powers: Terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us to deal with them because we have internal mechanisms (that we are not going to tell you about) to make sure we do not violate your rights.
Those reassurances have never been persuasive — whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency’s phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism — especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability.
The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue. Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignment of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers.
Based on an article in The Guardian published Wednesday night, we now know that the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency used the Patriot Act to obtain a secret warrant to compel Verizon’s business services division to turn over data on every single call that went through its system. We know that this particular order was a routine extension of surveillance that has been going on for years, and it seems very likely that it extends beyond Verizon’s business division. There is every reason to believe the federal government has been collecting every bit of information about every American’s phone calls except the words actually exchanged in those calls.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/opinion/president-obamas-dragnet.html?hp&_r=0
SPRING-FORD YOUTH COMMUNITY THEATER TO PRESENT THE LARAMIE PROJECT
High School Students Tackle Controversial Play
Spring-Ford Youth Community Theater to Present The Laramie Project
ROYERSFORD, PA – Spring-Ford Youth Community Theater is proud to present The Laramie Project by Moisés Kaufman and the members of Tectonic Theater Project at the Spring-Ford 8th Grade Center located at 700 Washington Street, Royersford, PA 19468. Performances run Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings, May 3rd through the 12th. Curtain is a 7:30 p.m.
The cast is made up of high school students in grades 10 through 12. Spring-Ford Youth Community Theater President, Bonnie Fetteroff, directs. Laramie is the capstone production for the group’s 2011-2012 season, its 14th.
The extensive research that would ultimately become The Laramie Project began in November 1998, one month after Matthew Shepard, a young, openly gay man, was abducted, brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left to die on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyoming. Over the course of eighteen months, the writers traveled to Laramie six times and conducted over 200 interviews with its residents to document the community’s views on homosexuality, their reaction to the crime itself as well as to the fact that the perpetrators were two local youth.
The New York Times hailed The Laramie Project as an “. . . enormously good-willed, very earnest and often deeply moving work of theatrical journalism . . .” and Curtain Up called it “. . . a play of forceful but never showy dramatic impact, its seriousness leavened with laughter”.
The Laramie Project asks the audience to call into question the beliefs and values that form the very foundation of modern society: faith, trust, tolerance, forgiveness, community, and the desire for truth.
Please Note: Due to adult themes and language, this production is only suitable for mature audiences.
Tickets for The Laramie Project are available at the door at a price of $10, advanced tickets are available for $6 from any cast member or by emailing tickets@sfyct.org.
Mike And Ike Splitting Up, Candy Divorce Part Of Marketing Campaign
Mike and Ike candies, regular flavor. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Editor’s note: GOOD GRIEF!
Mike and Ike, the dapper mustachioed icons for the chewy fruit-flavored candy made by Just Born of Bethlehem, are going their separate ways after a six decade union.
In an unconventional, tongue-in-cheek advertising campaign, Just Born began touting the separation on Mike and Ike’s Facebook page this month.
As far as advertising campaigns go, this one seems to be working quite well.
So far, The New York Times has published a story on the matter. And a headline on the Huffington Post web site reads as follows:
“Mike And Ike Head For Gay Divorce In New Ad Campaign.”
Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-mike-and-ike-divorce-20120413,0,254144.story
Mike Wallace, CBS Pioneer Of ‘60 Minutes,’ Dies At 93
Publicity photo of journalist Mike Wallace for the television program Mike Wallace Interviews. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mike Wallace, the CBS reporter who became one of America’s best-known broadcast journalists as an interrogator of the famous and infamous on “60 Minutes,” died on Saturday. He was 93.
On its Web site, CBS said Mr. Wallace died at a care facility in New Canaan, Conn., where he had lived in recent years. Mr. Wallace, who received a pacemaker more than 20 years ago, had a long history of cardiac care and underwent triple bypass heart surgery in January 2008.
A reporter with the presence of a performer, Mr. Wallace went head to head with chiefs of state, celebrities and con artists for more than 50 years, living for when “you forget the lights, the cameras, everything else, and you’re really talking to each other,” he said in an interview with The New York Times videotaped in July 2006 and released on his death as part of the online feature “Last Word.”
Sam Shepherd’s “Curse Of The Starving Class” At Muhlenberg College
Allentown, Pa. (Nov. 17, 2011) — Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Sam Shepard delves into the darkest corners of the American family in his 1978 play “Curse of the Starving Class,” opening Nov. 30 at Muhlenberg College.
Part of Shepard’s series of “family tragedy” plays, “Curse” continues the playwright’s exploration of the death of the American family—embodied by the Tate family, whose personal and financial struggles have pushed them to desperation. The New York Times called the play “Shepard’s most comic and most excoriating study of the indomesticity of the American household.”
