I wish I had written this. It was by Nate White, in response to a question on Quora.com. I can’t find the original, but it’s been preserved on other sites, including this one:
To Brits, Trump Makes Dubya Look Smart
It should make you smile. And it predates coronavirus. The thing is, surely he must have some redeeming qualities. But life is too short.
Chris Lawrence 2020.
Jonny Dymond recorded an interview with Lord Sumption, ex-Justice of the UK Supreme Court. The interview was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 World at One 30 March 2020. In it Lord Sumption expressed concerns about the potential impact on freedom and civil liberty in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic. That edition of World at One can be accessed on BBC Sounds, and the interview itself is also available on YouTube:
While I was sorting through stuff in the house I came across another theatre poster, this time for The Fears and Miseries of the Third Reich by Bertolt Brecht.
The poster says August 2-7 but not what year. It must have been 1976 though as it was certainly around that time and August 2-7 in 1976 would have been a run of Monday to Saturday, which makes sense.
I remember we played to packed houses, but that wasn’t difficult as The Little Theatre Club auditorium only held about 50 people. Even though, that was during the 1976 heatwave, so it must have been quite cosy. Most evenings after whatever theatre performance was on there would be jazz, folk or blues until the small hours.
A few weeks ago I was talking about the actress Elisabeth Bergner.
But I didn’t mention the curious link between her and the 1950 Academy Award winner All About Eve, starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter.
Elisabeth Bergner was born in 1897 in Drohobych, which is now in the Ukraine but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her career began in Austria and Germany, but the Nazi takeover forced her to move to London in 1933.
I mentioned last time a parallel between two disparate things which seemed to me more than a coincidence. One was an example which Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka used to articulate his idea of the behavioural (as opposed to geographical) environment. The other was a fairly representative passage I remembered from when we were performing Peter Handke’s The Ride Across Lake Constance.
I was talking last time about the Lake Constance legend, Gestalt psychology, optical illusions, and the Jastrow Illusion in particular.
Most people see the lower arch as bigger than the upper one.
But apparently it’s not just people.
A few weeks ago I wrote about Peter Handke’s play The Ride across Lake Constance, and the legend it got its title from.
Serendipitously I came across another reference to this legend in a book by Kurt Koffka, one of the founders of Gestalt psychology. In The Principles of Gestalt Psychology (1935) he uses it to distinguish between what he calls the ‘geographical environment’ and the ‘behavioural environment’:
