Architecture, literature, horticulture (sort of) and dentistry: We're all over the What-We're-Reading map today.
Obama's Granny: While Chicago is buzzing about the wheres and the whats of the Obama library, another project bearing the Obama name is a bit further along. Senior editor Andrew Herrmann is reading a curbed.com story about the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation educational center in Kenya. Named after the president's step grandmother, the foundation recently released renderings by architect Diebedo Francis Kere of an education campus that would serve 1,000 students. Sarah Obama was the president's grandfather's second wife and helped raise the president's father, Barack Obama Sr.
Kere, who is based in Berlin, Germany and originally from Burkina Faso in West Africa, is one of the participants in the Chicago Architecture Biennial, kicking off this weekend, which features architects and their works from around the world. Some events are open to the public.
A rendering of a proposed education campus in Kenya, designed by architect Diebedo Francis Kere of Berlin. [Kere Architects]
Shakespeare the Right Way: What do you think William Shakespeare meant when his Juliette questions, "Wherefore art thou Romeo?"
She isn't asking where Romeo is, if that's what you're thinking — and it's certainly a common misunderstanding. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is having all of Shakespeare's plays "translated" from English into, well, more modern English. They hope this will make the plays more easily accessible and understandable for a wider audience, but it's a move that's generated controversy among those who question if it will damage the Bard's prose and literary legacy.
(If you're still busting your brain trying to figure out what "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" means, Juliette is wondering why the man she's fallen in love with has to be Romeo, an enemy of her family.)
And if you're a Shakespeare fan, you'll probably love this video, which shows how Shakespeare's plays were originally pronounced:
Marijuana Falls From the Sky in Arizona: A 28-pound bundle of marijuana fell through the sky and into a family's carport, crushing a dog's crate in the Arizona town of Nogales, a few miles from the U.S. and Mexico border, USA Today reports. The dog was not in the crate at the time of the fall. Nogales police told the family that a pilot in an ultralight aircraft likely dropped the bundle early by accident, a local newspaper reported.
The Classism of Teeth: Something like 75 percent of Americans are afraid of the dentist. Know what's scarier? Not being able to afford to take care of your teeth. In the terrific essay "Poor Teeth," recently long-listed for inclusion in Best American Essays, author Sarah Smarsh shares her experience of growing up poor in a family plagued by bad teeth. Her father, who's never had dental insurance, "almost died when infection from an abscessed tooth poisoned his blood and nearly stopped his heart," she writes. Along with health issues comes the shame of being labeled "white trash" and the vicious ridicule aimed at "people who look like contemporary U.S. poverty," she says.
