The best part for us writers of course is that True/Slant also paid us each month to write what we wanted to write. Financial responsibility in today’s writing world is virtually unheard of, but we were paid and paid on time. Though the amount was nothing  to write home about, and nothing to buy a home with for that matter, it did help. It was enough of a boost each month to remind me that writing as a craft, journalism as a craft, can be rewarded in the current marketplace. And it was a reminder that when writers are paid to do their work, the quality of the work survives as well.

But that seems like history now. It was an idea, a great one that worked for a time. As True/Slant transition/expires, I will not be one of the writers headed to Forbes. Forbes, alas, does not have much of a need to hire an arts and culture writer and, as an arts and culture writer, I am not sure Forbes would be the right kind of place for me either.  In signing off from The Culture Spoke I want to thank everyone who read this blog, those who stumbled upon it while Googling something they heard about, and those who read it with any kind of regularity.  All readers are welcome readers in this day and age. I am not sure where my digital writing career goes from here, but I will continue to pursue writing essays as a freelance journalist, and I will continue to write fiction. Thanks again, and thanks to everyone at True/Slant who made this happen. It was great while it lasted.

In New Hampshire a bear entered a house through an open door then proceeded to eat two pears, a bunch of grapes, sipped some fine agua from the fish bowl and then on his or her way out grabbed a stuffed bear. That’s an adult grown bear that could tear you limb from limb grabbing a toy stuffed bear before exiting the house. It must get lonely in those woods.

via Bear Eats Fruit, Takes Stuffed Bear From NH House – NYTimes.com.

The activities start at 4 pm on Saturday and will take over the bandshell in Prospect Park, an area usually reserved for single concert shows. Field of Dreams is also part of Celebrate Brooklyn!, which this summer is itself celebrating its 32 year of concerts and organized events. What can the wandering Brooklyner or DIY junkie expect to see at Field of Dreams? The musical line-up features a bevy of talent, including Cucu Diamantes, Andres Levin, Pablo Picasso, Les Nubians, Monsta X, Groove Collective, Mista Sinista from The Executioners, Keziah Jones, Los Hankey Pankey’s, Shantell Martin, Trixie Whitley, and more. Actor Luis Guzman will also perform. Artists will be sprinkled across the grounds and will cover the gamut of approaches and mediums. There will be Elliot Arkin, who will be manning his mobile art lab, Mister ArtSee. Arkin is currently building Mister ArtSee in Gowanus, Brooklyn but upon completion, he plans to tour the country with it, bringing contemporary art exhibitions wherever he goes. Artist Glenda Reed will recreate her living room and host anyone who wants to stop by for a conversation and some pretzels and iced tea. Kate Pane and Valerie Suter invite attendees to revisit their childhood and explore the past as they ask visitors to recreate the forts and enclosures we all made as youngsters. Ari Richter will perform a Art Marathon lecture during which he will give 30 minute lectures on 12 separate topics complete with slide show and dry erase board illustration as teaching aids. These are just a few examples of the more than three dozen artists who are currently signed up, but as Field of Dreams explicitly states, attendees are more than welcome to bring their own art as well, whatever form that takes.

In the end, Levin and the Bruce High Quality Foundation’s collaborative event promises to lay an eclectic foundation for the DIY movement’s evolution. The event is open to the public with a $3 suggested donation. The mix of people who will attend and who are presenting art and music will enact the ideal of Bruce High Quality, who sought to interpret the potential of public spaces as sculpture. And for Levin, the musical line-up for Field of Dreams is a heady progression of Latin and hip-hop influenced artists befitting of a man called “the master chef of Urban fusion” by the Los Angeles Times.

via Music Has No Enemies.

The story is a reminder of the drama that ensued when Nabokov instructed his family to burn his final incomplete novel, The Original of Laura, written on 183 separate index cards. The novel was never burned and was held in a safe deposit box in Switzerland for 30 years until it was published by Knopf in 2009.

via BBC News – Newsnight – Should newly uncovered Kafka manuscripts be published?.

