Innholdsfortegnelse for Dec-22-14 i The New Yorker

PORTRAIT OF FERGUSON … AND THE REDSKINS I was deeply saddened to see the Bob Staake cover depicting St. Louis’s Gateway Arch (“Broken Arch,” December 8th). My partner, my son, and I moved to St. Louis three years ago. Staake lived in the city for seventeen years, and he wrote on The New Yorker’s Web site that he would like those of us in St. Louis to see his image of the broken black-and-white arch in a positive light and appreciate its message. But his illustration elicits resentment in those of us who believe in equality, progress, and justice. The incident in Ferguson is a reminder that there is still so much work to be done, but it is important to note that St. Louis is no different from…

I haven’t done drugs for three days so I name each one after my sister and mother and brother and take them out with me on a walk, each one taking turns leading, each one the leader of a pack that was bred in the midseventies, each leash the color of glass and the density of a star, I hold each leash like something that has returned home after being lost, I walk them under the oaks and maples, under the lilacs and cherries, they walk through the shadows like the team they are, each caring for the other like I always wanted them to, each giving room for a paw, a tail, sometimes smelling each other to make sure they are all right, we are all all right…

ROCK AND POP Musicians and night-club proprietors lead complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in advance to confirm engagements. Bambi Kino If you think “early Beatles” means “Love Me Do” (1962) and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” (1963), you’re not wrong, but you can go a little further back in your paleo-rock exploration. The lads from Liverpool honed their performing skills playing multiple sets of covers in crummy clubs in Hamburg beginning in 1960. Some fifty years later, a few accomplished New York musicians (who have worked with the acts Maplewood, Nada Surf, Guided by Voices, and Cat Power) tapped into that material, naming their band for where the Beatles slept, in the back of Hamburg’s Bambi Kino cinema. The Beatles may not have done any holiday material…

Mr. Dialect pauses on a bluff twice pink in the spreading lakes, his suit bespoke and out of style. His very mood an index of gestures that the artist oversteps. Where should he look for the abiding tinge that flushes the cheeks of all these second homes? Compulsive translator, in time he’ll slip the modesty that’s his; he too reaches for effects. And the other one who is not upside down in the lake, rippling, with almost the same intensity sends regrets. He wanted to go to some expense in meeting you, with care for the adjectives. Mr. Dialect alone cast a shadow at noon. He did it by leaning slightly. It’s far from my wish to identify with the nameless on these islands, he thought. His eyelashes blond…

“An Irish Christmas” The singer, banjoist, and mandolinist Mick Moloney came up in the Dublin folk scene of the nineteen-sixties, then moved to Philadelphia, earning a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He also founded the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra, based at N.Y.U. With the fiddler Athena Tergis, the klezmer singer Tamar Korn, the Filipino vocalist Grace Nono, and plenty of help from the local community of musicians and scholars, he’ll be presiding over four evenings of songs, stories, lore, and laughs, presented by the Irish Arts Center. (Symphony Space, Broadway at 95th St. 212-864-5400. Dec. 18-21.) Big Apple Circus This nonprofit organization might take its name from the biggest metropolis in the country, but its tented spectacles always have an intimate feel,…