Travel
Red-light Cameras Open Question: Safety Device or Backdoor Tax Increase?
Maggie Clark writes: A 2012 audit in St. Petersburg showed the number of dangerous side-impact collisions did decrease at intersections where the red-light cameras had been installed. However, rear-end collisions actually increased at those intersections, as more drivers stopped short to avoid violations. In addition to identifying drivers who run through a red light, the cameras tag those who fail to come to a full and complete stop before turning right on red. more »
Another Reason to Visit New York City: Wedding Bed Covers, Tapestries, Quilts and Period Clothing
Jill Norgren writes: Interwoven Globe is a large exhibition begging hours of a visitor's attention. Walk through it first without reading the explanatory signs. Once familiar visually with all that the exhibition has to offer, begin again, studying the signs and considering the objects as expressions of the global artistic exchanges made possible by the golden age of European maritime navigation. more »
The Empty Frames: Last Seen Exhibit by French artist Sophie Calle at the Gardner Museum
While standing in front of the empty spaces on the Museum walls where works were once hung, Calle asked curators, guards, conservators, and other Museum staff members what they remembered of the missing pieces. Calle used text from the interviews and the photographic images to create a visual meditation on absence and memory, as well as reflection on the emotional power works of art hold on their viewers. more »
Taylor Branch, Barbara Kingsolver, Katherine Paterson, Natasha Trethewey: Authors at the National Book Festival
Authors and poets Margaret Atwood, Marie Arana, Taylor Branch, Don DeLillo, Khaled Hosseini, Barbara Kingsolver, Brad Meltzer, Joyce Carol Oates, Katherine Paterson and Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey will be among writers speaking. New Library of Congress exhibits celebrate opera, the majestic art form that has transfixed audiences for more than 400 years, and the other exhibit celebrates what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the greatest demonstration for freedom in the nation’s history." more »