Category Archives: New Utopia

Recent reports that half of women in England and Wales are now childless by their 30th birthday reveal a worrying new attitude amongst Gen Z. Parenthood, to the younger generation, isthe enemy of unfettered frivolity. Young women, we are told, would rather live for the moment than plan for the future. 'Being present' has become the mantra of the 'mindful' generation who see autonomy as the ultimate expression of a life well lived.

But how complicit are men in this myopic 'me-only' utopia we have created for ourselves? Are women actively rejecting the sort of men who would like to settle down or have the sort of men who once yearned to settle themselves become cynical about taking the plunge?

Whileboth sexes feel trepidation about losing cherished freedoms, men are experiencing a much darker existential anxiety that isnt simply about a loss of liberty. Although I-deserve-to-have-it-all infantilism has infected both sexes, women's pragmatism in the face of diminishing odds tends to wake them out of their complacency although this hasnt necessarily stopped many older women from delaying childbirth beyond the point of no return.

Historically men have never known when to leave the party and, as a result, tend to go along with their partner's desire to move to the next level. Although men are rarely the ones making the final decision about when to have children, there's a growing sense of bewilderment around the sisterhood's increasingly strident 'you-go-girl' attitude. If women are proud to declare 'we got this' where does that leave the other half of the population? I'm not suggesting that these men yearn for a return to the bad old days when women 'knew their place' only that they seem increasingly concerned about the pathologies aroundmale incompetency,where women's needs are presumed to take preference over their own, not least in matters of child rearing.

The modern autonomous woman is perfectly capable, in practical terms at least, of raising a child on her own. Single motherhood is no longer stigmatised, meaning women are much more open to the possibility of going it alone, an option that must seem increasingly attractive in a culture where men are seen as hopeless and mothers complain of partners 'always getting in the way'.

Men's apparent inability to perform even the simplest of childrearing chores such as changing nappies has become a well-worn comedy trope. The idea that we are all a bunch of hapless Neanderthals when it comes to the domestic sphere has leaked into men's psyches, often damaging their sense of self worth. As women's low expectations gnaw away at their confidence is it any wonder younger males are choosing to opt out of marriage and parenthood before they have even had a chance to prove themselves?They see cowed, emasculated men struggling to maintain a grip on their relationships while simultaneously being told they are somehow complicit in women's subjugation.

I was reminded of this strange paradox when I joined a workshop entitled 'changing masculinities' at a junior school in south London. The young men, many from deprived backgrounds, were astonished when the instructor explained how they lived under an oppressive patriarchal power structure and should therefore reject tyrannical institutions such as marriage along with all forms of traditional masculinity; this from a school where nearly all the teachers were women and over half the boys came from fatherless households. Telling young men they are responsible for structural inequalities must surely damage their ability to engage with the opposite sex later in life.

Despite our current obsession with demonising all things patriarchal, the evidence suggests we are in fact moving towards a more matriarchal society in which men are encouraged to stop talking and take a backseat. In a 2020 United Nations study entitled 'Tackling Gender Norms: A Game Changer for Gender Inequalities', Joanne Sandler, former Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (or UNIFEM) called for male leaders across the globe to 'step aside as an expression of their feminism.' Indeed our government's reaction to the pandemic has been overwhelmingly matriarchal in tone with the big state choosing to mollycoddle a helpless, infantilised populace that doesnt know any better.

The idea that we should replace one gender with another as some kind of virtuous payback for historic injustices doesn't foster trust between the sexes. Indeed, it mayeven inhibit men from taking the risks that inevitably come with marriage and fatherhood. If you keep repeating that men are a toxic liability while at the same time promoting the idea that only alpha females can save us from ourselves, what you're effectively saying is that men have become surplus to requirement. But how is this any different from the oppressive patriarchal system they seek to dismantle? In such a dispiritingly cynical age, why would any man choose to reproduce?

In her latest book What do Men Want, philosopher Nina Power argues that we do men a disservice by throwing around vague terms like patriarchy. 'We cannot in fact... "smash" the patriarchy, because it is not a being, but rather the structure of a certain kind of being, that is to say, how a society is organised. But organised by whom? Transmitted how? How and why have some - or many - women gone along with it?'She continues 'By dismantling patriarchy we have also collectively done away with all the positive dimensions of patriarchy as well: the protective father, the responsible man, the paternalistic attitude that exhibits care and compassion rather than simply places constraints on freedom. If anything, we have dismantled patriarchy in a rather extreme way, resulting in a horizontal, competitive society that suits consumer capitalism very well.'

In a culture that views traditional masculine virtues as a liability, there will inevitably be fallout, in a justice system for instance that appears to discriminate against fathers, as happened to an acquaintance of mine who recently lost a custody battle along with his house and all of his savings. Now effectively destitute, he told me how much he regrets his decision to have children; what was the point when he barely gets to see them? The trauma of separation has made his life almost unbearable.

This is the embittered culture young men now find themselves caught up in. A culture where cowed single dads fear being labelled misogynist if they step out of line, a place where those same fathers are too often hung out to dry by a system described by author Greg Ellis in his book The Respondent as 'the only branch of the legal system that doesn't begin with the presumption of innocence.' Outcasts find little in the way of succour or redress other than succumbing to the bitter extremism of Men's Rights Activism. Dare to speak out and chances are you'll be mocked as a whiny, over-privileged faux-victim.

Perhaps the female defence lawyer who contacted me recently was right when she expressed sympathy for young men's hesitancy around marriage and fatherhood, especially given the febrile, often one-sided nature of so many custody battles. Keen to share with me some of the injustices she had encountered during her dealings with men, she revealed how, during family court proceedings, women would often gain automatic custody of their children if there had been any sort of criminal complaint made. 'Since MeToo I've noticed a growing number of aggrieved mothers taking advantage of a system that demands we 'believe all women'. Desperate to maintain custody these mothers will make spurious accusations in a family court and then go on to make the same complaint to the police to shore up their position once they've secured a conviction in the family court. Social services then become involved, helping the mother gain full custody of the children. It's a system corrupted by anti-patriarchal ideologues and there is nothing a man can do once criminal charges have been made. He's on his own, literally.'

Under similar circumstances, men are rarely offered the same level of custody, 'I recently defended an accused husband who had made a controlling coercive cross allegation against his wife. Because he happened to be male and white she was black and female - he wasnt considered a vulnerable victim and his plea was rejected.'

Naturally, a rise in such cases doesnt sit well with the sort of men who might be in two minds about whether to settle down and have children especially when it appears that the law has already made assumptions about male guilt. The lazy stereotype of the wayward, feckless man continues to hold sway.

This year sees the thirtieth anniversary of the hit 90s sitcom Men Behaving Badly in which the obtuse, hopelessly irresponsible man-baby was first conceived. Coincidentally, two months before Men Behaving Badly first aired on the BBC, Loaded magazine hit the newsstands with its appeal to so called 'laddism'. Inside that very first edition, a letter from the editor gave an indication of what would become a cultural turning point 'a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of sex, drink, football and less serious matters for the man who believes he can do anything, if only he wasnt hungover'. The die had been cast and a grotesque caricature of crude, nihilistic manhood lodged itself in the cultural mindset, a mindset that persists to this day.

And so we find ourselves trapped in a deeply demoralising conundrum where pathologised men fear the negative repercussions of marriage and child-rearing while their opposite number recoil from the toxic masculine template they have been force-fed for a generation. Neither sex seems willing to compromise but eventually sacrifices will have to be made, if only for the continuation of our species.

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Fatherhood is a risk men aren't willing to take - The Spectator

Hello gentle readers, and welcome to the SwitchArcade Round-Up for March 7th, 2022. Its a quiet one today. I was hoping to have some reviews ready, but I spent more time with my family over the weekend than I expected to. No regrets, but it means youll have to wait until tomorrow for some tasty review action. For today? There are some new releases to check out, though nothing too great. The sales are more interesting, thanks largely to the MAR10 Day discounts kicking off. Lets get to it!

Todays releases are pretty dire, friends. Well, nothing for it but to play on through. So this is a racing game of sorts where you play as a cat. And you race other cats. On the streets. Do well and you will earn points, and you can use those points to unlock more cats. I could imagine something with this concept being fun with other players, but this one is a pure solo act.

Work those traffic lights to keep the traffic moving smoothly without causing an accident. The stages get more challenging and complicated as you go. Weve seen games like this on the eShop before, and this is certainly another one.

This game is LIT. No, that is the actual name. I am not using slang to make a statement about its quality. Its LIT. Absolutely LIT. You can probably put it together using the games title and the above screenshot, but this is a puzzle game where you use mirrors to reflect the light beam into a particular target location. If youve been playing games for any length of time the odds are tremendously good youve encountered this kind of thing in some game or another.

This is a collection of more than two hundred cipher crossword puzzles. It basically works like a regular crossword except instead of using clues to figure out each word, you have to figure out which numbers represent which letters using a bit of logic. If that kind of puzzle sounds good to you, its really hard to argue against grabbing this for such a reasonable price.

