Good Morning:
The decline story is the easy one to write. Today’s feed makes the case for the other one — where culture is building, the rooms are full. Start in Istanbul, where Argentine tango has found a huge, fervent following, with milonga clubs and dance schools multiplying across the city (AP). In Los Angeles, the Hollywood Fringe just drew a record number of participants and is set to break even for the first time in years — perhaps evidence behind the old boast that “L.A. is a theater town” (MSN)?
Reinvention runs backward, too: in Palermo, director Emma Dante revived Sicilian dialect theatre and is now collecting a Golden Lion for it (The New York Times).
Two more to enjoy: how Gaudí engineered the Sagrada Família to stand without flying buttresses, which he dismissed as “crutches” (BBC), and a forgotten Tolkien translation surfacing in Oxford’s Bodleian after decades in the stacks (MSN).
Doug
