July 20, 2019 - Air Mail

Issue No. 1

It Was a Great Week for …

… the United States Congress (or, anyway, better than the week Pyotr Kikilyk had—more on him in a moment): Robert Mueller’s testimony was delayed till July 24, freeing up Democrats to bicker among themselves…

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The View from Here

By Graydon Carter

Welcome to this first edition of AIR MAIL. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles we plan for it in the months ahead. But as a general roadmap of where we plan on going, it will have to do.

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Sweden Hive-Minded To raise awareness about the world’s imperiled bee population, McDonald’s franchises in Stockholm and…

The 18th-century interior of Rome's imperiled caffè.

Italy Caffè Finito? Non Ancora! Although the Italian government declared Antico Caffè Greco a cultural treasure in 1953, jaded Romans know…

An underwater reefscape near West Maluku, Indonesia.

Indonesia Good Reef In an effort to protect marine life from global warming, UNESCO has cordoned off part of the Coral Triangle…

The crew of Apollo 15 in Houston, 1971. From left: David R. Scott (mission commander), Alfred M. Worden (command-module pilot), and James B. Irwin (lunar-module pilot).

First Scam on the Moon
Apollo 11 was one small step for man, one giant leap for some German philatelists

By Emily Ludolph

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Hidden Figure

At the Moon launch, NASA engineer JoAnn Morgan took a small step for womankind

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Cam Spence in the West Village, New York, June 2019.

Cam Spence When the comedienne talks to herself, other people listen

By Josh Duboff

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Château Diter, a palazzo in the South of France.

Fawlty Towers The château that ate Provence

By John von Sothen

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“Call my attorney and say that I killed Ted in self-defense. Call my publicist
and say that I wish Ted the best of luck in all his future endeavors.”

A scene from the HBO series My Brilliant Friend, based on the novels of Elena Ferrante.

Ferrante Fatigue Why Italian women un-friend the author of My Brilliant Friend

By Andrea Lee

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Shop Altuzarra ‘Espadrille’ Tote It travels easily and often on a red-eye to Seoul or a puddle jumper to Mustique

Hip Hop But Not earrings, by Roxanne Assoulin.

Shop Roxanne Assoulin No offense to the finer stuff, but Roxanne Assoulin’s costume jewelry often delivers…

Shop Anglo-Italian “What would Gianni Agnelli wear?” It’s a question more than a few men ask themselves. In 2019, we have…

A Honda Vamos from the Stuart Parr Web site.

Drive Honda Vamos Many 1970s cars had names that could have been rock bands: Thing, Mini Moke, and the Jimny. Lightweight, utilitarian…

Shop Altuzarra ‘Espadrille’ Tote It travels easily and often on a red-eye to Seoul or a puddle jumper to Mustique

Shop Roxanne Assoulin No offense to the finer stuff, but Roxanne Assoulin’s costume jewelry often delivers…

Shop Anglo-Italian “What would Gianni Agnelli wear?” It’s a question more than a few men ask themselves. In 2019, we have…

Drive Honda Vamos Many 1970s cars had names that could have been rock bands: Thing, Mini Moke, and the Jimny. Lightweight, utilitarian…

John Malkovich as Barney Fein and Ioanna Kimbook as Yung Kim Li (behind her, Doon Mackichan as Sondra) in Bitter Wheat, at the Garrick Theatre, London, June 2019.

#MeToo Takes the Stage
In London, Mamet’s new “Weinstein play” repels critics but delights audiences

By John Lahr

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Instagroan

The End of Silent Suffering

By Cazzie David

11

Kylie Jenner bares her soul to the planet.

Suki Waterhouse, a British model, actress, influencer, and entrepreneur.

Lil Miquela is an Instagram robot, also known as a digital avatar or virtual influencer.

Hailey Bieber is a model and television personality.

Charli XCX is an English singer and pop star.

Kelly Oxford is an author, Twitter personality, and writer on *Busy Tonight.*

Jade Roper is a former star of *The Bachelor.*

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Signac's Lézardrieux, l'Église is estimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000 at Sotheby's.

Vue de Signac

The art of French Neo-Impressionist painter Paul Signac is in high demand. So much so that, in May of last year, his 1915 depiction of the port of La Rochelle, valued at about $1.7 million, was stolen from the Museum of Fine Arts in Nancy, France. (This spring, it was recovered in Ukraine and returned to the museum.) Signac, born in 1863, is best known for his contributions alongside Georges Seurat to the pointillism movement. Throughout his career, Signac also painted watercolors: Lézardrieux, l’Église, painted in Brittany, circa 1929, is on view at Sotheby’s in advance of its sale in the Impressionist and Modern Art Online auction on July 24.

Signac’s Lézardrieux, l’Église is estimated to sell for $20,000 to $30,000 at Sotheby’s.

The Man Behind the Craigslist for Sloanes and Squires

“What ho, Nigel!”

By Robin Olson

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Austria's Bregenz Festival, on through August 18, features Verdi's Rigoletto on the lake.

Rigoletto, Alfresco

For drop-dead operatic dazzle on a colossal scale, the Bregenz Festival’s floating stage at the Austrian end of Lake Constance takes a back seat to no showcase on earth, not even the fabled Verona Arena. Conventional scenic design is useless here. The action is far away. Nuance is a lost cause. What’s needed is an extravagant visual metaphor that distills the essence of the classic at hand. Engineered like spaceships, each show takes months to build and runs for two seasons, to almost invariably sold-out houses. The new attraction this year is Rigoletto, Verdi’s twisty tragedy of a court jester’s revenge. —Matthew Gurewitsch

Austria’s Bregenz Festival, on through August 18, features Verdi’s Rigoletto on the lake.

Discover

The Boom Overture, expected by the mid-2020s.

Supersonic Boom New York to London could take 90 minutes

By Tom Knowles

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Thanks, but No Thanks

Rejection letters you may have missed

Greetings from the Anthropocene: in Brazil, combines harvest soybeans on land that was part of the rain forest.

Grim Reaping Forest twice the size of Wyoming destroyed to grow food

By Ben Webster

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"The Twelve Dancing Princesses," a Brothers Grimm fairy tale, was illustrated by Kay Nielsen for In Powder and Crinoline, published in 1913.

Nielsen Enchanted

It’s not every fairy-tale illustrator who could pull off collaborations with both Walt Disney and Karl Lagerfeld, but the Danish artist Kay Nielsen (1886–1957) forged a sophisticated aesthetic that embraced the strangeness of these tales while mirroring the latent eroticism that have made them stick for centuries. He was, in a word, catnip to big-time make-believers like Disney and Lagerfeld. READ ON

“The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” a Brothers Grimm fairy tale,
was illustrated by Kay Nielsen for In Powder and Crinoline, published in 1913.

Discover