Model Airplanes

What better way to get through the long, cold winter season than with a few good books? The Daily News asked Winona-area book lovers—authors, poets, bookstore owners and more—which books they recommend to read by the fire during the cold and dreary winter months. The responses have been edited for length and clarity.

P.S. DUFFY, author

Deep cold with a high of 15 below calls for curling up with a book, under quilts, by the fire, preferably with a good brandy. No? Not brandy? Hot tea then. Give yourself over to winter’s reflection, its intersections of present and past with this first line: “Sometimes in the night he dreamed about the dead—familiar faces and the others, half-forgotten ones, fleetingly summoned up.” It opens Colm Toibin’s 2004 novel, The Master, about the last years of Henry James’ life. Don’t dash through it. Winter’s about slowing down. Be interior with James in the tension of the creative impulse where memory and imagination meet and wander back through lush landscapes of 19th century Ireland, Paris, Italy, America and coastal Britain. Then you’ll find spring has come once again.

BETH ONESS, author, poet, professor One of my all-time favorite novels is Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Love, sex, eroticism, philosophy and politics. What more could one want?

STEVE SCHILD, poet, professor “If you’re looking for sheer genius expressed as goofiness, find Tom Robbins’ Still Life with Woodpecker. It’s about “a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes,” about “making love stay,” about

Article source: http://www.winonadailynews.com/news/local/the-week-s-top-or-so-in-review-wsu-women/collection_fe9a0aa5-8434-5aa0-b71a-2d50bf616951.html

Governor Christie returned home Friday night to declare a state of emergency ahead of a snowstorm expected to bring near-blizzard conditions to North Jersey, where as much as a foot of snow is anticipated by Saturday night, and to create even more problems in other parts of the state, where twice as much snow is expected and coastal flooding has been forecast.

Meteorologists have been watching the storm all week, and became more and more certain about the track and its anticipated impact on different areas with each passing day. The Washington, D.C., area was expected to get hit by the brunt of the storm, with more than 2 feet of snow and blizzard conditions, but the main body of the storm is expected to pass south of North Jersey, forecasters said on Friday.

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A record number of Air Force drones crashed in major accidents last year, documents show, straining the U.S. military’s fleet of robotic aircraft when it is in more demand than ever for counterterrorism missions in an expanding array of war zones.

Driving the increase was a mysterious surge in mishaps involving the Air Force’s newest and most advanced “hunter-killer” drone, the Reaper, which has become the Pentagon’s favored weapon for conducting surveillance and airstrikes against the Islamic State, al-Qaeda and other militant groups.

The Reaper has been bedeviled by a rash of sudden electrical failures that have caused the 2 1/2-ton drone to lose power and drop from the sky, according to accident-investigation documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Investigators have traced the problem to a faulty starter-generator but have been unable to pinpoint why it goes haywire or devise a permanent fix.

All told, 20 large Air Force drones were destroyed or sustained at least $2 million in damage in accidents last year, the worst annual toll ever, according to a Washington Post investigation. The Pentagon has shrouded the extent of the problem and kept details of most of the crashes a secret.

The aircraft losses pose another challenge for the Air Force as it struggles to provide sufficient drone coverage for counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Libya, Mali and Cameroon, among other countries.

Despite a surge in requests from field commanders, the Air Force last year had to curtail its drone combat missions by 8 percent because of

Article source: http://www.heraldonline.com/news/article55803720.html

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Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/01/24/debris-could-linked-doomed-malaysia-flight/79267544/

Modern Painters checks in with the busy independent curator Neville Wakefield, who is juggling a slew of new projects: a gig at Red Bull Studios New York; the redesign of Playboy magazine; and a Palm Springs, California-based biennial, organized with Ed Ruscha, among them.

What’s one work of art you would own, if cost/logistics/reality were no obstacle?

Most of what I like is experiential and can’t be bought. The pieces that give me the most pleasure are works such as Chris Burden’s “Coals to Newcastle,” 1978, a performance piece that entailed flying a small model airplane loaded with a couple of joints into Mexico. The documentary residue is deadpan, hilarious, poetic, absurdist, and profound — what a great work of art should be.

What’s one work of art you already own that you’d be most inclined to save in an emergency?

I have a set of William Blake’s etchings, “Illustrations of the Book of Job,” that have been passed down through three generations in my family. I’d probably grab these, as I’d like to be able to pass them on to the fourth generation: my children.

You are heading up art programming for Red Bull Studios New York. Can you tell us a bit about the two-artist show “BIO:DIP,” that will be on view February 20 through

Article source: http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/1315649/curators-choice-neville-wakefield