“Curse of the Starving Class” plays Nov. 30 through Dec. 4 in Muhlenberg’s 100-seat Studio Theatre.
The production marks Muhlenberg faculty member Larry Singer’s return to the stage after 20 years. Singer teaches acting as a visiting assistant professor in the Theatre and Dance Department. He made his Broadway debut in 1980 and worked as an actor for the next decade, but since 1988 has worked primarily as a teacher and director.
A poll of Back Stage magazine readers named Singer the best scene study teacher and acting coach in New York City, in the magazine’s 2011 Back Stage Choice Awards. Singer says that “Curse of the Starving Class” has provided a challenging return to the stage.
“Shepard writes completely with his heart, trying to bear and expunge his own demons,” Singer says. “You just sense that as an artist, he’s not holding back, and he’s unequivocal in his determination to do that, and that inspires me as an actor to follow suit.”
Director Francine Roussel, also a faculty member in the Theatre and Dance Department, says the play has particular resonance now, in the wake of recent financial scandals and what she calls America’s growing distrust of the elite.
“The greed of American culture is a dominant theme in the play—how that greed overwhelms the characters’ sense of family,” Roussel says. “The play is talking about the dysfunctional family, but it also has the bigger context that is the crisis of capitalism, and the risk of the excesses that are beyond the individual crisis of this family.”
“Curse of the Starving Class” tells the story of the Tate family, barely subsisting on a scrap of a California avocado farm. The son, Wesley, stands on the precarious edge of manhood, his prospects dim, while his sister Emma immerses herself in 4-H projects and horseback fantasies. Their father Weston, played by Singer, has driven the family deep into debt, but he’s got a scheme to sell the place and start fresh. He has no idea that his wife Ella is cooking up a scheme of her own.
Roussel says the Tates are doomed from the start—by Weston’s alcoholism, by greed, and by their inability to come together as a family.
“The parents are behaving more like children, and the children are being forced to grow up very fast and to try to be responsible,” she says. “But of course they haven’t been given the tools to do that, to grow up. The family members cling to each other and claw at each other at the same time; they feel like they need each other to survive, but like they’re trapped.
“There’s a beautiful image at the end of the play,” Roussel says, “of an eagle who is flying in midair with a cat hanging by its claws from the eagle’s chest. They are destroying each other. And even though they’re trying to survive, both of them will eventually fall to their death.”
Singer says that, besides the playwright’s brutal honesty and excoriating, dark sense of humor, what most distinguishes Shepard’s writing is its sense of rhythm.
“The rhythms are challenging at first,” he says, “but after a while you feel like you’re galloping along with a horse. It’s a great feeling. Sometimes you fall off, and it hurts, but otherwise galloping is a great rhythm.”
The play presents some unique production challenges—chief among them, that it calls for a live lamb to join the cast.
“We have to make sure it’s not too big, make sure it’s used to being handled by humans and not just wild in the fields,” Roussel says. “That remains our number one concern.”
Muhlenberg College‘s Theatre & Dance Department is the top-rated college performance program in the country, according to the Princeton Review‘s 2012 survey report. Muhlenberg is a liberal arts college of more than 2,200 students in Allentown, Pa, offering Bachelor of Arts degrees in theater and dance.
“Curse of the Starving Class” will be performed Nov. 30 – Dec. 4: Wednesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and $8 for patrons 17 and under. Performances are in the Studio Theatre, Trexler Pavilion for Theatre and Dance, Muhlenberg College, 2400 Chew St., Allentown. ***For mature audiences***
Tickets and information are available at 484-664-3333 or http://www.muhlenberg.edu/theatre
J.C. Penney Snags Apple Senior VP Ron Johnson – Look For Big Changes
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With just okay sales and growth, J.C. Penney has lagged behind competitors like Kohl’s and Macy’s. J.C. Penney has taken a bold step into the light to try to reclaim more market share.
In November, Ron Johnson, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Retail will become J.C. Penney’s new CEO. One only has to visit an Apple store to see what exciting changes may be in store for one of America’s most iconic retailers. Apple stores are generally crowded! Apple stores have customer-centric employees and make the most of current technology. Imagine what applying these principles would do for your J.C. Penney shopping experience!
Ron Johnson’s leadership has contributed to a record level of growth for Apple’s retail stores. Johnson previously worked for Target.
To read the rest of the story from the New York Times, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/15/business/economy/15shop.html
Pottstown’s Community Land Trust – Urban Agriculture On The Rise
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Here is an excellent article from the New York Times about farming, fresh food, health, sustainable land management, farmer’s markets, urban farming etc… The point of Pottstown’s Community Garden, which is the Community Land Trust‘s first project, is all the above! Click on the link below for the full story!
Another Print Media Casualty
Hot off the press! The New York Times is laying off 100 newsroom jobs.
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