The Smithian

The multiracial revival of “A Streetcar Named Desire” will arrive on Broadway…”Streetcar,” toplined by Blair Underwood and Nicole Ari Parker…it seems likely the show will open…around April 22…Parker will play Blanche DuBois opposite Underwood as Stanley in Tennessee Williams’ 1947 play, with Daphne Rubin-Vega and Wood Harris also on board…

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[meaningful glance]

(Source: onaxism)

The “Republic of Tahrir”—as journalist Ashraf Khalil calls it in this first-person account—is now synonymous with a politics of spontaneity, youthfulness, and optimism. Yet for those who have long dreamed for the birth of liberal societies in the world’s least free region, the Tahrir moment has also been a source of anguish.

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“The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963” by Christopher Paul Curtis — describes the civil rights era from the perspective of a young (and extremely mischievous) boy and his family.

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NASA has published what it calls the “most amazing highest resolution image of Earth ever…”

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The press loves drama and hates a front-runner. So guess who they are rooting for.

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…the now Academy Award-nominated (for documentary feature) film, “Undefeated”…

more, plus trailer, here.

Though far from a familiar face in the United States, the 23-year-old Ms. Vallejo has gained rock-star status among the global activist class. Since June she has led regular street marches of up to 200,000 people through Santiago’s broad avenues—the largest demonstrations since the waning days of the Pinochet regime in the late 1980s. Under her leadership, the mobilization, known as the Chilean Winter, has gained nationwide support; one of its slogans, “We are the 90 percent,” referred to its approval rating in late September.

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America’s historic Chinatowns…are fading as rising living costs, jobs elsewhere, and a desire for wider spaces lure Asian Americans more than ever to the suburbs. As the Lunar New Year began last Monday, annual festivities in Washington’s shriveled Chinatown are, for the first time, being promoted by a large marketing firm. New York’s Chinatown, one of the nation’s oldest, has lost its status as home to the city’s largest Chinese population…Shifts also are under way in Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, San Francisco, and Seattle, where shiny new “satellite Chinatowns” in the suburbs…rival, if not overshadow, the originals.

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[snackable]

While the golf world trains its…eye on Abu Dhabi, where Tiger Woods is poised for his first victory in a full-field event in over two years, the 60th anniversary of the color barrier being broken in a PGA Tour event is being quietly celebrated at this week’s Farmers Insurance Open. In 1952, the former heavyweight champion Joe Louis was a year into his retirement from boxing when he received a sponsor exemption from Chevrolet to play in the inaugural San Diego Open…there was a Caucasian-only rule. Louis did not take kindly to the rule.

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