A generic-looking sports game with creepy, dead-eyed human characters in it? Thats got to be a Pix Arts joint. And it is! Template flip, asset flip, or original game? I leave the exercise to you, dear reader. All I can tell you is that if you are looking for your hand ball pelota fix, this isnt going to help much. Single-player only, but at least you can use buttons to play. Smash it into the trash where it belongs.

(North American eShop, US Prices)

There are lots of sales that came in over the weekend, but the biggest news here is obviously the MAR10 Day sale. Nintendo does have the occasional sale on its Switch releases, but the odds of any one particular game showing up are small. That means that if you see a game in this list that youve been interested in, youd do well to grab it during this sale. Aside from the Mario games, there isnt a lot to jump up and down about. I will mention Spelunker HD Deluxe, which is an enjoyably challenging game that is easier to swallow at half its usual price. In the outbox, youve got things like Crysis Remastered Trilogy and Megaquarium to consider. Check those lists!

MAR10 Day Sale

Super Mario 3D World + BF ($40.19 from $59.99 until 3/14)New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe ($40.19 from $59.99 until 3/14)Mario Kart 8 Deluxe ($40.19 from $59.99 until 3/14)Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle ($9.99 from $59.99 until 3/14)Mario + Rabbids KB Gold Edition ($14.99 from $79.99 until 3/14)Mario & Sonic at the Olympics ($41.99 from $59.99 until 3/14)Luigis Mansion 3 ($40.19 from $59.99 until 3/14)Luigis Mansion 3 MP Pack ($6.99 from $9.99 until 3/14)Luigis Mansion 3 + MP Pack Set ($47.58 from $69.98 until 3/14)Yoshis Crafted World ($40.19 from $59.99 until 3/14)

Select New Games on Sale

Street Racing: Tokyo Rush ($5.99 from $11.99 until 3/10)Circa Infinity Ultimate ($1.99 from $10.99 until 3/11)The Game of Life 2 ($20.99 from $29.99 until 3/11)Art Sqool Deluxe ($1.99 from $13.99 until 3/11)Brawl Chess ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/11)Detective Di Silk Road Murders ($3.89 from $12.99 until 3/12)Bus Driver Simulator Countryside ($10.49 from $14.99 until 3/12)Farmers Co-Op: Out of This World ($9.09 from $12.99 until 3/12)Its Raining Fists & Metal ($4.54 from $6.99 until 3/14)Secret Files: Tunguska ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/14)Secret Files 2: Puritas Cordis ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/14)Secret Files Sam Peters ($1.99 from $6.99 until 3/14)Secret Files 3 ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/14)Lost Horizon ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/14)Lost Horizon 2 ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/14)

Spelunker HD Deluxe ($12.49 from $24.99 until 3/14)Traffix ($2.49 from $4.99 until 3/15)Doodle Games Bundle ($9.42 from $22.45 until 3/18)Ghostanoid ($2.93 from $6.99 until 3/18)Galaxy Warfighter ($2.93 from $6.99 until 3/18)Demons Tier+ ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/19)Riddle Corpses EX ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/19)Xenon Valkyrie+ ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/19)Demetrios The Big Cynical Adv. ($3.99 from $9.99 until 3/19)Smashy Road: Wanted 2 ($1.99 from $7.99 until 3/25)Wild & Horror Pinball ($7.49 from $14.99 until 3/25)Viviette ($4.99 from $9.99 until 3/25)Race Track Driver ($5.99 from $11.99 until 3/25)Sports Car Driver ($7.79 from $11.99 until 3/25)Zombie Blast Crew ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/25)

Utopia 9 A Volatile Vacation ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/25)Arcane Arts Academy ($1.99 from $7.99 until 3/25)Epistory Typing Chronicles ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/25)Good Night, Knight ($1.99 from $11.99 until 3/25)Tiny Lands ($1.99 from $5.99 until 3/25)Badland: GotY Edition ($1.99 from $5.99 until 3/25)DungeonTop ($1.99 from $13.99 until 3/25)Gravity Rider Zero ($1.99 from $6.99 until 3/25)Tools Up! ($1.99 from $19.99 until 3/25)Planet Quiz: Learn & Discover ($1.99 from $11.99 until 3/25)Door Kickers ($1.99 from $11.99 until 3/25)Blazing Beaks ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/25)Mini Trains ($1.99 from $5.99 until 3/25)Warlocks 2: God Slayers ($1.99 from $17.99 until 3/25)Dex ($1.99 from $19.99 until 3/25)

Coffee Crisis ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/25)BIT.TRIP Series, Assorted ($1.99 from $4.99 until 3/25)Koloro ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/25)Tharsis ($1.99 from $11.99 until 3/25)Akuto: Showdown ($1.99 from $7.99 until 3/25)Not Not A Brain Buster ($1.99 from $2.49 until 3/25)Welcome to Primrose Lake ($1.99 from $7.99 until 3/25)Mana Spark Complete ($1.99 from $11.99 until 3/25)Hyper Parasite ($1.99 from $17.99 until 3/25)REKT Double Flip ($1.99 from $6.99 until 3/25)One Strike ($1.99 from $4.99 until 3/25)One Strike: Complete ($1.99 from $5.99 until 3/25)Akane ($1.99 from $4.99 until 3/25)Pocket Golf Mini Hole in One ($1.99 from $2.99 until 3/25)Om Nom: Run ($1.99 from $4.99 until 3/25)

Eyes: The Horror Game ($1.99 from $2.49 until 3/25)Space Pioneer ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/25)Real Boxing 2 ($1.99 from $14.99 until 3/25)Street Cats Race ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/27)Need a Packet? ($3.49 from $6.99 until 3/27)I, AI ($4.99 from $9.99 until 3/27)Mask of Mists ($7.49 from $14.99 until 3/27)Aircraft Evolution ($4.99 from $9.99 until 3/27)Normans Great Illusion ($2.49 from $4.99 until 3/27)Steam Tactics ($4.99 from $9.99 until 3/27)My Aunt is a Witch ($4.99 from $9.99 until 3/27)Dungeons & Bombs ($2.49 from $4.99 until 3/27)

Sales Ending Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 8th

Charterstone: Digital Edition ($12.49 from $24.99 until 3/8)Concordia: Digital Edition ($19.99 from $24.99 until 3/8)Crysis Remastered ($14.99 from $29.99 until 3/8)Crysis Remastered Trilogy ($34.99 from $49.99 until 3/8)Eight-Minute Empire Complete ($5.99 from $14.99 until 3/8)Evoland Legendary Edition ($4.99 from $19.99 until 3/8)Far: Lone Sails ($2.99 from $14.99 until 3/8)Foregone ($4.99 from $19.99 until 3/8)Genetic Disaster ($2.99 from $14.99 until 3/8)Guardian of Lore ($6.99 from $13.99 until 3/8)Guards ($1.99 from $4.99 until 3/8)Istanbul: Digital Edition ($9.99 from $19.99 until 3/8)Little Mouses Encyclopedia ($4.99 from $12.99 until 3/8)Megaquarium ($12.29 from $24.59 until 3/8)My Singing Monsters Playground ($27.99 from $39.99 until 3/8)

n Verlore Verstand ($2.09 from $13.99 until 3/8)Northgard ($13.99 from $34.99 until 3/8)Pinball FX3: Portal Pinball ($1.19 from $2.99 until 3/8)SGC: Short Games Collection #1 ($13.99 from $19.99 until 3/8)Steam: Rails to Riches Complete ($13.99 from $19.99 until 3/8)Super Toy Cars ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/8)Super Toy Cars 2 ($2.99 from $11.99 until 3/8)Tyd wag vir Niemand ($1.99 from $9.99 until 3/8)Under Leaves ($1.99 from $12.99 until 3/8)Voxelgram ($4.79 from $7.99 until 3/8)

Thats all for today, friends. Well be back tomorrow with a couple of new releases, some more sales, a review or two, and maybe some news. Im working hard on my review of Triangle Strategy, but its probably going to take a few more days at minimum. Its a lot of game. I hope you all have a magnificent Monday, and as always, thanks for reading!

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SwitchArcade Round-Up: MAR10 Day Sales Including 'Mario Kart 8', Plus 'Ink Cipher' and Today's Other New Releases and Sales TouchArcade - Touch...

Posted in Indiana Dining March 08, 2022by Tori Jane

Hey, so, quick question: what do you look for when choosing a place to go for, say, a day trip? Is it something about the surrounding natural beauty there, or is it the things to do in whatever town you end up in? Do you lean toward places where you already know people, or maybe places where you hope to make new friends? Okay, all of those are good starts, but what about pie? Yeah, pie. Hear us out: why not go somewhere that has a killer pie shop and simply expand your day trip from there? We think its genius. Well, it just so happens that Zionsville is the perfect place for this, and its home to a shop that might just have the best pie in Indiana. Once youre done with the pie, explore the rest of the town, too.

During these uncertain times, please keep safety in mind and consider adding destinations to your bucket list to visit at a later date.

