Month: December 2019

In 2008, the Newseum — a private museum dedicated to exploring modern history as told through the eyes of journalists — opened on prime Washington real estate.Sitting almost equidistant between the White House and the Capitol on Pennsylvania Avenue, the glass-walled building became instantly recognizable for its multi-story exterior rendition of the First Amendment.Eleven years later that experiment is coming to an end. After years of financial difficulties, the Newseum will close its doors Tuesday.“We’re proud of how we did our storytelling,” said Sonya Gavankar, the outgoing director of public relations. “We changed the model of how museums did their work.”The building was sold for $372.5 million to Johns Hopkins University, which intends to consolidate its scattered Washington-based graduate studies programs under one roof.Gavankar attributed the failure to a “mosaic of factors” but one of them was certainly unfortunate timing. The opening coincided with the 2008 economic recession, which hit newspapers particularly hard and caused mass layoffs and closures across the industry.She also acknowledged that the Newseum’s status as a for-pay private institution was a harder sell in a city full of free museums. A Newseum ticket costs $25 for adults, and the building is right across the street from the National Gallery of Art and within blocks of multiple Smithsonian museums.“Competing with free institutions in Washington was difficult,” Gavankar said.Another problem, organizers said, is that the Newseum struggled to attract local residents, instead depending on a steady diet of tourists and local school groups. Actual Washington-area residents, who do frequent the Smithsonian and elsewhere, mostly came on school trips and rarely returned as adults.Claire Myers fits that profile. The D.C. resident recalls coming to the Newseum in high school in a senior-year class trip. She only returned in late December for a final visit because she heard it was closing at the end of the year.“I do think part of the reason was because it’s a paid museum,” she said. “Why go out of my way to do this when I could just go to any other free museum?”The $25 price tag, Myers said, creates a pressure to set aside the whole day and take in every exhibit, whereas at one of the free Smithsonian museums, she knows she can come back another time to catch whatever she missed. But Myers said she was deeply impressed by the exhibits, particularly the Newseum’s signature gallery of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs.“I do wish it wasn’t going away,” she said.The museum’s focus evolved over the years, showcasing not just journalism and historic events, but all manner of free speech and civil rights issues and some whimsical quirks along the edges. Exhibits during the Newseum’s final days included an exploration of the cultural and political influence of Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show,” a look at the history of the struggle for LGBTQ rights and a display depicting the history of presidential dogs.Gavankar said the Freedom Forum, which originally maintained the Newseum in northern Virginia for years, would continue its mission in different forms. The educational foundation maintains a pair of exhibits on the Berlin Wall in both Reagan and Dulles airports. Next year, those displays will be replaced by exhibits on the women’s suffrage movement. The current Rise Up! exhibit on LGBTQ rights will move to a new long-term home in the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle.
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Tony Award-winning composer Jerry Herman, who wrote the cheerful, good-natured music and lyrics for such classic shows as “Mame,” “Hello, Dolly!” and “La Cage aux Folles,” died Thursday. He was 88.His goddaughter Jane Dorian confirmed his death to The Associated Press early Friday. He died of pulmonary complications in Miami, where he had been living with his partner, real estate broker Terry Marler.The creator of 10 Broadway shows and contributor to several more, Herman won two Tony Awards for best musical: “Hello, Dolly!” in 1964 and “La Cage aux Folles” in 1983. He also won two Grammys — for the “Mame” cast album and “Hello, Dolly!” as song of the year — and was a Kennedy Center honoree.Herman wrote in the Rodgers and Hammerstein tradition, an optimistic composer at a time when others in his profession were exploring darker feelings and material. Just a few of his song titles revealed his