''THE EXEMPLARY SYLVIE GUILLEM''

Sylvie Guillem is a remarkable dancer who, at 43, shows no signs of slowing down. James Woodall witnesses her latest show, "PUSH", and is awed by her liquid precision and seemingly effortless technique ...

There are artists whose ever-greenness delights the world, but behind their survival lies a deeper lesson. Great artists are great because they can draw on resources the rest of us do not possess. Picasso and Ingmar Bergman were incapable of being uncreative or boring until their final breaths.

In the land of the living, Bob Dylan has never stopped, in 46 years of recording and performing, working out how to do something and sound new. As noted here recently, he even proves adept with a paintbrush. Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso, 65 and grey-headed, still writes provocatively intense poems for his Bahian soul music. He sings with a voice that appears to have been hatched, yesterday, from honey.

Yet for my money, one of the most exemplary artists at work today is Sylvie Guillem, a French ballerina. I should say ex-ballerina, as she gave up ballet per se some years ago. At 43, she is considerably younger than the above-mentioned legends, but a dancer's fate becomes uncertain the moment she enters her 20s........

''Dilbert''

''GRACE PALEY'S "FIDELITY"

Ariel Ramchandani finds a melancholic honesty in Grace Paley's last book of poems. Paley wrote with the detachment of a woman near death, punctuating her work with the occasional bitter laugh ...

"Fidelity", the excellent new collection of poetry by Grace Paley (FSG, March 18th 2008), is a fitting final release (she died in August, aged 84). It is about the experience of being old, and the often painful separation between the poet and her world. Paley builds her poems organically and spaciously--they seem to expand in the air and dissipate foggily, barely located anymore in time and space. She saw herself as if through the lens of a camera, as though she did not inhabit the body she wrote about. In poems such as "When", she leaves physical spaces in between her words, echoing the fatigue and remove the speaker has from the action:

When she came to meet him at the ferry
he said  you are so pale  worn  so
frail standing on her toes
to reach his ear  she whispered
I am an old woman  oh then
he was always kind

The pauses make the poem feel as though it could drift away, barely anchored by the locating words "when", "then" and "always". The "when" brings us into the past, and the line break after the "oh then" leaves it dangling: we are not sure whether the speaker is lamenting a past "then",  or placing us at the ferry. In the word "always" we find ambiguous continuity, a hazily defined timeline of experience separate from the moment in which the poem occurs.

''Gíria: No-Brainer''

Gíria (Slang): No-Brainer
Tradução: algo muito fácil ou óbvio que não exige esforço mental, moleza, bico.
Pronúncia: /noʊ/ /breɪnər/ (entenda os símbolos fonéticos)
Exemplo: The math test was a no-brainer! (A prova de matemática foi moleza!)

''LARGE OF HEART, SMALL OF POCKET''

Conventional wisdom holds that you should focus your charitable giving on one or two causes. Allison Schrager's wisdom holds that you should give as widely as you like, subject to the usual due diligence ....

A couple of weeks ago when I was writing about giving to schools, I explained why I thought it better to give $100 to each of three schools that I attended, rather than $300 to only one. My thanks to "Josh" for a well-reasoned comment citing arguments that it was "better to give to
one cause vs. multiple ones". Yes indeed, you are usually advised to concentrate your charitable giving, just as you are usually advised to diversify your investment portfolio. But accepted wisdom is there to be overturned, in altruism as in anything else.

A few years ago Steven Landsburg wrote a mathematical
proof showing that to maximise your giving utility (to get the most for your money, we might say), the optimal strategy was to give to one or very few charities.......

''Calvin''

''GROWLS FROM GRIZZLY BEAR RANCH''

At his ranch in the Selkirk mountains of British Columbia, Julius Straussfinds that quad-biking tourists and government-approved bear-culling are turning him into a militant conservationist ...

In the annals of our small and humble valley, it was a notable gathering of scientific minds.

An accomplished skunk man, a bat expert, a Chinese-medicine practitioner and a clutch of bear biologists all gathered around our dinner table last weekend to swap ursine opinions. We had sent out an invitation to the eminences of the local bear world (and their partners) with a view to soliciting their advice on how best to nurture and protect our beautiful grizzly bears.

We also wanted to thrash out best practice on thorny issues such as habituation, discuss the effect of hunting on the bears and assess the provincial government's policies. Perhaps surprisingly, British Columbia, which has an image of being one of the most wildlife-friendly places on earth, still allows grizzly bears to be hunted as trophies. Although the wholesale slaughter of yesteryear is now outlawed, 28 permits are to be given out by the government to hunt grizzlies next spring, just in the area around our ranch.

In the event we talked a little bear, drank a deal of wine and, gorged on Kristin's cooking.........