We're not sure if it's all that love that goes into each and every recipe or what, but man, this place has got what it takes to be considered among the best pie shops in Indiana.

Good luck, however, figuring out what the heck you want. With more than 30 amazing flavors to choose from, we don't blame you for feeling a little overwhelmed (it's okay, we were too).

If cream pie isn't your thing, no worries - there's a huge selection of fruit pies, silk pies, seasonal pies, custom pies, and more. Pick up one (or 10, we don't judge) and indulge before checking out the rest of Zionsville.

It's got big-city spirit despite the fact it's a small town, and we think you'll love the sense of community shared here even with folks who are just visiting.

Head to the Zionsville Cultural District and enjoy local arts and entertainment, as well as eateries you won't find anywhere else but right here. For the more outdoorsy among us, did you know Zionsville is home to the largest land-per-capita parks system in Indiana? It's true - enjoy countless parks and lots of awesome natural attractions sure to keep you visiting every time you get a chance.

Zionsville is a little slice of utopia - or so it feels. Everyone here is just a little kinder, just a little friendlier, just a little more laid-back; you're sure to feel welcome and wanted here. It's definitely one of those places where everyone likes to learn your name.

We don't blame you; Zionsville is one of our favorite places, too.

For the full menu, as well as the most up-to-date hours and specials, be sure to check out the official My Sugar Pie website. Where do you find the best pie in Indiana? Tell us about your favorite spots in the comments!

Address: Zionsville, IN 46077, USA

Address: 40 E Pine St, Zionsville, IN 46077, USA

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The Small Town In Indiana Boasting World-Famous Pie Is The Sweetest Day Trip Destination - Only In Your State

Lee Yu Bin or simply known by her stage name Dami is a Korean artist under Dreamcatcher Company. She is also the main rapper, lead dancer and vocalist of K-Pop girl group Dreamcatcher and a former member of MINX. On September 18, 2014, she debuted as a member of MINX with the single Why Did You Come to My Home? On November 29, 2016, Happyface Entertainment announced that MINX would re-debut under the name Dreamcatcher, where two new members Gahyeon and Handong were added to the group.

In October, Dami, together with fellow members JiU, Siyeon and Yoohyeon, became contestants on the survival show MIXNINE. However, on December 10, it was announced that all four members would be leaving the show. With the third installment, the group announced their new comeback with their sixth EP, Dystopia: Road to Utopia and its lead single Odd Eye, which was released on January 26, 2021. Dami and Siyeon released an OST for the drama Black Hole in two versions, the original version debuted at number 1 on K-OSTs chart and on number 5 on the Rock charts.

On July 1, Dreamcatcher announced their management contract with Pony Canyon will end on August 31, 2021. On July 30, Dreamcatcher made their comeback with the song BEcause and the special EP Summer Holiday. In February 2022, it was announced that Dreamcatcher will release their second Korean studio album in April.

ALSO READ:SEVENTEENs The8 tests positive for COVID-19

Join the biggest community of K-Pop fans live on Pinkvilla Rooms to get one step closer to your favourite K-Celebs! Click here to join.

Is Dami eating breakfast with you? Let us know in the comments below.

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Eat your favourite breakfast and we'll tell you if Dreamcatcher's charming rapper Dami will join you - PINKVILLA

The book was probably unpublishable. About that fact both the author and his longtime editor agreed. But the author was determined, and he had on his side a brilliant publishing record. For more than a decade, starting in 1936 with his Inside Europe, the reporter John Gunther had been a fixture on the best-seller lists. From the mid-1930s through the 1950s, no one, save the romance novelist Daphne du Maurier, had produced more American best sellers than Gunther.

Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.

Gunthers unpublishable book was a memoir: an account of the death, in 1947, of his 17-year-old son, Johnny, from a brain tumor. Gunther had started writing while the experience of Johnnys illness was still raw, finishing the book in a few weeks, six months after his sons death. Hed set out with the idea of a privately circulated memoir, the sort of volume of remembrances printed in a few hundred copies that parents of soldiers killed in action sent to friends and relations. But as he finished the manuscript, he began to think it should be published for a wider audience.

Surely the book was too personal, Gunthers publisher, Harper & Brothers, objected. Who would want to read such a dismal book about a complete stranger? And wasnt it indecent to broadcast an intimate story of suffering in public? But Gunther prevailed. He and his editor came to an agreement: The book would be published with a notice on the jacket that neither Harper & Brothers nor Gunther himself would take any profits from its sale; all the proceeds from the book would go to fund cancer research for children. And with that disclaimer, a title borrowed from a John Donne poem, and a dignified buff jacket ornamented only by a small drawing of a dove, Harper & Brothers published Gunthers Death Be Not Proud in February 1949 in a modest print run.

Larger print runs quickly followed. By the time that I first read the book, in 1981, it was a mass-market paperback that had sold hundreds of thousands of copiesa publishing success well beyond anything that either Gunther or Harper & Brothers could have imagined. It had been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Italian, Hebrew, Spanish, French, Dutch, German, Swedish, Hindi, and Portuguese, among other languages. For decades, Death Be Not Proud was required reading in many American high schools. In 1960, my mother read it in her tenth-grade civics class in Louisville, Kentucky. It is the only one of Gunthers books that has remained continuously in print.

In our time, when the intimate memoir has become commonplace, Harper & Brothers queasy reaction to Gunthers project is a reminder of an era when stringent rules of reticence still reigned. The publics unexpected embrace of the book is disorienting too. The usual assumption is that the modern, unguarded memoirs origins lie in the narcissism of the 1990s, or the self-revelatory zeal of the 70s. But Gunthers surprise hit points to a different genesis: the anti-fascism of the 30s and widespread revulsion at the dehumanizing horrors of World War II. The predominance of the genre todaywhich we think about as a celebration of Ihad its beginnings in an attempt to heal the collective we.

By the mid-1930s, the rules about what couldand couldntbe discussed in public were changing. The First World War had toppled hierarchies, fraying parental authority and upending rules of propriety. The popularization of Freudian ideas helped make talk about familial dynamics and sexual urges at least semirespectable. The newly founded tabloid papers took advantage of the publics interest in private lives, inaugurating I Confess! competitions that stoked a market for tales of infidelity, out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and other misdeeds. Send in the best confessionanonymously, of courseand the cash prize was yours. In Akron, Ohio, the first Alcoholics Anonymous group met in the summer of 1935, propelled by the idea that sharing, either for confession or for bearing witness, was a first and necessary step on the road to sobriety.

The agents provocateurs of this new culture of openness were people born, like Gunther and the AA co-founder Bill Wilson, in the couple of decades around the turn of the 20th century. They were members of the so-called Lost Generation, who, in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald (a banner member of the club), had grown up to find all Gods dead, all wars fought, all faiths in man shaken. Many of them had lived for a spell in Europe, either as soldiers or as expatriates. Collectively, this generation went on to produce a landmark tell-all book about alcoholism and institutionalization (William Seabrooks Asylum) and the frankest account of a marriage ever published (Vincent Sheeans Dorothy and Red), as well as Gunthers pioneering Death Be Not Proud.

Even in rarefied literary circles, though, self-exposure was still risky. Take Fitzgeralds 1936 excursion into self-revelation: the three essays he published in Esquire magazine, later collected under the title The Crack-Up. By todays standards, Fitzgeralds account of his nervous breakdown, eloquent as it is, hardly registers on the confessional scale. He likened himself to a cracked plate, claimed (untruthfully) that hed quit drinking, and expressed his despair about the future of the novel after the advent of the talkies. His account of self-immolation was impressionistic and evasive, written as if from behind a veil. He avoided entirely the subject of his wife, Zelda, and her mental illness. Still, his longtime editor, Maxwell Perkins, felt he had committed an indecent invasion of his own privacy. Fitzgerald himself ended up fearing hed damaged his reputation permanently.

The fact that so many of the taboo-shredding American memoirists had lived in Europe wasnt a coincidence. They had seen up close the battle among fascism, communism, and democracy playing out after the First World War. Inevitably, they took sides and came to rethink their place in the world. This doesnt accord with the stereotype of the Lost Generation, its members drinking away their anomie in Parisian cafs. But as Brooke Blower noted in her insightful Becoming Americans in Paris (2011), that is because our conception of the Lost Generation is too limited. They werent simply running away; they were, as John Dos Passos put it, running toward the whole wide world.

The most avidly engaged expatriates were the foreign correspondents, like Gunther, whose job was to translate European news for American audiences. International journalism was thriving in the U.S., as papers such as the Chicago Daily News and the Philadelphia Public Ledger built up their own bureaus abroad rather than relying on wire services. Gunther spent his 20s and 30s dashing between European chancelleries, deciphering coup attempts and revolutions, trying to explain the rise of fascism and the consolidation of Soviet Communism.