depth of hope: “I’ll Be Here Tomorrow,” “The Best of Times,” “Tap Your Troubles Away,” “It’s Today,” “We Need a Little Christmas” and “Before the Parade Passes By.” Even the title song to “Hello, Dolly!” is an advertisement to enjoy life.Herman also had a direct, simple sense of melody and his lyrics had a natural, unforced quality. Over the years, he told the AP in 1995, “critics have sort of tossed me off as the popular and not the cerebral writer, and that was fine with me. That was exactly what I aimed at.”In accepting the Tony in 1984 for “La Cage Aux Folles,” Herman said, “This award forever shatters a myth about the musical theater. There’s been a rumor around for a couple of years that the simple, hummable show tune was no longer welcome on Broadway. Well, it’s alive and well at the Palace” Theatre.Some saw that phrase — “the simple, hummable show tune” — as a subtle dig at Stephen Sondheim, known for challenging and complex songs and whose “Sunday in the Park with George” Herman had just bested. But Herman rejected any tension between the two musical theater giants.“Only a small group of ‘showbiz gossips’ have constantly tried to create a feud between Mr. Sondheim and myself. I am as much of a Sondheim fan as you and everybody else in the world, and I believe that my comments upon winning the Tony for ‘La Cage’ clearly came from my delight with the show business community’s endorsement of the simple melodic showtune which had been criticized by a few hard-nosed critics as being old fashioned,” he said in a 2004 Q&A session with readers of Broadway.com.Herman was born in New York in 1931 and raised in Jersey City. His parents ran a children’s summer camp in the Catskills and he taught himself the piano. He noted that when he was born, his mother had a view of Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre marquee from her hospital bed.Herman dated his intention to write musicals to the time his parents took him to “Annie Get Your Gun” and he went home and played five of Irving Berlin’s songs on the piano.“I thought what a gift this man has given a stranger. I wanted to give that gift to other people. That was my great inspiration, that night,” he told The Associated Press in 1996.After graduating from the University of Miami, Herman headed back to New York, writing and playing piano in a jazz club. He made his Broadway debut in 1960 contributing songs to the review “From A to Z” — alongside material by Fred Ebb and Woody Allen — and the next year tackled the entire score to a musical about the founding of the state of Israel, “Milk and Honey.” It earned him his first Tony nomination.“Hello, Dolly!” starring Carol Channing opened in 1964 and ran for 2,844 performances, becoming Broadway’s longest-running musical at the time. It won 10 Tonys and has been revived many times, most recently in 2017 with Bette Midler in the title role, a 19th-century widowed matchmaker who learns to live again.“Mame” followed in 1966, starring Angela Lansbury, and went on to run for over 1,500 performances. She handed him his Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009, saying he created songs like him: “bouncy, buoyant and optimistic.”In 1983 he had another hit with “La Cage aux Folles,” a sweetly radical musical of its age, decades before the fight for marriage equality. It was a lavish adaptation of the successful French film about two gay men who own a splashy, drag nightclub on the Riviera. It contained the gay anthem “I Am What I Am” and ran for some 1,760 performances. Three of his shows, “Dear World,” “The Grand Tour” and “Mack and Mabel,” failed on Broadway.Many of his songs have outlasted their vehicles: British ice skaters Torvill and Dean used the overture from “Mack and Mabel” to accompany a gold medal-winning routine in 1982. Writer-director Andrew Stanton used the Herman tunes “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” and “It Only Takes a Moment” to express the psyche of a love-starved, trash-compacting robot in the film “WALL-E.”Later in life, Herman composed a song for “Barney’s Great Adventure,” contributed the score for the 1996 made-for-TV movie “Mrs. Santa Claus” — earning Herman an Emmy nomination — and wrote his autobiography, “Showtune,” published by Donald I. Fine.He is survived by his partner, Marler, and his goddaughters — Dorian and Dorian’s own daughter, Sarah Haspel. Dorian said plans for a memorial service are still in the works for the man whose songs she said “are always on our lips and in our hearts.”
