Colum McCann (born 1965) is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He is a Professor of Contemporary Literature at European Graduate School and Professor of Fiction at CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Nathan Englander. McCann's fiction has been published in 30 languages. His novels include Songdogs, This Side of Brightness, Dancer, Zoli and Let the Great World Spin. He has written for numerous newspapers and periodicals, including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, The Times, The Irish Times, Granta, and La Repubblica. His short story "Everything in this Country Must" was made into a short film directed by Gary McKendry. It was nominated for an Academy Award in 2005. In 2003 McCann was named Esquire Magazine's "Best and Brightest" young novelist. He has also been awarded a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, the Irish Novel of the Year Award and the 2002 Ireland Fund of Monaco Princess Grace Memorial Literary Award. He was recently inducted into the Hennessy Hall of Fame. His novel Let the Great World Spin (2009), uses the true story of Philippe Petit as a "pull-through metaphor," and "weaves together a powerful allegory of 9/11." The novel has won numerous honours, notably the National Book Award and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. J. J. Abrams has optioned the film rights and has promised to work with McCann on the screenplay. In 2010, McCann and musician Joe Hurley cowrote a song-cycle – “The House That Horse Built (Let the Great World Spin)” – based on the character of Tillie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colum_McCann

Konstantin Kakanias knows that 200 years ago porcelain was considered an art form easily comparable in importance to painting or tapestry weaving (not to mention 2,000 years ago, when vase painting was basically the only game in town). So when the Greek-born artist was asked by several friends and patrons to create sets of painted ceramic plates 14 years ago, Kakanias seized the opportunity to revive this ancient art form. Kakanias, a multimedia artist, lives in Los Angeles and Greece and is best known for his whimsical cartoonlike drawings and watercolors based on the lives of fictional characters. Chickens were the theme for a recent commission by a collector who raises exotic breeds on his Connecticut farm. As a gift for his partner's 55th birthday, the collector ordered an equal number of plates. After the plates are thrown and baked once, Kakanias sits with the bare earthenware dish between his hands, not unlike his predecessor Euphronios. While classical vase painters used something like a pastry bag, Kakanias paints on the plate directly. Like a jeweler, he uses a loupe to achieve the ornate detailing along the borders. Today the chicken plates are lovingly showcased in a display case—specifically designed for them by the owner—in the dining room. Though this might be the most grand commission, it is not his biggest one. Kakanias has made up to 300 dishes for one set, but he is adamant that he will not be transitioning into any kind of standardized production. David Netto
See pictures at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653401047581640.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Some people may question whether prison can truly be a place for rehabilitation. Michael Levi Fuller doesn't. Inmate #46565 here at the Southern Desert Correctional Center, Mr. Fuller has watched some hard cases come into his institution for years, then leave practically reborn. The cases in question are cars—very cool vintage cars. They come in rough and battered, and inmates restore them to their original glory. It may be the penal system's most unusual workshop. "We've got a '56 Jaguar, a '48 Rolls Royce and a Studebaker pickup," says Mr. Fuller in a phone interview. The 51-year-old Mr. Fuller joins 32 fellow medium-security inmates at the prison's auto shop every weekday. It's quite an operation and perhaps the most creative use of captive labor in a multibillion dollar business-behind-bars archipelago that stretches from New England to Hawaii. The inmates restore vehicles for a unit of Silver State Industries, a wholly owned subsidiary of another "holding" institution,"We Have the Time to Do It Right," is one of the mantras on the unit's corporate website; "Built with Conviction" is another. Although 40 of 50 states still produce license plates behind bars, prison businesses have diversified. Inmates at Arizona Correctional Industries at the Lewis prison complex in Buckeye fix diesel tractors. Nearly a thousand Tennessee and South Carolina convicts use draw knives and hand scrapers to "antique" floors for a company that markets interiors with a vintage look. The Pendleton, Ore., penitentiary sells a line of Prison Blue work apparel. California has a product in development: its own denim collection, Folsom Prison Blues. Joel Millman http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203911804576653670533388508.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_editorsPicks_1

Architect Daniel Libeskind, known as the master planner for the World Trade Center site, has produced a head-turning extension to the German army's military museum in Dresden. Like a piece of shrapnel freshly fallen from the sky, Mr. Libeskind's five-story, 200-ton wedge of steel and glass juts out of the austere neoclassical structure that first opened to the public in 1897 as part of Kaiser Wilhelm I's armory. The Kaiser opened the site, now known as the Military History Museum, to boast of Germany's bellicose military culture, which ultimately culminated in two world wars and the Holocaust. In that period, 85 members of Mr. Libeskind's family perished. It was this history and his childhood experiences with anti-Semitism in Poland that inspired Mr. Libeskind's widely admired design of Berlin's Jewish Museum, which opened in 2001. The 65-year-old says his passion for resurrecting the dilapidated armory is apropos. "Precisely because I'm a child of Holocaust survivors," he says, "I had no qualms about speaking in a democracy about the importance of a military for democracy. If Germany had been a democracy, those horrors would never have happened." The museum was long a medium for military propaganda. As a Nazi military museum, it survived the bombing of Dresden in February 1945 because it was on the city's outskirts. Until reunification in 1990, the building housed a Soviet propaganda museum to educate East Germans about the proletarian struggle. The museum has been mostly closed since 2004. From the outset, Mr. Libeskind sought to slice into the former armory—catalyzing a visual "shift in axis." "I wanted my building to penetrate the opacity of the armory's rigid structure," he says. Mr. Libeskind's design includes a 99-foot-high viewing platform. "From the platform you see a Dresden that rose from the ashes of its bombing," says the architect. Inside the Libeskind extension are 11 mini-exhibitions emphasizing how the military—and often subsequent violence—permeates all cultures and societies. In a section on "War and Fashion," visitors learn how trench coats, khakis, standardized sizing and even Ray-Ban sunglasses were developed to improve military efficiency. There's a charred Nazi toy tank found in a bombed-out Dresden home. Mary M. Lane
See picture of the museum at: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576639191201461686.html

Historic Artists' Homes and Studios selected by the National Trust for Historic Preservation See 32 at: http://www.preservationnation.org/travel-and-sites/sites/hahs.html?related_state=&related_region= Search by state or region at: http://www.preservationnation.org/travel-and-sites/sites/artists-homes.html

The fossils seemed hardly worth a second look. The one from England was only a piece of jawbone with three teeth, and the other, from southern Italy, was nothing more than two infant teeth. But scientists went ahead, re-examining them with refined techniques, and found that one specimen’s age had previously been significantly underestimated and that the other’s dating and identity had been misinterpreted. They had in fact discovered the oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans in the whole of Europe, two international research teams reported November 2. In tests conducted at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit in England, the baby teeth from Italy were dated at 43,000 to 45,000 years old. Other analysis showed the teeth to be those of a modern human, not a Neanderthal, as previously thought when the fossil was unearthed in 1964 from the Grotta del Cavallo. Similar tests at Oxford established that the age of the jawbone, from Kents Cavern near Torquay, Devon, had been significantly underestimated, by about 7,000 years, probably because of contamination when it was originally dated in 1989. The age is now set at 41,500 to 44,200 years old, making this the oldest known modern human fossil from northwestern Europe.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/science/fossil-teeth-put-humans-in-europe-earlier-than-thought.html