Gunther had arrived in Europe in 1924, a cub reporter from Chicago, dreaming, like many of his journalist friends, of writing the Great American Novel. In 1925, he met Frances Fineman, a New Yorkborn Barnard graduate who had become a journalist, and the pair married two years later. An avowedly modern woman, Frances Gunther saw meaningful work and sexual fulfillment as her due: She expected marriage and a career, domesticity and adventure. A serious follower of Freud, she underwent at least four psychoanalyses, grappling with the ways that she frustrated herself, including by tryingand failingto write her own books. Stymied by a formidable writers block, she involved herself in Johns reporting, exhorting him to think harder about both the structural forcesshe was also a serious student of Marxand the psychological dynamics at play in a Europe recovering from a brutal war.

In part influenced by Frances, John came to recognize that the traditional tools of the newsroom hardly sufficed to convey what he was seeing. Objectivity was then, as it is now, the hallmark of the respectable paper. Yet Gunther found it impossible to report dispassionately on the rise of the Nazis or the Austrian dictator Engelbert Dollfusss bloody civil war against the Viennese Socialists. He felt mystified by the roaring crowds saluting strongmen and the seemingly irrational, passionate hatreds all around him. Writing articles on elections and bank failures struck him as simply scraping the surface of events. Like many young Americans, Gunther had taken for granted that the whole thrust of human history was toward freedom. But what if the leaders people freely chose were dictators rather than democrats?

Instead of looking for proclivities to authoritarianism in, say, German or Italian national character, Gunther trained his attention on the dictators themselves. He searched out Hitlers relatives in an Austrian backwater, trying to understand what had made him the man he was. Gunthers own psychoanalysis in Vienna with Wilhelm Stekel, one of Freuds first disciples, helped consolidate his views. Hed gone to Stekel wondering whether psychic strains might explain his worsening asthma, but soon was talking about his dissatisfactions with his work and marriage. In his reporting, he started to foreground unconscious urges: the psychological injuries of childhood, repression, frustrated sexual desires.

Feeling the world crashing in around them, he and Frances tracked for themselves how the patterns of public lifea dictators machinations, the betrayal of one nation by anothertranslated into private relations between husbands and wives, parents and children. This was what Virginia Woolf called in Three Guineas (1938) the inseparable interconnection between the tyrannies and servilities of the public and private worlds. The global economic crisis of the Great Depression, John thought, had precipitated his own personal upheaval.

Armed with a psychological framework, the Gunthers dedicated themselves to understanding how the pathologies of world leaders became the stuff of international crises. Gathering information about Stalins family life and Mussolinis marriage, about Atatrks mother fixation, about the emotional makeup of Hitlers henchmen, John broke the rules regarding fit topics for reporting. He put his argument right on the first page of Inside Europe: The fact may be an outrage to reason, but it cannot be denied: unresolved personal conflicts in the lives of various European politicians may contribute to the collapse of our civilization. So strong was the proscription against such disclosures that Gunther thought hed have to publish his book anonymously.

In the end, Gunther signed his name to the book, figuring he didnt want to stay a newspaperman forever anyway. Inside Europe became a sensation: hurriedly reprinted, translated into 14 languages, and banned in Germany, a fact that Gunthers other publishers ballyhooed in their advertising. President Franklin D. Roosevelts son Franklin Jr. took the book on his European honeymoon. The young John F. Kennedy toured the continent with Inside Europe in hand, his guide as he weighed the comparative evils of fascism and communism. The book made Gunther enough money that he could quit his day job as a reporter and devote himself, as hed always wanted, to writing books, novels as well as nonfiction. In September 1936, he, Frances, and Johnny, then 6, moved back to the United States after 12 years abroad.

In the decade that followed, Gunther scored two more publishing hits with his Inside Asia (1939) and Inside Latin America (1941), accompanied General Dwight Eisenhower in the invasion of Sicily, and became the sort of international expert asked to opine on everything from Japanese military strategy to the fortitude of the British home front. FDR invited him to the White House for a tte--tte. He and Frances separated in 1941 and then divorced in 1944, their troubled marriage a microcosm, they both thought, of a world at war. She went on to become an ardent campaigner against the British empire: an Indian nationalista confidant of Jawaharlal Nehrusand then a Zionist, and a leading figure in the American pressure campaigns for both causes.

In the spring of 1946, Gunther was busy writing the book hed planned about democracy, Inside U.S.A., when 16-year-old Johnny was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. The prognosis was grim; radiation therapy began immediately, and the doctors bills piled up. John cried so much that Frances feared hed collapse. But he had to work. Hed barely made a dent in the books projected 50-plus chapters and was running out of money. While Johnny was undergoing treatment, John visited him at noon and in the eveningsFrances was there all afternoonand returned to his office, writing until 1 or 2 a.m. every night. Thank God for the end of daylight savings time, he noted in his diary: It gave him an extra hour to work. The Book-of-the-Month Club had chosen Inside U.S.A. as its selection for June 1947, a guarantee of big sales. To make that deadline, Harper & Brothers was typesetting the book a chapter at a time, as quickly as Gunther finished them.

From the April 1997 issue: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. on John Gunther and the writing of Inside U.S.A.

He met his deadline, and Inside U.S.A. hit the market with the largest initial print run in the history of American publishing, a half-million copies. Johnny died a month later, on June 30, 1947. At the end of the summer, Gunther put his sons papers in order: his schoolwork, his diaries, the letters he and Frances had exchanged with Johnny when they were away for eight months in 193738 reporting from Asia and, later, when he left for boarding school. John talked with Frances about writing a Johnny book. He arranged the hundreds of condolence letters theyd gottenbrief, embarrassed missives from friends and acquaintances, people never at a loss for what to say, acknowledging that the Gunthers grief was beyond words. Just after Christmas, he started writing.

The book, Gunther decided, would have three parts: his own narrative, then Johnnys lightly edited letters and diaries, and an afterword by Frances. Gunther had been jotting down notes and phrases all along on the colored slips of paper he always kept nearby. An old reporters habit: Hed recorded fragments of conversations, the offhand comments doctors and nurses made, Johnnys wry observations. His subject wouldnt be Johnnys lifethe usual territory of the In Memoriam volumebut how hed endured sickness. He was writing a blow-by-blow account of what happened to Johnnys brain.

It was, Gunther recognized, an unconventional approach. The standard mid-century source on American autobiography counts only 13 titles dealing with illness out of the more than 6,000 memoirs published before 1945. None of those is a chronicle of cancer, the subject of most illness memoirs today. After the Second World War, scientific advances in cancer therapeutics were just starting to extend survival rates, and with the new medical possibilities came a new narrative form, which derived its suspense from the twists and turns of treatment.

Gunther brought the skills of a spectacular newsman to bear on the story, taking the reader right into the situation with him. The call from Deerfield Academy, where Johnny was a junior, had come on an April afternoon in 1946. I think your child has a brain tumor, the doctor had blurted out. Gunther raced to western Massachusetts, picking Frances up in Connecticut on his way from New York. As soon as he saw the look on the doctors faces, he knew there was no hope of a recovery. Three days later, Johnny underwent a six-hour surgery at the Neurological Institute of New York. I got half of it, the surgeon told John.

David J. Linden: A neuroscientist with terminal cancer prepares for death

In the 14 months that followed, the Gunthers consulted more than 30 specialists. They searched for the latest medical miracle. Johnny was the first brain-tumor patient in the United States to be treated with mustard gas, an early form of chemotherapy; Gunther himself delivered the canisters full of the toxic stuff to the hospital. As Johnny grew sicker and sicker, they turned to the refugee physician Max Gerson, who insisted that a diet of fresh vegetables, no salt, no fat, and scant protein could cure cancer. And then, for some reason the doctors couldnt explainwas it the X-ray treatment, the mustard gas, or the diet?the tumor seemingly retreated. I was beside myself with a violent and incredulous joy. Johnny was going to recover after all!

Gunther wrote without euphemism. His metaphors were precise, his descriptions unflinching. The effect of that first surgery was akin to the explosion of a .45-caliber bullet, a doctor told him. He made use of a clinical vocabulary, translating the language of the medical case report: Papilledema, he explained, was swelling of the optic nerve; a ventriculogram required drilling holes through the skull. The surgeons left Johnnys skull open so that the tumor wouldnt be driven inward; the flap of scalp that covered the soft spot was the size of a mans hand. When the tumor began to grow again, a few months after the remission began, the surgeon excavated more than four inches into the brain, unable to find healthy tissue.

The multi-perspective memorial volume was a classic Victorian form, but Death Be Not Proud gave it a new purpose. Because each part struck a different emotional register, together they functioned as a sort of Inside Ustaking the reader into the familys private dynamics to understand how theyd coped. Gunthers tone was restrained and dignified: As to our own emotions I am trying not to write about them. He was reining in his feelings even as he was writing of intimate experiences, exposing just enough to make plain the weight he was carrying. The battle among the doctors over which course of treatment to pursue all but destroyed us. At times, Johnny seemed subconsciously hostile to me as if out of resentment at my good health. Johnny talked about death with Frances, but almost never with John, changing the subject when his father walked into the room.

