A community of artists in a former confectionery factory in Rio de Janeiro have turned to lawyers, aerosol cans and cachaça (sugar-cane liquor) to overturn an eviction order from developers trying to capitalise on the regeneration of the city before the World Cup and Olympic Games.  Their campaign – one of several disputes triggered by the £21bn redevelopment plans for Rio – has drawn the attention of the mayor, Eduardo Paes, and led to questions about the city's priorities and potential as it moves into the international spotlight.  In the past three years, about 50 artists – including sculptors, painters, fashion designers and sound engineers – have created studios and offices in the Behring factory, which once produced chocolates and sweets but is now adorned with ceramic baths suspended from the ceiling by chains, factory equipment transformed into furniture and other installations.  Located in Rio's long-neglected port area, the 80-year-old building offered cheap rent and open space near the city centre.  But the property was recently auctioned and the new owners, Syn Brazil, told residents they had 30 days to get out.  The artists at Orestes 28 – the factory's address – have hired lawyers, lobbied the mayor's office and registered as a cultural organisation.  Some plan to spray paint the building in protest. Others say the experience has brought them together – often over glasses of cachaça.  Alexandre Rangel, a painter, sculptor and installation artist, said: "When we received the eviction notices, we were disorientated at first, but artists are political beings.  We got organised.  It has helped us draw closer together as a community . That is a good thing.  But we are still fighting for the right to stay here."  Theirs is not the only conflict as Rio prepares for 2014 and 2016.  Protesters have petitioned city hall against evictions on the site of the proposed Olympic Village.  But the artists have a selling point.  Similar communities have sprung up in many old factories around the world.  The Dashanzi 798 art district in Beijing was also threatened with demolition before the 2008 Olympics, but artists there successfully lobbied the authorities to make their community a cultural hub for the city.  The residents of Orestes 28 are now trying to do the same.  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/23/rio-artists-evicted-olympics-2016

In recent years about one-third of all the tin mined in the world has come from Bangka in Indonesia, its sister island Belitung to the east, and the seabeds off the islands’ shores.  Because almost half of all tin is turned into solder for the electronics industry, a dominant force in the global tin market today is tablets and smartphones bought by consumers in the U.S. and elsewhere.  The trail from the dangerous mines to the leading names in electronics, including Foxconn Technology Group (HNHPF), the biggest manufacturer for Apple (AAPL)and others, is clear. Shenmao Technology and Chernan Metal Industrial—two of the top solder makers in Asia, both suppliers to Foxconn—say they buy 100 percent of their tin from Indonesia.  Shenmao estimates it’s the dominant supplier of solder to China, the cradle of electronics manufacturing, and accounts for 16 percent of the global market.  Chernan says other clients have included Sony (SNE), Panasonic (PC), Samsung Electronics, and LG Electronics.  The top of seahorse-shaped Bangka is about one degree south of the equator, just off the eastern coast of Sumatra.  It has a population of about 960,000 and has been known for tin for centuries.   Tin is often associated with soup and questionable meats, but tin cans were replaced long ago by containers made from far cheaper steel, lined with plastic or extremely thin coatings of tin, which does not corrode.  Tin’s real use is for solder.  Electronics manufacturers use solder, which today typically contains more than 95 percent tin, to attach and connect components.  The solder points are tiny but omnipresent, numbering about 7,000 in just two of the components in an iPad, according to research company IHS’s (IHS) iSuppli.  

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-08-23/the-deadly-tin-inside-your-ipad#p1

Recommended author:  Born in 1895 in Cincinnati, Helen Hooven Santmyer knew she wanted to be a writer when, at the age of nine, she finished reading Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  Nearly 80 years later, Santmyer’s name would appear on best-seller lists throughout America.  Helen is best known for the widely acclaimed novel …And Ladies of the Club, published in 1982.  In the media blitz that followed the book’s release, there were numerous reports that it took Santmyer 50 years to write the 1,334-page novel.  Along the way, Santmyer wrote four other novels and one collection of essays, most of which reflect her love and admiration of Xenia.   In 1962, Santmyer published Our Town, a collection of essays depicting her early experiences in Xenia.  It won the Ohioana Book Award in 1965.  Shortly after that, Santmyer began to devote serious time to writing …And Ladies of the Club.  Some biographical accounts say that writing Ladies was Santmyer’s angry reaction to Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street (1920), an unflattering novel about small-town life.  …And Ladies of the Club takes place in the fictional Ohio town of Waynesboro.  Men who survived the Civil War have returned home.  Some of the wives form a literary club in effort to enrich their lives culturally.  The title of the book refers to members of this club, through whom the town’s political, cultural, and social changes are related.  http://www.ohioana-authors.org/santmyer/highlights.php

