Arts & Life

There’s a saying often attributed to the novelist John Gardner that there are really only two stories: A Person Goes on a Journey or A Stranger Comes to Town. Which is, of course, the same story, just turned inside out. It’s the story of movement; of migration, its trauma or …

When I was a kid growing up on Long Island in the late ’70s, certain smarty-pants types were happy to share their knowledge of Asia. If you told them you were Chinese you might get the tried-and-true “Ching-chong!” If you were Japanese, maybe you’d get an “aah-so!” But when I …

Louis Lumière supposedly said that the “cinema is an invention without a future.” If you read recent headlines from Hollywood and beyond, you might agree, even though Lumière, one of the pioneers of the medium, made his prediction in 1895. The movies have teetered on the edge of one kind …

I was a big reader before I discovered Stephen King, but his books pressed a lever in me. The best of his early novels — “The Shining,” “The Stand,” “Carrie” — came out while I was in grade school, and I read them each six times in class tucked under …

FILE PHOTO: Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson makes a speech during a visit to West Yorkshire, Britain September 5, 2019. Danny Lawson/PA Wire/Pool via REUTERS LONDON (Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson remains determined to pull Britain out of the European Union on Oct. 31 come what may, his foreign …

For several years, a small nonprofit operating out of a church on the South Side of Chicago has tried to reduce gang violence by getting kids involved in boxing, music and other programs. Few outside the city had ever heard of the group, Crushers Club, until this week, when it …

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Francisco Toledo, who shook up the 1960s Mexican art scene with his fresh approach to painting, sculpting, printing, tapestry weaving and preserving the cultural heritage that inspired him, has died. FILE PHOTO: Mexican graphic artist Francisco Toledo works on his sculpture ‘La Lagartera’, a 24.5 metre …

FILE PHOTO: Mexican graphic artist Francisco Toledo and children fly kites, with pictures of the 43 missing students of the Ayotzinapa Teacher Training College ‘Raul Isidro Burgos’, at the Arts Center of San Miguel Etla, on the outskirts of Oaxaca December 20, 2014. REUTERS/Jorge Luis Plata MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – …

Meanwhile, kids in Row House play the divers’ game, the goal of which is to swim from one interconnected lake to another through a deep tunnel without drowning. “It’s rough,” Eben, a quad boy, explains. “By the time you get along it your eyes star up, I mean you’re all …

TORONTO — Margaret Atwood wasn’t sure she had a “Handmaid’s Tale” sequel in her, even as fans clamored for one. “What they were begging for was a continuation in the voice of Offred, which I would not have been able to do,” she said over tea and juice at a …