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To tourists they are a time-honored, charming way of seeing the sights, but animal rights activists say Montreal’s horse-drawn carriages are a cruel and unnecessary relic of yesteryear.A longstanding feud between the coachmen and their critics looks set to end however with the unique mode of transport set to disappear from the streets of Canada’s second city by year-end.“You can pet him if you want,” Nathalie Matte tells onlookers attracted to her hoofed beast with its flowing mane and tail.Coachwoman Nathalie Matte, 52, who will lose her job when Montreal’s horse-drawn carriages are taken off the roads Dec. 31, waits for passengers in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Dec. 22, 2019.In the heart of Montreal’s Old Port neighborhood, a half-dozen horses and carriages are lined up outside the Notre Dame basilica, waiting for riders.A group of tourists, tempted by offers of a languid and comfortable ride along cobblestone streets and a complimentary blanket across their lap on a cold winter’s day, snap pictures.The carriages this time of year are decorated with red ribbons and fir branches to mark the Christmas holidays.“It’s a unique way to see the city rather than just taking the bus or the subway,” said Mujtaba Ali, 29, who is visiting with family from neighboring Ontario, as he steps off a carriage.Cultural heritageHorses and landaus — four-wheel, convertible carriages named after the German city of their origin — are a part of Montreal’s cultural heritage, owner Luc Desparois said.“They’ve been around as long as Montreal has existed,” he told AFP.The Quebec city was founded by European settlers in the 1600s at the site of an indigenous village inhabited as far back as 4,000 years ago, although the landau itself was invented in the 18th century.City Hall has ordered an end to the tourist rides out of concern for the horses. In 2018, the council passed a bylaw banishing horse-drawn carriages, starting in 2020.The death of a horse in 2018 while pulling a carriage was the last straw for animal rights groups and prompted mayor Valerie Plante to speak out against the carriage industry, saying it was no longer welcome in Montreal.The decision will put some 50 coachmen and their horses out of work.Horse-drawn carriages line up in front of the Notre Dame basilica in Old Montreal, waiting for tourists in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Dec. 22, 2019.Animal welfare“It is a tradition that has long been appreciated but today I think it is time to move on,” said Jean-François Parenteau, the city’s pointman in the case.The city, he said, must “show concern for the animals.”His comments drew praise from Galahad, a Quebec association for the protection of horses that lobbied for the ban. Its founder, Chamie Angie Cadorette, said the horses faced tough working conditions.“It is not just an hour a day. It is eight hours a day, going up and down roads in traffic,” she said, accusing horse owners of neglect.“They say they are mistreated. Prove it,” said Desparois, who recently lost a legal challenge to the ban.City Hall, under pressure from activists, had long sought to ban the carriages, but until now had managed only incremental steps, such as requiring horses be taken off the road when summer temperatures soared.That did not satisfy animal rights groups.Loss of income, careerIn April, to prevent out-of-work horses from ending up at slaughterhouses, the city said it would pay the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Can$1,000 (US$760) for each horse offered a refuge or adoptive family.As of Dec. 16, only one application to join the program had been made.The offer is a “total insult” for Desparois, owner of the Lucky Luc stable, which has 15 horses and employs 15 coachmen.“You could offer me $10,000 tomorrow morning and I would not sell them to you,” he said, adding that after 34 years in the business his animals mean more to him than money could.A coachwoman puts a cover on her horse while waiting for tourists in freezing temperatures in Old Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Dec. 22, 2019.After the ban takes effect, the “king of horse-drawn carriages,” as local media has dubbed him, plans to take his horses to other nearby communities or maybe even to Ottawa.Neither option, he says, will be as profitable as rides in the Old Port, where he charges Can$53 per half-hour ride or Can$85 for an hour with an average of two to seven rides per day.Older coachmen will simply take early retirement. Others will likely leave the profession.“I won’t have a choice but to quit. I won’t have the means to move to Ottawa,” said Nathalie Matte, 52, a coachwoman who plans to return to a previous job as a groom.City Hall, meanwhile, is working on a retraining program to help coachmen transition to other tourist jobs.
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War Dracula is a stage play by a group of Afghan theater actors in Kabul. The theme of the play revolves around the damage and consequences of the decades-long war in Afghanistan. VOA’s Haseeb Maudoodi filed this report from Kabul, narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.