Cheval was in every way the perfect subject to create his work of outsider art. He had not stepped anywhere near the famous art academies; he had no contact with famous artists when he began his building his visionary structure. He was simply a local postal worker in Hauterives, who had only gone to school until the age of 13 before starting work at a bakery. Each day he would deliver the mail to the residents in the town and the surrounding area, walking long distances on his route. As he walked, he would glance at the magazines and postcards he was delivering to the residents. Inside the magazines he saw images of foreign, exotic locales that he kept in his mind. He saw early Indian buildings decorated with Hindu gods and goddesses. he saw the monuments in Washington, D.C., the primitive buildings of Polynesian peoples.

These images remained in his head until one day on his route when Cheval stumbled upon an unusual rock that caught his eye. He began collecting these unusual rocks, finding more of them at the same location. These rocks serve as the first building elements of Le Palais Idéal. With them Cheval decided he would spend his nights working by oil lamp and creating what in his mind was the perfect architectural style, a combination of all he had seen in the magazines and postcards he delivered. This project, which soon incorporated cement, lime and mortar took Cheval 33 years and all the work occurred without his neighbors noticing. Cheval completed Le Palais Idéal in 1912, adn not long after he began work on his tomb, an equally elaborate but smaller structure in the same town that took 8 years for Cheval to complete. He died in 1924, shortly after completing his grave.

In the final stages of Le Palais Idéal’s construction, Cheval began to garner the interest of big profile artists of the period. Picasso, then the biggest artist in all of Europe, was inspired by the palace, along with Andre Breton, the father of Surrealism and

Postman Cheval’s Ideal Palace

Cameron plans to release the 3-D version of ‘Titanic’ on the 100th anniversary of the tragedy, which took plane on April 10, 1912.

Cameron had previously criticized the 3-D process. he was quoted in the film business blog, Deadline Hollywood, “Now, you’ve got people quickly converting movies from 2D to 3D, which is not what we did. They’re expecting the same result, when in fact they will probably work against the adoption of 3D because they’ll be putting out an inferior product.”

Titanic Rises in 3-D

image by Bara Kristinsdottir via The New York Times

Chess champion Bobby Fischer died in 2008. But his grave in Iceland was exhumed this past weekend in an attempt to answer claims by Marilyn Young that Fischer is the father of her 9-year-old Filipino daughter named Jinky Young. The exhumation is part of an ongoing battle over Fischer’s estate, which is valued at $2 million. Miyoko Watai, the head of the Japanese Chess Association, also claims that Fischer married her in 2004. From The New York Times:

Marilyn Young filed her claim in Iceland last November. Among the documents she provided were pictures of her, Fischer and Jinky, and postcards to Jinky signed “Daddy” that she said were from Fischer. She has also produced records showing that Fischer gave her money in 2006 and 2007 for Jinky, according to RUV, a public broadcaster.”

Bobby Fischer Is Exhumed – Gambit Blog – NYTimes.com.

The answer, as provided by a reader: “Make a long, weird list of random items on brightly colored paper (items could include a button, a picture of Portlandia, Beau Breedlove’s autograph, etc.). Cross off most of the listed items. At the bottom of the list have “A JUSTIN BIEBER CD (OMG – SERIOUSLY).” Grab the CD, tell the clerk that ‘you are just killing the scavenger hunt competition, and don’t be surprised when about twenty other people come in here looking for this piece of a crap’. Leave, happily.”

via How do you Buy a Justin Bieber CD?.

At some point during those ten years, Scott defaced the 400-year-old book by removing the covers, the frontispiece and the back page to disguise the book, which obviously did not work.

Authorities began an investigation as soon as he brought the book public again, leading to his arrest. Scott’s trial is now underway in England and he has so far plead not guilty to the charges of theft, handling stolen goods, and removing criminal property

BBC News – County Durham man ‘mutilated’ stolen Shakespeare folio.