Johnnys letters and diaries reproduced in the second part of the book bore witness to his character. They filled in the details of his life before the tumor: the affectionate young son writing home from summer camp, the prodigious schoolboy playing chess, experimenting in chemistry and physics. He maintained a chipper tone even after he got sick, valiantly cloaking his fear in humor. I have discovered Utopia here, Johnny wrote to a friend while in the hospital. No athletics, No worries. In his diaries, he admonished himself to make the best use of the time he had left, getting on with his schoolwork and his science projects. He fretted about his parents. In November 1946, as his tumor erupted again, he wrote: Ask parents what you can do to make them happy.

Francess afterword was the most personal and unabashedly emotional of the three parts. She wrote about her relationship with her son, her attempt to create of him a newer kind of human being: an aware person, without fear, and with love. To remake a war-ravaged world required people who cared about others, and Frances had started with her son. Shed reared him to become a cooperative rather than competitive person. But now that he was dead, she was consumed by guilt. She felt remorse about sending Johnny to boarding school; she regretted the divorce: I wished we had loved Johnny more when he was alive.

In 1949, the year that Death Be Not Proud was published, new ideas about both the individual and collective psyche were taking root. Rebuilding after the Second World War would require more than simply clearing away the bomb rubble and restarting industry; for the fragile peace to hold, a psychological reconstruction was imperative. President Harry Truman sent a message of encouragement to be read aloud at the American Psychiatric Associations annual meeting. The greatest prerequisite for peace, he observed, must be sanitysanity in its broadest sense, which permits clear thinking on the part of all citizens. To foster a sane and healthy postwar society, people would need to learn how to express the emotions theyd kept bottled up.

Caitlin Flanagan: The things I would never do

This was the context in which Death Be Not Proud caught fire. The old strictures on self-revelation that had hemmed in Fitzgerald hadnt entirely disappeared. According to the Hartford Times book critic, Gunthers book was just as breathtaking and shocking as would be a similar confession from a new neighbor, a complete stranger, who suddenly told you his familys most secret tragedy. But for every critic who objected to Gunthers almost indecent disclosures or the memoirs nauseating details, many more applauded its frankness and bravery. To read it was to undergo a magnificent human experience, wrote the Chicago Tribunes influential critic Fanny Butcher.

For John Donne, the phrase Death be not proud had conveyed a religious belief in immortality. Death, thou shalt die, Donne had written: One short sleep past, we wake eternally. Death Be Not Proud, by contrast, represented a bid for a secular afterlife, a testament to Johnnys courage. As much as it was about one boy, it was also about the worth of the individual writ large. In their sons illness, the Gunthers saw the same sort of dynamic that had haunted them in Europeit was as if the pattern of Johnnys illness were symbolic of so much of the conflict and torture of the external world. The battle between Johnnys fine mind and the savagery of the tumor was like the fight theyd witnessed in fascist Vienna and Berlin: A primitive to-the-death struggle of reason against violence, reason against disruption, reason against brute unthinking force.

To insist on the value of a single existence was to strike back at that shocking disregard for human life. Gunthers memoir was a literary counterpart to the work then under way in international law, where new concepts of human rights were being invented. As Death Be Not Proud went to press in the fall of 1948, delegates at the recently founded United Nations were debating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document proclaimed an inalienable right to live free from want and oppression and, still more novel, to develop fully ones own personality. After half a century of war and genocide that had claimed by conservative estimates more than 70 million lives, the defenders of the individual were gaining the upper hand.

The reading public received the book just that way. Thank God there are people like you who still realize the infinite value of one soul when the world is devising new means of mass killing, one woman wrote to Frances. Death Be Not Proud became an instant best seller. In American college towns as in county seats, it topped the list of the books that patrons requested in public libraries. As soon as the first excerpts appeared in Ladies Home Journal, then one of the largest-circulation magazines in the United States, the Gunthers found themselves deluged with letters. Readers thanked them for having the courage to put their own hearts into print. Some correspondents took the Gunthers relative openness about their divorce as an invitation to comment, and urged the couple to reconcile.

By far the largest number of letters, and there were thousands of them, came from grieving parents. Their children had died of meningitis, leukemia, or glioma; their sons had been killed in action in Germany or died in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Mostly mothers wrote, but occasionally fathers did too. Some unburdened themselves at great length, filling pages and pages, as though they hadnt been able to talk to anyone. A ministers attempt at consolationWe know it must be for the best. God doesnt make mistakeshad proved no comfort at all. These parents blamed themselves, as Frances had. They felt guilty that they couldnt afford more treatments and private doctors, or they regretted subjecting their children to painful operations. Dont you ever feel bitter? they asked the Gunthers. I expect you did, but I suppose that doesnt help does it?

These letters comprise an astonishing archive of the repressed grief in mid-20th-century America. Readers peeled pictures of their loved ones out of photograph albums, to enclose with their letters. A mother whose baby had died of pneumonia cut A Word From Frances out of the book and put it in her Bible with her babys footprints. One father ordered 20 copies of Death Be Not Proud to send to his relatives; his son had polio. Gunther had put their familys suffering into words. In turn, readers adopted his manner of narrating the course of an illness, telling him their stories, interspersing the clinical details with everyday accounts of how theyd tried to cope. It was as if hed given them not just permission but a template for relating their experiences.

Beginning in the late 1950s, a different set of readersreaders like my mothertook up Gunthers book. English teachers assigned Death Be Not Proud; the tribute to selfless bravery fit well on civics syllabi too. It became a popular selection for teen book clubs. Young readers wrote to Gunther in increasing numbers. They wished theyd known Johnny: He was the sort of boy theyd like to befriend or, someday, marry. They saw him as a model against which their own character should be measured, certain that they fell far short of his example. I only wish that I could be half the person Johnny was! wrote one high-school girl from Scarsdale, New York.

Gunthers teenage readers recognized Death Be Not Prouds redemptive message. It was a book about an individual whose selflessness was his most salient feature. As an eighth-grade boy in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, put it, His fight for life was not only for his mortal body but the lives of millions of people. But Johnnys wasnt the self-sacrifice of a Christ figure or the hardened courage of a soldier. It was something altogether more recognizable to young readers. Students put themselves in the shoes of Johnny, Frances, or John. Teachers encouraged that sympathetic identification by asking their pupils to write essays from the perspective of one of the characters in the book.

And yet, adolescents were so gripped by Death Be Not Proud precisely because it wasnt fiction. Like Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, which was translated into English in 1952, Gunthers memoir demonstrated how life had outpaced fiction, as millions of people all over the world, in the words of one Connecticut girl, shared in the tragedy of your sons death. It wasnt like the average book, she added, perhaps because this really happened. Teenagers requested photos of Johnny, details of his science experiments, more information about the couples divorce. Some people would say, Oh, its only a story, dont let it bother you, one reader wrote; but when you realize that it actually took place, it makes a person stop and think.

Gunthers young readers were the Baby Boomers, born into the prosperity and stability of a postwar world. Some of them later marched on Washington, protested the war in Vietnam, and eventually popularized the slogan The personal is political, an idea that owed much to the slippage between geopolitics and inner life that Gunther and his generation had first chronicled. Youth movements dont spend much time paying homage to their elders, and the rebels of the 1960s were no exception. But what the Boomers had learned from their transgressive 1930s forebears was that repression had to be combatted by openness and that no subject was beyond words.

Read: Why writing about bodies is vital

For this, at least in part, they had a once ubiquitous, now largely forgotten reporter and his ex-wife to thank. In 1926, Virginia Woolf had lamented how few writers had taken on the subject of illness. Sickness, she wrote, ought to be among the prime themes of literature, alongside love, warfare, and jealousy. John Gunther paved a way to talk about cancer and death in public, about divorce, pain, and parental remorse. He did so precisely because he was a reporter whod taken from the hellish world of the 1930s and 40s a conviction that the individual needed defending and that the full range of human experiences had to be told. In the next decades, when telling all became the norm, some part of that original impetus got lost, as the imperative to tend to the common good faded. If the I became detached from the we, that was above all else a measure of the late 20th centurys good fortune.

This article appears in the April 2022 print edition with the headline The Man Who Told All. When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

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How John Gunther's 'Death Be Not Proud' Inaugurated an American Genre - The Atlantic

Good morning, BroadwayWorld! Because we know all our readers eat, sleep and breathe Broadway, what could be better than waking up to it? Scroll down for the latest news.

Today's top stories include the latest episode of The Aging Ingenue, a new single from Noah Reid, and more!

Plus, Taron Egerton collapsed onstage this weekend during the West End opening night preview performance of the Mike Bartlett play, Cock.

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VIDEO: The Aging Ingnue- Episode 3 | Denialby The Aging Ingnue

In today's episode: Claire picks up smoking and loses her phone - just a typical Tuesday morning. Starring Sara Jean Ford and her daughter. . (more...)

VIDEO: Warren Carlyle Talks THE MUSIC MAN and HARMONY on Backstage with Richard Ridgeby Backstage With Richard Ridge

Watch as Richard Ridge catches up with Tony winner Warren Carlyle, who choreographed the current Broadway revival of The Music Man, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.. (more...)