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During his later years, the acclaimed German author and Nobel laureate Thomas Mann would tell a story about riding a train across the United States during a lecture tour to rally support for the effort to defeat the Nazis during World War II.“He was sitting there, then another man came and asked if he could take the seat next to him,” said the author’s grandson, Frido Mann, who was himself engaged on a goodwill tour across the United States to foster closer U.S.-German relations and promote democracy back in October.I’m Tom. I write books.“Once the man took his seat, he said: ‘Hi, I’m John,’” related the grandson, who first heard the story when he was 13 or 14 years old. “Oh, I’m Tom,” the famous writer replied. Frido Mann chuckled at the thought.He went on to say that “John” told “Tom” he was a retired businessman, and that Thomas Mann replied, “I’m writing books.”The two men went on to look at John’s family photos and carry on a personal conversation that “would have been impossible” in Germany in those days.  Mann said the incident left his grandfather with a deep appreciation for the ease and warmth of Americans and of a country that had, for a while, become his adopted home.A photo of young Frido Mann, left, with his grandparents Katia and Thomas Mann and his younger brother in the 1940s in California is featured in Frido Mann’s book The White House of Exile. (Natalie Liu/VOA)Thomas Mann, the recipient of the 1929 Nobel Prize for Literature, penned a series of novels which generated the wrath of the Nazi government and were banned in Germany, but became best-sellers in his home country after the war.So it was a coup for the German Embassy in Washington to recruit the writer’s grandson to promote German-American understanding with a tour of the United States in a bilateral friendship year officially billed as “Wunderbar [Wonderful] Together.”Sitting in a coffee house in Washington during a stop on that tour on an autumn day, Frido Mann said he shares his grandfather’s feelings for America.Frido Mann spoke with VOA in Washington in October 2019 while on a lecture tour in America. (Natalie Liu/VOA)‘Like a printing on my soul’While born in the United States and remaining an American citizen, Frido Mann has spent most of his life in Europe. But, he said, his emotional bond to the United States has never weakened. America remains “the magnet that pulls me back somehow to the land where I was born … it’s like a printing in my soul.”Mann, who is an author in his own right, said the idea of German citizenship did not always appeal to him.“Twenty years ago I gave a lecture somewhere in northern Germany,” he said, and his hosts asked whether he was interested in becoming a German citizen.  “I said ‘No, I don’t think I’m a German.’ They were so offended that they stopped communication with me!” Mann recalled.That changed eight years ago when he moved to Munich, a one-time home to his grandparents, his father’s birthplace and a city where he had spent some college years and met his future wife.Where Germany is, I also amDuring his time in exile, Thomas Mann proudly  — and defiantly — proclaimed that “Wo ich bin, ist Deutschland,” that is, “where I am, [there] is Germany,” in an op-ed published in The New York Times in February 1938. Seven decades later, his grandson, after years of keeping the old country at arm’s length, decided that it was time he took on the privilege, and duty, of citizenship.“Now I am German, I’m not a guest [in Germany] any more.”Explaining his decision, Frido Mann said he had become impressed with the German nation’s commitment to building a democratic society upon the ashes of its “horrible history” engendered by and during Nazi rule, and he said he wanted to contribute to that building effort. His decision was facilitated by an Article in the post-World War Two German Basic Law which grants and restores citizenship to those who left the country during the war years on political, racial or religious grounds.Upon receiving his German passport, Frido Mann said he was struck by its design.“For me, it was a very important moment when I got the passport, the dark pint passport; now the color may have changed. It was first written ‘European Union [on top] and then [on the lower half of the cover] Germany. And I said to myself: ah, many things have changed in Germany.”Transatlantic identityNevertheless, Mann continues to travel with his American passport, for emotional as well as practical reasons. Clad in blue jeans, a short sleeved blue button-down shirt and comfortable walking shoes – or sneakers, as they’re called in America– Mann looks every bit the American.His attachment to America is “almost irrational,” he said, describing a “deep, almost biological feeling [of] belonging to a country where I recognize people, how they look, how they talk, how they eat, how they act.”“When I’m in Europe, even [for] decades, I forget this, and I get used to life in Europe, and I like it [there], too; but as soon as I come back, I feel as if this is still, still my country; even now, in my old days, happens every time.”Twice an exileHis grandfather would understand that attraction, Mann said. After fleeing Germany, Thomas Mann settled near Los Angeles, after a stint in Princeton where he counted among his neighbors Albert Einstein, another noted German who renounced Nazi ideology and chose to become a U.S. citizen.The cover of Frido Mann’s book in memory of his grandparents and German intellectuals who fled the Nazis and took up residency in the U.S. during World War II; some would go on to become U.S. citizens, as did Thomas Mann. (Natalie Liu/VOA) Mann went on to become a leading figure in a community of German writers and artists in exile living in a community known as the Pacific Palisades. However, his alleged association with left-wing causes made him a target of the 1950s “Red Scare,” prompting Mann to move again, this time to Switzerland.Frido Mann recalled that his grandfather was initially distraught over the move, describing him as being “homesick” and greatly missing his California house. Today, that house has been purchased and rebuilt by the German government.But it happenedAsked what Thomas Mann would have made of the transformations Germany has gone through since the Second World War, Frido Mann said: “That’s the question I ask myself, too. In 1945, if someone had said to him ‘in 70 years, a new German government will buy this house and turn it into an encounter place for Germans and Americans,’ he would say ‘you’re crazy!’” Pointing to his temple, Frido Mann laughed as his thoughts traveled in time. “But it happened.”Frido Mann, from left, with German Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife, Elke Büdenbender, at the opening ceremony of the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles, California, June 2018. (Courtesy Photo)A democratic futureTurning to current European politics, Frido Mann said the rise of ultra-nationalist groups in several countries is a concern, but he takes some comfort in having seen those groups lose ground in a wave of recent elections across Europe, while calling the political scene in Great Britain a case that merits separate analysis.“I’m not too optimistic yet, I might just wait a bit, and see how things develop” before letting down his guard, he said. “I believe the future norm of humanity is democracy,” he continued. Democracy, he said, is a “vision” which he identifies as still “very new, still developing.” He said his goodwill U.S. tour on behalf of the German government goes along with his commitment to advance that vision and continue the legacy his grandfather had left behind. 
