The one Lleyton wants
The News Review:
- The one Lleyton wants
- Gangs’ Deadly Reach Growing Younger
- ‘Democracy’: A Big Yes Vote
- The Pope and His Legacy
- Residents Voice Fears at Forum on Gang Growth
The one Lleyton wants
The Age – Jan 30, 2005
The closest he came was inthat ‘88 clash, the first men’s final at Melbourne Park – the lasttime a local was in contention for the title. Since then,Australians have won Wimbledon and the US Open, even got close atthe French Open, but fell short in Melbourne year after year. It’s as if the controversial Rebound Ace surface has been likeKryptonite to home-grown Supermen and women. Either that, or thegods of tennis have punished the sport’s administrators for turningtheir backs on the grass that nurtured Court and Goolagong, Emersonand Rosewall. When he goes out to play Safin, Hewitt will walk past picturesof those champions. Especially this year, Open history iseverywhere. If he wins, Hewitt will not only end a long drought -the last Australian winner was in 1976 – but add his name to anillustrious list.
Gangs’ Deadly Reach Growing Younger
Washington Post – Jan 30, 2005
Culmore is home to MS-13’s fastest-growing youth clique, Silva Loco Salvatrucha, according to gang members and detectives. “Silva is a big clique, and all are from Northern Virginia. It’s home-grown,” an MS-13 member said. “But it’s not a respected clique — it’s always been disgraceful to MS. They are young and stupid. They just want to be number one. They just want to be big.
‘Democracy’: A Big Yes Vote
Washington Post – Jan 30, 2005
And then there is the opera’s narrator, Baron Jacobi, the Bulgarian minister, who watches the spectacle, sees through everybody and everything, makes his pile, loses his job and, triumphantly, heads home. Wheeler’s score is a fine one, although stronger by far in Act 1 than in Act 2, which has rather too much of the clotted, snap-crackle-pop, percussive busyness that so often mars the work of Elliott Carter and his disciples. If I generally find Wheeler’s music more often clever than funny, there remain long, inspired passages of radiance (especially the finale to Act 1, which is beautifully balanced, musically and dramatically, and sends the spectator out to intermission glowing). Best of all, he writes skillfully and idiomatically for the human voice — even in the opera’s most strenuously modernist moments, Wheeler never asks his singers to leap around the staff like so many mountain goats negotiating impossible terrain — and his orchestration is inevitably supple, colorful and assured. This is Wheeler’s first full-length opera: I hope there will be many more. When it was announced that the cast would be made up mostly of members of the Washington National Opera’s young artist program, it seemed something of a cop-out, and one wondered why the troupe’s first commissioned opera in a decade wasn’t being entrusted to established professionals. As it happened, this was an altogether inspired decision: Across the board, the youthful players brought immaculately polished singing and acting to their characterizations, and threw in an enthusiasm and rooted, palpable sense of family that inevitably disappears as people get famous and fees go up…
) My principal complaint about this production of “Democracy” is that Washingtonians have too little time in which to see it, for there will be only one more performance, this afternoon at 2. With the exception of a single scene in “The Ballad of Baby Doe” by Douglas Moore and John Latouche (which takes place at the Willard Hotel!) our town has never been so deftly captured in an opera. While I’m sure “Democracy” will be back sometime (and, alas, will be probably just as relevant as it is now), those who want to experience some home-grown cultural history first-hand should find their way to Lisner Auditorium, and quickly.
The Pope and His Legacy
Washington Post – Jan 30, 2005
Roman Catholic rejection of pluralism, feminism, clerical reform, religious self-criticism, historically minded theology and the application of scientific method to sacred texts would all exacerbate dangerous trends in world Christianity at the worst possible time. That is especially so in the nations of the southern hemisphere, where Catholicism sees its future and where proselytizing evangelical belief — Protestant and Catholic alike — is spreading rapidly. In Latin America, long a Catholic preserve, Rome undercut the home-grown liberation theology movement, which emphasized the rights of the poor over the privileges of the oligarchs, only to find itself competing with imported Protestant missionaries. Ironically, John Paul II, in his determination to restore the medieval European Catholicism into which he was born, became an inadvertent avatar of a new Catholic fundamentalism. The great question now is whether his defensive, pre-Enlightenment view of the faith will maintain a permanent grip on the Catholic imagination. He has been an apostle of peace, yet the last contradiction of his papacy may be how, if this narrow aspect of his legacy takes hold, he will have helped to undermine peace — not through political purpose, but through deeply felt religious conviction. How will the next pope resolve such contradictions? Catholic progressives have one set of hopes, and traditionalists quite another.
Residents Voice Fears at Forum on Gang Growth
Washington Post – Jan 30, 2005
“We’ve got what could be a serious problem down the road if we don’t start addressing it now. MS-13, a Hispanic gang with an estimated 3,000 members in Northern Virginia, has more than 22 “cliques” in Loudoun, according to local officials. The Los Angeles-based Crips and 18th Street Gang have also made their mark on the county, and there are home-grown gangs committing crimes and recruiting in the area, said sheriff’s investigator Frank Pearson. Pearson presented a slide show showing gang graffiti throughout the county — mostly variations of the MS-13 symbol, sprayed across Goose Creek Bridge, on the side of the Sterling Park Mall and on Plaza Street in Leesburg. Recent speculation about ties between MS-13 and al Qaeda were especially worrisome to Dawn Gelormino of Ashburn. “Are we truly prepared to handle this epidemic?” asked Gelormino, one of about 50 in attendance. Containment was another concern of hers, echoed by others in the audience who had doubts about the proposal to extend Metrorail into Loudoun.