VIDEO: TAKE ME OUT Gets Company Ready to Return to Broadwayby BroadwayWorld TV

In just days, the Second Stage Theater production of Richard Greenberg's Tony Award-winning play, Take Me Out, will officially begin previews at the Hayes Theater, where it was originally set to open almost two years ago. Right before Broadway shut down, BroadwayWorld's Richard Ridge met with the company while they were still in rehearsals. We're looking back on that day ahead of the show's official return!. (more...)

Noah Reid, Star of Upcoming Broadway Production of THE MINUTES, Launches New Singleby Marissa Tomeo

Singer-songwriter and actor Noah Reid today released the first single, "Everyday," from his upcoming album available to stream or download. "Everyday" offers a sublime introduction to the expansive sonic world of Reid's highly-anticipated new music, sharply contrasting the track's heavy-hearted mood with bright guitar tones and effervescent melodies. . (more...)

Taron Egerton Collapses At Opening Night of c*ckPreviewsby Marissa Tomeo

According to an article on Just Jared, Taron Egerton collapsed onstage last night during the West End opening night preview performance of the Mike Bartlett play, Cock. The show paused for forty minutes, ultimately continuing on Egerton's understudy. . (more...)

VIDEO: David Byrne Discusses AMERICAN UTOPIA on CBS Saturday Morningby Marissa Tomeo

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3/10: Take Me Out begins previews

Music:

3/11: Betty Buckley Sings Sondheim

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3/10: 25 Plays from The Fire This Time Festival: A Decade of Recognition, Resistance, Resilience, Rebirth, and Black Theater

And a Happy Birthday shout-out to Andy Blankenbuehler, who turns 52 today!

Blankenbuehler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a 1988 graduate of St. Xavier High School and 1984 graduate of Nativity School in Cincinnati. He received his bachelor's degree from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

As a performer, he has appeared on Broadway in many musicals, from Guys and Dolls (1992-1995) to Fosse (1999-2001).

His Broadway work as a choreographer includes the musicals In the Heights (2007-08) and 9 to 5 (2008-09). He won the Tony Award and Drama Desk Award for his choreography for In the Heights. Other New York work includes choreography for the "Broadway By The Year:1930, 1938 and 1978" series, and the City Center Encores! productions of The Apple Tree (2006) and The Wiz (2009). He is the director and choreographer of Bring It On: The Musical, written by Jeff Whitty, with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Tom Kitt and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Amanda Green, which premiered at the Alliance Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia, on January 16, 2011. This production also performed at the Ahmanson Theater in Los Angeles where Blankenbuehler won the 2011 L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Choreography.

Additionally, Blankenbuehler choreographed the Frank Wildhorn world premiere production of Waiting for the Moon. The show featured 6 full-length dance sequences, including one that lasted over 10 minutes. He was nominated for a Barrymore Award for Choreographing the show.

Blankenbuehler has choreographed for Bette Midler and directed, choreographed, and co-conceived the production "Nights On Broadway" at Caesars Palace.

Blankenbuehler appears briefly in the 2008 documentary "Every Little Step" about the 2006 Broadway revival of A Chorus Line, with his Polaroid shown as one of the people being cut from a callback for the show.

He choreographed the 2012 Broadway revival of Annie. He is the choreographer for the musical Hamilton (2015), both Off-Broadway and on Broadway. He received a special 2015 Drama Desk Award for Hamilton. His choreography for Hamilton won the Tony Award for Best Choreography in 2016.

He both directed and choreographed a new musical, Bandstand, which premiered at the Paper Mill Playhouse (New Jersey) in October 2015. The music is by Richard Oberacker and book and lyrics by Robert Taylor and Oberacker. He directed and choreographed a developmental lab of this musical in August and September 2014, then titled Bandstand: A Musical.

In 2016, Blankenbuehler choreographed the revival of the movie Dirty Dancing starring Abigail Breslin and Shane Harper. He also choreographed the revival of the Broadway musical Cats with previews beginning July 14 and an August 2 opening.

See you bright and early tomorrow, BroadwayWorld!

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Wake Up With 3/7: Taron Egerton Collapses Onstage, and More - Broadway World

Avijit Pathak

Sociologist

As I write this piece, television news channels are continually giving a running commentary on the devastating war the Russian army intoxicated with the technologically sleek weapons of destruction ravaging the major cities of Ukraine. In the age of media simulations and psychic impoverishment, even this war might look like a spectacle; and so long as it doesnt affect us directly, we tend to consume it as some sort of mass entertainment: no less thrilling than a video game! Even though wars are traumatic economically, culturally and existentially our Generals, techno-fascists, narcissistic leaders and weapon-manufacturing empires would continue to create an environment conducive to war. Or, is it that as pragmatists, we too have normalised the mass psychology of aggression and violence, and accepted the inevitability of war in some form or other?

Why is it that the age of modernity, despite its gospel of progress, reason and freedom, has further brutalised our consciousness?

Possibly, in this dystopian age, we see Trump and Putin, or George W Bush and Saddam Hussein as more real than, say, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, or the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh. Who knows we might ridicule the pacifists for their anti-war position, and brand them as idealistic and impractical? Are we then destined to pay the price of being practical war, mental trauma, influx of refugees, homelessness, and untold misery of women of invaded territories?

The trajectory of human history is filled with the narratives of war. However, what ought to disturb us is the fate of modernity. Why is it that the age of modernity, despite its gospel of progress, reason and freedom, has further brutalised our consciousness? Far from taking us to the land of peace and solidarity, modernity has given us a never-ending cycle of wars with mathematical precision, and ever-expanding sophisticated technologies of violence and weapons of mass destruction. There is no just war, be it the Gulf war in the name of restoring civility and democracy, or the destruction of Ukraine in the name of rescuing it from what Putin would have characterised as neo-Nazis.

Possibly, the reason for the inability of the age of modernity to free itself from war is a mix of three destructive principles the discourse of hyper- nationalism, often sanctified by a techno-authoritarian state with narcissistic leaders like Hitler and Putin; militarism as a hyper-masculine practice that manufactures and cultivates the fear of enemies, and thereby sanctifies itself in the name of patriotism and martyrdom; and above all, the greed implicit in modern capitalism, totalitarian socialism and associated colonial/imperial ambitions. It is, therefore, not surprising that only in a world of this kind can we dance with death, kill more than 75 million people in World War II, and, as Zygmunt Bauman said, think of holocaust with scientific planning. We saw Soviet tanks and troops crushing a spontaneous national upsurge in Hungary in 1956, or the might of the US manifesting itself in the aerial bombing or dropping of thousands of bombs on Iraq in 1991. From Vietnam to Afghanistan to Ukraine, the story goes on.

It is sad that the prevalent practice of education seldom encourages the young learner to interrogate the ideology of militant nationalism and militarism. If you talk to an average school/college student, you would find how his mind has already been conditioned to believe that, say, Pakistan is our enemy; military aggression is not bad because our Army personnel, as true patriots, are rescuing the nation! Our education system transforms young minds into warriors of multiple forms hyper-competitive careerists with the aggression of social Darwinism; techno-managers with instrumental reasoning; or sado-masochists willing to be carried away by authoritarian personalities.

Yet, those who have not yet lost faith in the possibility of human goodness must come forward, raise their voice against war, and strengthen the pacifist movement. This requires a paradigm shift in our worldview from brute instincts and narcissistic urge to dominate over others to what Erich Fromm would have regarded as the art of loving; from the monologue of power to what Thich Nhat Hanh would have characterised as loving kindness and compassionate listening; from colonial aggression and militarism to what Gandhi would have stressed: nonviolence as an art of resistance, or, as Johan Galtung would have said, a mode of conflict resolution; and from instrumental science and technological violence to ecological holism, or what feminists would have regarded as the ethics of care. Be it Jesus and Buddha, or Leo Tolstoys The Kingdom of God is Within You and Tagores Gitanjali: we see the finest aspiration for the elevation of humankind.

In this Orwellian/Foucauldian world, not many would be willing to be convinced by these pacifists. Yet, we need this utopia not as some sort of day-dreaming, but as an inspiration for a nuanced art of resistance, or a creatively nuanced and spiritually elevated pedagogy to nurture the seeds of a peaceful world. We need this utopia to make our children realise that the cult of militarism is ugly, the invention of nuclear weapons reveals our moral decadence, and narcissism, far from being an expression of courage, is a manifestation of chronic fear and psychic insecurity. And atom bombs are not more powerful than love and empathy.

Even under extremely difficult circumstances, the hope for a new world should not wither away. Amid the ongoing war, as we see young Russian students and pacifists in the streets of Moscow raising anti-war slogans and pleading for peace, it arouses hope. Why should we negate the redemptive power of this hope?

#russia ukraine war

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There is no just war - The Tribune India

AUROVILLE, India The bulldozer arrived one night in December, shaking Ganga Park awake in her tree house and sending her scurrying down the trunk.