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A quilt is a multi-layered blanket, often used as a home decoration or as a baby blanket. Quilts are an ancient craft but really took off in the United States in the late 1600’s. Today, in the northwest state of Oregon quilting remains vital by incorporating all kinds of new styles and fabrics –  some of them from Indonesia. Ariadne Budianto reports.
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The holiday season is a beautiful time of year in the nation’s capital with many amazing holiday light displays from the National Zoo to the White House Christmas tree. However, this year it is extra special with “Enchant Christmas at Nationals Park,” where visitors get a chance to help Santa save Christmas, lost in a huge maze of Christmas lights. Saqib Ul Islam has more.
 
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Depending on which country they’re from, the kids may ask about Father Christmas, Papa Noel, Saint Nick or Santa Claus.But those who believe all want to know one thing: where in the world the jolly old man and his sleigh full of gifts are on Christmas Eve.For the 64th time, a wildly popular program run by the U.S. and Canadian militaries is providing real-time updates on Santa’s progress to millions around the globe.And this year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command is offering even more high-tech ways for children and parents to follow along.Operation NORAD Tracks Santa has evolved from a misdirected telephone call in 1955, to a trailer parked outside the command’s former lair deep inside Cheyenne Mountain, to NORAD ’s modern-day headquarters at Colorado’s Peterson Air Force Base.Along the way, the tens of thousands of telephone calls fielded by NORAD volunteers each year have been augmented by an explosion of technology that lets millions track St. Nick’s journey from the North Pole to the Pacific and Asia, from Europe to the Americas.This year’s portals include Alexa, OnStar, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and 3-D apps developed for mobile devices by Cesium, a Philadelphia-based IT and defense contractor. The apps integrate geospatial and satellite-positioning technology with high-resolution graphics that display the actual positions of the stars, sun and moon and the shadows they cast at any point in Santa’s journey.It takes a village of dozens of tech firms — including Google, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Bing Maps — to deliver the immersive effect for global Santa trackers, with some 15 million visits to the website alone last year.And it takes a village of 1,500 volunteers to field emails and the 140,000 or so telephone calls to 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723). They staff phone banks equipped with monitors inside a building at Peterson, which offers a view of snow-capped Pikes Peak to the west.More volunteers and firms donate food, water and coffee to those on Santa Watch.“Hi Santa Trackers! Lots of kids are waiting to ask you about Santa,” a sign reads.Volunteers are equipped with an Operations Center Playbook that helps ensure each and every caller can go to sleep happy and satisfied on Christmas Eve.Longtime Santa trackers are familiar with the NORAD-Santa story.In 1955, Air Force Col. Harry Shoup — the commander on duty one night at NORAD’s predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command — fielded a call from a child who dialed a misprinted telephone number in a newspaper department store ad, thinking she was calling Santa.A fast-thinking Shoup quickly assured his caller that he was. And a tradition was born.Today, most early calls come from Japan and Europe. The volume soars in the U.S. and Canada, said program manager Preston Schlachter. United Kingdom callers ask about Father Christmas. Those in France generally seek Papa Noel’s whereabouts.For team members, once “Big Red” — Santa’s code name — is airborne, Schlachter said, “it’s off to the races.”“I’ve never had a block of time move so quickly,” he said.
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