August 24, 2012 from Slipped Disc "on shifting sound worlds" by Norman Lebrecht

A couple of hours after we posted that the instruments of the Sao Paolo Symphony Orchestra were being held at the home airport because Customs were on strike, the entire cargo was mysteriously released – just in time for today’s concert.  A senior source at the orchestra tells us: ’It was no doubt important to show that the subject attracted international attention, and the Olympics should thank you for that too!’  Glad to be of service.  Meantime, Frankfurt remains deadlocked, refusing to return a seized Guarnerius violinto the Brussels-based Yuzuko Horigome until she pays a 380,000 Euro fine.  A Slipped Disc reader has clarified the position by phone with the Customs authorities at Frankfurt airport.  They told her that when you enter Germany with an object whose value is higher than Euro 430 you must go through the red lane anytime and pay a 19% deposit of the value of an instrument, which is repaid when leaving the country.  Ms Horigome went through green and suffered a higher penalty.  http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/08/did-slipped-disc-persuade-airport-to-release-precious-instruments.html

August 25, 2012   Adding to the confusion surrounding instruments in the air, Air Canada has told a student group it would not permit its four cellos to occupy paid seats on a flight from Calgary to Poland.  Why not?  Don’t ask.  It’s chaos in the air for travelling musicians.  The US Congress has introduced some clarity and there is pressure now on the EU to do likewise.  http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/08/no-more-than-two-cellos-on-a-plane-says-airline.html   

Tanglewood is an estate and music venue in Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.  It is the home of the annual summer Tanglewood Music Festival and the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, and has been the Boston Symphony Orchestra's summer home since 1937.  Tanglewood was named for American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. Hawthorne, on the advice of his publisher William Ticknor, rented a small cottage in the area in March 1850 from William Aspinwall Tappan.  While at the cottage Hawthorne  wrote Tanglewood Tales (1853), a re-writing of a number of Greek myths for boys and girls. In memory of the book, the owner renamed the cottage "Tanglewood", and the name was soon copied by a nearby summer estate owned by the Tappan family.  Tanglewood concerts can be traced back to 1936, when the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) gave its first concerts in the Berkshires.  This first three-concert series was held under a tent for a total crowd of 15,000.  That same year, Mary Aspinwall Tappan (descendant of Chinese merchant William F. Sturgis and abolitionist Lewis Tappan), gave the family's summer estate—Tanglewood—to the orchestra.  In 1937, the BSO returned for an all-Beethoven program, presented at Tanglewood (210 acres), donated by the Tappan family.  In 1938 a fan-shaped Shed was constructed, with some 5,100 seats, giving the BSO a permanent open-air structure in which to perform.  Two years later conductor Serge Koussevitzky initiated a summer school for approximately 300 young musicians, now known as the Tanglewood Music Center (formerly the Berkshire Music Center).  The Boston Symphony Orchestra has performed in the Koussevitzky Music Shed every summer since, except for the interval 1942–45 when the Trustees canceled the concerts and summer school due to World War II.  The Shed was renovated in 1959 with acoustic designs by BBN Technologies.  In 1986 the BSO acquired the adjacent Highwood estate, increasing the property area by about 40%. Seiji Ozawa Hall (1994) was built on this newly expanded property.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanglewood

The 2012 Summer Paralympics opening ceremony was held on 29 August 2012, starting at 8.30 p.m. and marking the official opening of the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, England.  The show – named Enlightenment – has Jenny Sealey and Bradley Hemmings as its artistic directors.  Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Games and was joined by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  The ceremony was performed in front of a capacity audience of 80,000 people.  Once the Games were declared open, the Paralympic Flag was carried into the Stadium and hoisted into the air as the Anthem was played.  The Paralympic Flag featured three 'agitos' (Latin for 'I move') in red, blue and green – the colours most represented in national flags around the world.   The big finale was the entrance of the Paralympic Flame into the Stadium.  The torch entered on a wireline controlled descent from 350 feet up on the ArcelorMittal Orbit next to the Stadium, carried by Joe Townsend, a former Royal Marine with amputated legs and a member of the 2016 Rio British Paralympic Association, representing the future.   He passed the torch to David Clarke, member of the 2012 British 5-a-side blind football team, representing the present.  He, with his guide, passed the torch to Margaret Maughan, the first ever Paralympic gold medallist for Great Britain, representing the past.   She in a wheelchair, pushed by her assistant, lit the Paralympic Cauldron, of the same design as the 2012 Olympic Cauldron, with metal pedals on long metal arms.  When lit, it condensed from a splayed open hemisphere to a stand of trumpets.  The Flame will continue to burn for the whole of the Games.  The Cauldron was based on four others kindled on the summits of Scafell Pike, Ben Nevis, Snowdon and Slieve Donard, the highest peaks of each Home Nation: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.  The flame arrived into the stadium after a 92 mile overnight relay from Stoke Mandeville to London.   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Summer_Paralympics_opening_ceremony