When its operator paused the menacing machine, which was there to clear a path through the surrounding forest, Ms. Park clung to it. Their standoff continued until the driver gave up and turned back.

When the bulldozer returned a few days later, Ms. Park confronted it again, but this time she was joined by dozens of her neighbors in the south Indian arcadia of Auroville.

They linked arms around the bulldozer, chanting Om Namo Bhagavate, a popular Hindu mantra that roughly translates to Obeisance to the Almighty. They remained until they won at least a temporary victory: a stay order from an environmental tribunal, forcing the demolition work to stop.

It was super instinctive, Ms. Park, 20, said of her leap into action. If theres an intruder, you immediately protect and defend.

The intruder, in this case, was the government of Auroville, an idealistic community founded in 1968 with the goal of realizing human unity by putting the divine at the center of all things.

That unity, however, has recently frayed.

A bitter dispute has arisen between Aurovilles government, which has revived a long-delayed plan to vastly expand the community, and those residents who want to protect the thriving forest they have cultivated from the barren stretch of land where their social experiment began more than 50 years ago.

The community was founded by a French writer, Mirra Alfassa, better known to her followers simply as the Mother, who believed that a change of consciousness and aspiration to the divine in Auroville would ripple out to the rest of the world.

Before her death in 1973, the Mother had commissioned the French architect Roger Anger to develop a design for a city of 50,000, about 15 times the current population. Mr. Anger conceived of a galactic form: spiraling concentric circles around the Matrimandir a circular golden meditation chamber with 12 radial roads.

But without the money or manpower over the decades to carry out the plan, the communitys residents, or Aurovilians, built something different.

They dug wells and built thatched-roof huts. And they planted trees. A lot of them. Under the cool forest canopy, civets, jackals, peacocks and other creatures roam, and muriel bushes release a sweet, heady fragrance.

The divide between those Aurovilians who want to follow the Mothers urban development plans known as constructivists and those who want to let the community continue developing on its own organicists has long existed.

But the struggle took on a heightened pitch last July, when the office of Prime Minister Narendra Modi appointed a new secretary, Jayanti Ravi, to head the townships governing board.

Ms. Ravi had been the health secretary in Gujarat, Mr. Modis home state. Earlier, she was a district magistrate under Mr. Modi, then the states top official, when he faced near-universal condemnation for failing to control two months of religious riots in Gujarat in 2002 that left more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslim, dead.

The governments new interest in enacting Mr. Angers design reflects Mr. Modis penchant for ambitious construction projects to foster tourism around Hindu or nationalist sites. His Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., is the political arm of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a social organization devoted to making India an explicitly Hindu state.

Though Auroville was founded by a Frenchwoman, she was the disciple of Sri Aurobindo, a spiritual teacher and a freedom fighter for Indias independence. The planned redesign of Auroville is being done ahead of Sri Aurobindos 150th birth anniversary in August for which Mr. Modi is planning a big celebration.

Part of Narendra Modis agenda is to appropriate all religious and spiritual figures into the fold of the B.J.P., said Navroz Mody, the resident who filed the petition to pause the development project.

Ms. Ravi promised to infuse the project with millions of dollars in federal funding. The development would start by paving a perfectly circular road, part of a broader, pedestrianized beltway that would connect Aurovilles four distinct zones. But in the way stand Aurovilles youth center, a water catchment area and hundreds of trees.

Sindhuja Jagadeesh, a spokeswoman for the local government, said it was a kind of decadence for Aurovilles approximately 3,300 people about half Indian, and half foreigners to live on 3,000 acres of land in a country as densely populated as India.

Many people have become attached to their comfort in the greenery, but we are supposed to experiment and evolve, said Ms. Jagadeesh, who is also an architect and an Aurovilian.

The stance of those opposed to the development, Ms. Jagadeesh added, clashes sharply with the Mothers vision for a model city of the future that would be replicated around the world.

We are here for human unity, but also to build a city, she said.

The proponents of the development plan, which ultimately envisions a high-density, self-sustained city with a bustling economy and experimental architecture, deride the Auroville of today as an eco-village where a visitor can get a good cappuccino but not the change in consciousness its founder hoped for.

Its not just a city plan, its meant to hold an experiment, said Shrimoyi Rosegger, a resident who approves of the development and has a deep faith in the transformative power of the Mothers plan. We believe it is an intelligence which is beyond us, she added, that if we follow her guidelines, something will be revealed to us.

Leaning against a motorcycle outside the communitys free clothing store and food co-op, Auroson Bystrom, 51, among the first children born in Auroville, said he opposes Ms. Ravis plans, but thinks the intense debate has energized the community.

Aurobindo is all about evolution, Mr. Bystrom said, referring to Sri Aurobindo. And for the last 35 years, Auroville hasnt felt all that evolutionary.

Some opponents of the plan say that the philosophy of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother was not as much about building a new city as it was building a new human. And that takes time.

How we urbanize is more important than how fast we urbanize, said Suhasini Ayer, an architect whose mixed-use development in Auroville recently won a design award at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow.

The communitys small population, opponents of the development say, owes more to the unusual conditions for residency than to the lack of the ring road that the government wants to plow through trees.

Those wishing to live here must undergo a year of vetting and must invest their own money into homes that will remain town property.

Auroville receives some funding from the government, but drums up most of its budget internally, from private enterprise and donations.

Residents purify their own water, grow their own grains and make their own paper. Those who work for Aurovilles public services receive a meager salary known as maintenance.

These people want to be pragmatic, Renu Neogy, a lifelong Aurovilian, said of Ms. Ravi and her supporters. But this is not a pragmatic place, this is utopia.

Some foreign residents said they feared that Ms. Ravi could deprive them of the sponsorship they need to continue living in India if they fail to get on board with her plans.

While the two sides seem far apart, some residents believe a solution may lie in the approach to community decision-making that was a founding principle of Auroville: consensus building.

Allan Bennett, an Auroville town planner, said a group of the communitys architects were mulling how to meld together the place that the Mother envisioned with the place that exists today through a process known as dream weaving.

The architects are trying to capture the poetry of the galaxy vision and also the ground reality, he said. These are the concepts they have to weave together.

Back in her treehouse, filled with bird song and sunlight, Ms. Park contemplated what she had confronted a bulldozer to save.

Growing up in Auroville, Ms. Park picked lemons and swung on the limbs of banyan trees. When she went briefly to live in Seoul, she wore a school uniform and followed a strict routine.

Outside its unavoidable to buy trash, to get swept away by consumerism. It really gets you down, she said. Its easy to be a good human being here.

Read the rest here:

Build a New City or New Humans? A Utopia in India Fights Over Future. - The New York Times

When it comes to travel coffee setups, the holy grail is the all-in-one device that will store all the equipment you need to make coffee into one slim, space-saving package. And the newest edition to the pantheon of to-go coffee kits, the aptly-named All-In-One Grinder, gets us one step closer to that reality by combining an electric grinder, travel mug, and pour-over device all in one sleek package.

As reported by Yanko Design, the concept is the creation of Guangzhou, China-based designer Locus Hsu. Clocking in around the same size as a water bottle, the All-In-One Grinder is meant to (mostly) get you from whole bean to brew. The conical burr grinder is adjustable and USB-chargeable. Just toss your beans in the grind chamber and youre ready to get grinding whenever the urge hits.

Once ground, the coffee can then be loaded into the attached conical metal-filter pour-over device that seats nicely atop the reusable travel mug. All you have to do is figure out how to get hot water and pour it over the coffee (perhaps a nice Cauldryn mug?) and voila, youve got coffee!

Of course, we havent yet reached the travel coffee singularity, where all your brewing needs are self-contained. But we are getting closer and closer. Though only a concept and thus not yet on the market, the All-In-One Grinder is a very handsome step in the right direction. Once someone figures out how to work in a collapsable kettle and a water reservoir, we will truly be living in the future. Humanity, the unstoppable force fueled by coffee anywhere at any time.

Zac Cadwaladeris the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.Read more Zac Cadwaladeron Sprudge.

Images by All-In-One Grinder

Originally posted here:

The New All-In-One Grinder Advances The Dream Of Mobile Coffee Utopia - Sprudge

Author Brian Pinkerton is a lifelong resident of the Chicago area, growing up on, as he puts it, Bozos Circus and Ray RaynerCreature Features and Cubs baseball. With 12 novels under his belt, his work has extended to the science fiction, horror, and mystery genres. His latest work, The Nirvana Effect (Flame Tree Publishing), finds myopia in a tech utopia, addressing virtual reality, social media, and the barriers they remove and put up at the same time. I spoke with him about his writings and what the city of Chicago has brought to them.

Provide a little background info about yourself. Whatever youd like to share.

Im a long-time Chicagoan. Ive lived in the suburbs or the city most of my life. I was born in Evanston. I grew up on WGNs Bozos Circus and Ray Rayner, and graduated on to Creature Features and Cubs baseball, back when Wrigley Field only had day games. Later, I was into the whole Wax Trax! scene, Metro, Medusas, and Neo. I worked downtown in the Loop for eight years.

