01. 88 Bikes
“As Kiva and other microfinancing groups show, philanthropy can be tailored to any size and still make an impact. When Dan Austin, a writer, filmmaker and cycling enthusiast first met children in a Cambodian orphanage in 2006, he wanted nothing more than to give them a taste of the exuberant feeling of freedom known to every suburban American kid. So he figured out a way to give them bikes.” (design observer).
02. In Conversation with Terrence Blanchard
“About twenty years ago, when he was writing the music for Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, his first film score, trumpeter Terence Blanchard took a hiatus from a successful career—at 28, he could already look back on a four-year stint with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and several years with the contemporaneously influential quintet he co-led with alto saxophonist Donald Harrison—to change his embouchure.” (Jazz)
03. Neil Simon’s ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ Closes in a Week – What Went Wrong?
“… comedy is changing on Broadway, and on Sunday one of Mr. Simon’s most-produced plays in the last 25 years, “Brighton Beach Memoirs,” became one of the biggest commercial flops on Broadway in recent memory. It closed a week after it opened, shocking many in the theater world, not least the writer himself.” (NYT)
04. The Two Sides of Lionel Messi (Above)
“The candidates were announced last week for the Fifa World Player of the Year award. Am I the only one out there who’s not too interested? My problem with the thing is that this concentration on the individual can tend to overshadow one of the fundamental truths of the game – the stars shine brightest when the collective balance of the team is right.” (BBC)
