construction is an online magazine of politics, culture, and literature.
Nathalie Leverger was born in St. Brieuc, Bretagne on the west coast of France. She has a background in business and did not discover her artistic side until she received a box of paints for her 33rd birthday. Since then she has exhibited her work at Galerie du Lézard Aix en Provence France, Art Metz France, Carrousel du Louvre, Gallery Gabrichidze, Salon D’Automne, Biennale d’Art, Gallery l’Expo, among others. This September she has an upcoming solo show at the BJ Art Gallery in Paris.
“‘L’Appartement’ is a story about jealousy, frustration, tears and loneliness. It is also an appeal to be loved. I started to paint this series in 2010, while I was alone in a very small gallery in Versailles. The gallery was far from downtown and I saw very few people during the exhibition. I felt like a prisoner stuck between its walls. Cast away like a punished, naughty child.”
“My history with art is a recent history. Nothing in my family predisposed me to be an artist. I come from a family of merchants and I graduated from business school. I worked in marketing, then logistics for 14 years; I married a serious businessman, had three children … Then I received a paint box as a gift in 1999.”
The last 100 years of major Pittsburgh sports can be separated into two distinct 50-year periods: “uneventful” and “eventful.” Between 1909 and 1959, the Pirates won two World Series titles (’09 and ’25), the Steelers were founded (’33) but were terrible, and the Penguins didn’t exist. From 1960-2010, a lot more happened. Let’s review this period.
On Friday evening (early Saturday a.m. Russia time) I emailed George Gogolev, a childhood friend and PR/Marketing consultant who lives in Moscow, asking him if he was planning to attend the December 10 protest against the election fraud that occurred during the December 4th Duma elections. He was.
“It’s 11 a.m. I’m drunk. and need to go pick up my body armor,” he wrote.
In 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev gave the world a somewhat unexpected Christmas present—he announced the official dissolution of the Soviet Union. And now, twenty years past, there is another surprising Christmas in store: on Christmas Eve, Russians are set to take to the streets and demand for a rerun of the fraudulent December 4 Duma elections. This protest will be a follow-up to the demonstration that happened last Saturday in Bolotnaya Square—the biggest opposition rally in Russia since the early ‘90s—and no one knows what to expect. Will the police be as gentle on Christmas Eve as they were on Saturday? Will more people show up? Will the government actually listen?
Last week, New York magazine published an article about the major reform of Bronx Science High School, one of the top-ranked public high schools in New York City and in the entire country. The reform began in 2001, when Valerie Reidy was hired as the new principal. A longtime Bronx Science biology teacher, Reidy was under the impression that her school was “‘perfect’” and was initially reluctant to change anything about it. But after the high school superintendent “encouraged [her] to think bigger,” Reidy dug into records and concluded that the school’s students, though undeniably smart and accomplished, were not scoring as well on standardized tests, getting accepted into as selective colleges, and winning as many competitions as their counterparts at Stuyvesant and Brooklyn Tech, the city’s two other elite public high schools. Something, she decided, had to change, or else Bronx Science would eventually fall too far behind the others.
The latest in the quest to interview Park Slope’s most mysterious writer takes us into the heart of the neighborhood …
Everything started a couple of months ago, with me trying to open up a can of tuna. I had this whole plan that I was going to make myself a couple of my favorite sandwiches—tuna with sliced cucumbers, and pepper jack cheese melted into the bread—and on the day it went down, I left school at two, and got back to Park Slope by three, lugging the groceries home in the rain.
When I opened my apartment door, my cat, which always creeps real hard on the other side of the door then scurries out of the way as I push it open, was perched on the dining room chair. She looked at me with her dead marble eye, gave a few guttural hiccups that sounded like a toilet being plunged, and barfed a waterfall of vomit on the floor. This was strange; I thought buying her Iams instead of the knockoff Yams had normalized her eating habits.
boardface: wish we were there. where is this?
Construction magazine’s profile of Newt Gingrich —
Newt Gingrich is a dinosaur enthusiast. His interest in animals has led him to pen the introduction to America’s Best Zoos. One time, he gave a speech to the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, city council outlining why the city should establish its own zoo.
Newt is interested in space exploration as well; he wants the U.S. to pursue new achievements in space, such as sustaining civilizations beyond Earth. He has also been a prolific amateur reviewer of military histories and spy novels; according to Katherine Mangu-Ward at The Weekly Standard, it is “‘clear that Newt is fascinated by tipping points—moments where new technology or new ideas cause revolutionary change in the way the world works.’”
This month, in the race for the Republican nomination, Newt Gingrich, rose to the top of the polls, making him the current favorite to challenge President Obama for the White House. A month ago, no one was talking about him. Who is Newt Gingrich, and how did he get where he got?
Jhumpa Lahiri, “The Third and Final Continent”
“Whenever we make that drive, I always take Massachusetts Avenue, in spite of the traffic. I barely recognize the buildings now, but each time I am there I return instantly to those six weeks as if they were only the other day, and I slow down and point to Mrs. Croft’s street, saying to my son, Here was my first home in America, where I lived with a woman who was a hundred and three. ‘Remember?’ Mala says, and smiles, amazed, as I am, that there was ever a time that we were strangers. My son always expresses his astonishment, not at Mrs. Croft’s age but at how little I paid in rent, a fact nearly as inconceivable to him as a flag on the moon was to a woman born in 1866. In my son’s eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way, alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have travelled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”
With all the reminders we get telling us how small we are, it’s amazing to read something that shows you that though you are small, life is still precious and magical.
On Monday, December 5, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) released an International Election Observation report about the Russian Federation, State Duma Elections. The report concluded that “the elections were marked by a convergence of the State and the governing party,” (the United Russia Party (UR); that the media was skewed in favor of UR, with all channels but one favoring it in their broadcasts; that “campaign materials for United Russia and voter information materials in Moscow bore a clear resemblance to one another” (they were indistinguishable); that there was “last minute pressure and intimidation of a key domestic observer group”; and that the counting process was “characterized by frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulations, including several serious indications of ballot box stuffing.” (And the list went on …)