The only extended period Ive been away from Chicago would be my undergraduate years at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. I attended graduate school at Northwestern and studied Integrated Marketing Communications, when I lived in Rogers Park. The city is in my roots.

What brought you to writing? Was it something you always wanted to do or a later in life discovery?

My dad has an audio recording of me from when I was five years old, proclaiming, Im going to be a book writer! I guess I already knew at a young age. Ive always been attracted to stories and storytelling. My mom was a high school English teacher. When I was very small, I used to scribble on the papers she was grading to make my contribution. I loved libraries and bookstores. I still have vivid memories of the annual book fair at Greenbriar Elementary in Northbrook. I was equally fascinated by the writing and the illustrations. Maurice Sendak was my favorite, along with Jack Kent.

One of my earliest ambitions was to be a cartoonist. I loved tackling blank paper with a pen. My cartoons were long, comedy-adventure stories, rather than comic strip gags. Eventually, I started telling stories without the drawings. I would get impatient with the drawing it couldnt keep pace with the story in my head. Some of those cartoons would begin with careful artwork and get progressively looser and sloppier as I became more caught up in the momentum of the narrative. By high school, I was writing quirky novellas and short stories. It got more serious in college, when I took undergraduate classes of the Iowa Writers Workshop and won first prize in a local literary magazine. One of my professors was the fiction editor of Esquire magazine. He liked my literary attempts but groaned when I wrote genre fiction.

Speaking of genre fiction You shift between mystery, horror, and others. Do you have a favorite or do you love all your literary children equally?

I like to mix it up. When writing, my biggest worry is boring myself. If Im not interested, Im not motivated, and its a slog. I like genre hopping to keep the stories fresh and different. I dont have to write these books. Its not my day job. Its recreation.

Shifting between genres is probably not the smartest marketing move. I dont know if the thriller fans follow me to horror or the horror fans follow me to science fiction, so I might be restarting a readership base every time I switch things up.

Regardless of genre, my books have a common thread. They all feature ordinary people encountering something extraordinary that pulls them out of their mundane lives and sends them on a path of adventure and self-discovery. Maybe its my way of living vicariously through fictional characters.

I also blend genres a bit, so it gets even more blurry. My science-fiction novels The Nirvana Effect and The Gemini Experiment are set in the near-future. One is a dystopian horror story, the other is an A.I. thriller. I wrote a science-fiction time travel book, Time Warp, thats actually a psychological drama with no science fiction or time travel. It threw all expectations out the window. The readers were either enthralled, bewildered or pissed off.

What motivates you to write?

For me, writing a story is like going on a vacation. I can go anywhere, meet fascinating characters and have an incredible journey. I plot out stories like people build trip itineraries. My imagination is a hyperactive playground. I dont think I could turn it off if I tried. I love creating stories and sharing them with others. If someone posts a review on Goodreads or Amazon that says they got a kick out of one of my books, it makes my day.

Your newest book The Nirvana Effect is a trip through a technological dystopia. Tell us about it.

The Nirvana Effect is a dystopian story about society crumbling under addiction to virtual reality when true reality becomes unbearable and people choose to live their lives in escapism.

The book is my reaction to the intrusion of technology in every aspect of our lives. We can now experience life without ever leaving our homes. With a few quick taps, we can have all our meals and necessities delivered to our homes. Our entertainment is streamed to our personal devices. Our social interactions take place remotely on social media, where algorithms put us in a cocoon of interests and beliefs that mirror our own. We work from home on laptops and engage on Zoom.

The Nirvana Effect takes it one step further where weve ditched the physical world almost entirely to thrive in the comfort and convenience of virtual reality. Instead of an iPhone in our hand, were equipped with computer chips in our head. Its not that farfetched. Elon Musk is experimenting with brain chip implants. Mark Zuckerberg is building a metaverse. At what stage do we make the transition from harnessing technology to technology harnessing us?

At what point do we move all of the pleasures of life to the Cloud? What happens when we no longer require any true human interaction? Do we become less human?

Its bizarre. I finished writing The Nirvana Effect on March 1, 2020, right before the pandemic hit full force and changed life as we know it. So much of whats in the book started happening a lot quicker than predictedself-isolation, invasive technology, civil unrest, government mandates, mistrust of institutions, heightened tensions with Russian and China, technology used to push a false narrative, the debate between digital and tangible good. Dont even get me started on NFTs!

Chicago turns up in more than one of your books. How has the city inspired and influenced you?

Chicago has great heart and soul. The people are pragmatic, relatable. For a writer, theres a broad palette of colors to choose from. Theres great diversity and history. You have every type of weather. You have a wide range of urban and suburban sets to stage your action. Its a versatile backdrop. One of my noir short stories takes place on Lower Wacker Drive. That was a blast. The location is so vivid and unusual, it becomes another character.

Los Angeles is for dreamers. New York is for cynics. Chicago is that perfect city in-between. Its down to earth. Its the heartland. Its a very big city but still personable, a community with a lot of character.

Time management is also a factor. Part of it is writing what I know. Less research and location scouting means more time for writing and plotting. I pick locations I know because it helps me see the story unfold more vividly. Somebody has already built the sets. I just populate them with characters and chaos.

My books move around a lot, too. The Gemini Experiment begins in Chicago but then branches out across the country and around the world. Abducted starts on the west coast and migrates to Chicago halfway through. Vengeance takes place in Evanston, where Ive lived multiple times in my life.

Whats next for you? Anything big or even small in the works?

Last month, I handed in my new book, The Intruders, to my editor. Its scheduled for publication in early 2023 from Flame Tree Press, same publisher as my previous two. Theyre distributed by Simon & Schuster.

Im still shifting and blending genres. The Intruders is a science fiction-horror hybrid about mysterious happenings in a small town that grow into a worldwide threat. Its partly a tribute to 1950s sci-fi stories like The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Thing, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Its also got a contemporary subtext about things that worry me today, like climate change. Anytime I do science fiction, theres a social commentary beneath the surface.

Im also writing a few short stories. One of my earliest novels, Rough Cut, has been adapted into a screenplay by (playwright and former Chicagoan) Darren Callahan, and its making the rounds in L.A. Fingers crossed!

What are you reading these days, or what book or books (new or old) would you recommend to others?

I dont always read a lot of genre fiction. I usually avoid reading novels when Im writing. I get worried it might subliminally influence my writingnot so much the story, but the narrative voice.

My book pile right now is an eclectic mix of stuff: Ray and Joe: The Story of a Man and his Dead Friend, a collection of seriously twisted cartoons by Charles Rodrigues from the classic 1970s era of National Lampoon; The Human Stain, by Philip Roth; Blacktop Wasteland, a thriller by S.A. Cosby; A.I. 2041, a collection of short stories set in 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufab; and art sex music, the autobiography of Cosey Fanni Tutti, a controversial female performance artist and musician who was part of the industrial music revolution.

As far as recommendations, anything by Richard Matheson or Ray Bradbury. Two thrillers that influenced me a lot are Marathon Man and Magic by William Goldman. His literary novel Color of Light, is extraordinary, too.

Is there anything I didnt ask that you wish Id asked?

In the beginning, theres an idea. It could be a single scene (a murderer accidentally locks his car keys in the trunk with the body); a concept (mosquitoes carrying the zombie virus attacking rural Louisiana); or a starting point (fired nanny disappears with child).

Then I construct an outline around it. I use notecards so I can rearrange scenes and play with the pacing. For suspense, I map out when certain information is revealed, and for action, the rhythm for building and releasing tension. The plotting is very important to me, the story threads and continuity. Every scene card needs its own purpose and dramatic arc. It cant just be a block of exposition. I like to end chapters on mini-cliffhangers.

Once the notecards are in good shape and tell a complete story, I start drafting. I handwrite my books on pads of lined paper, usually one chapter a week. I dont use the computer. The computer is an endless toy box of distractions. My cartooning background has made me comfortable with composing on paper, sketching out my prose in longhand.

The first draft is in pen, it just flows. Then I go back over it and edit it meticulously in pencil. The pages can get quite messy. When Im ready, I read the manuscript into a headset, using dictation software to flow it into a Word file. Its also a good exercise to read it out loud, especially the dialogue, to see how it sounds to the ear. I want the dialogue to sound natural, not written.

Then I proof the Word file against the handwritten pages; the software is good and fast, but not perfect. I find some funny mistakes.

At this stage, I make all revisions on the PC. Its very late into the process that Im actually typing on a computer keyboard. So, my novel The Nirvana Effect, which is a warning about the evils of technology, was written with a minimal intrusion of technology. I guess thats appropriate. Its defiant.

Maybe one day computers will write novels without any human input, using formulas and algorithms and templates. You pick your genre, the computer mines everything ever produced in that genre and assembles something new from those tried-and-true ingredients. Its automated and comfortably predictable, like a James Patterson novel. Now thats scary!

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Interview: Dystopia in Utopia: Brian Pinkerton, Author of The Nirvana Effect - thirdcoastreview.com