Last week Louise Penny pulled the plug on her appearance at The Kennedy Center to launch her new mystery, The Grey Wolf.
Said Penny: “I’m in DC, but in the wake of Trump taking over, I have pulled out. It was, of course, going to be a career highlight. But there are things far more important than that.”
“Trump taking over” means his self-elevation to the Chair of the previously bipartisan leadership of Washington’s leading concert hall, which he engineered earlier this month. Trump promised to “make the center GREAT AGAIN,” adding “The Kennedy Center is an American Jewel, and must reflect the brightest STARS on its stage from all across our Nation.”
Since then, Trump has fired the board and its CEO, Deborah Rutter, and appointed a new board who then appointed him Chair – and ticket sales have dropped by 50%.
Maybe audiences are waiting to see just who will be performing at the Center. One thing is clear – the performers previously booked are not the “brightest STARS.”
So as the Washington Post asked: “Why would those performers still want to climb on that stage?”
As comedian W. Kamau Bell replied: “I’m the exact kind of performer he doesn’t want in there, so this is the most important time to do my gig.”
Soprano Karen Slack stood with Bell. Said Slack: “How can I sing about powerful women who fought against oppression at a recital named after Ruth Bader Ginsburg…and just walk away?”
“This is an American project, as much as it is representative of Black women,” she continued, “why would I, in this moment, shy away from presenting it in the Mecca of the arts?”
The Post spoke to a third performer, another Canadian like Louise Penny. Metis singer-songwriter Amanda Rheaume cancelled her show even though it was a huge opportunity to expand into the US. But in the end, she too voted with her feet.
It seems that different artists will bend in different directions: some will boycott in order to protest; others will perform in order to protest. I don’t think there’s any wrong answer.
But Donald Trump is less than two months into his 48-month term of office. What fresh hell (and I mean both “fresh” and “hell”) will he inflict on Canadian artists and the arts in Canada?
Before you say “that’s ridiculous, he would never do that,” one thing the world has learned is that the word “boundaries” does not exist in Trump’s brain. When he says everything’s on the table in negotiating a new trade deal with Canada, or Canada’s absorption as a US state, or just as one of his fusillade of tariffs, he means precisely that: “everything.”
This could mean, for starters…
1. A 25% tariff on all Canadian artists performing at live venues in the US, including authors, musicians, actors …and Cirque du Soleil performers.
2. Insisting that Canada dismantle its existing quotas on Canadian singers and songwriters on Canadian radio stations, as well as Canadian content on Canadian movies and TV shows – because these regulations are unfair to American artists.
3. Blacking out all Canadian dramatic programming on US television, as well as on US-owned streaming networks like Network, Prime and Apple+.
4. Forbidding American publishers, platforms and studios from buying the rights to intellectual property created by Canadian writers and producers, or demanding that they always get full North American rights, cutting out Canadian publishers, platforms and studios.
5. Forbidding Americans from buying tickets to summer festivals such as Stratford and Shaw; and from crossing the Canadian border to attend those events.
6. Forbidding American arts producers, such as the Metropolitan Opera and the Houston Ballet, from partnering with Canadian arts groups on co-productions to defray costs.
The key word here, of course, is “forbidding,” both as in “not allowing,” and in “unpleasant or harmful.”
We’ll know whether this dark speculation of mine is just a fantasy, or…in a couple of years, if the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev, a close friend of Vladimir Putin and sanctioned from performing in the US after Russia invaded Ukraine, will be greeted alongside his Mariinsky Orchestra with a standing ovation from a packed house of 2,465 rabid and adoring concertgoers at The Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
Oh, and what is Louise Penny’s new book, The Grey Wolf, about? A continental war for Canada’s vast supplies of fresh water to destabilize our government and engineer a coup.
Meanwhile…
1. Is flying dangerous? Our recency bias has kicked in. But the facts belie our fears. As the Financial Times noted about the Washington DC mid-air collision where 67 people died: “It is the first US mass-fatality flight since a turboprop plane crashed in 2009 in New York state killing 49 people. Deadly crashes of large planes have gone from several a year in the 1980s and early 1990s, to one every several years today.”
Indeed, says the FT, “the rate of serious crashes of large planes is at or near all-time lows in every region apart from Africa, and even there it’s just a third of what it was 20 years ago.”
If you still have a fear of flying, these platforms may be able to help: Fly Calm, AviaSim, FearlessFlight and Dial A Pilot.
And, what to do if your flight is delayed or cancelled.
2. You may not need a therapist. What you need is a decision coach. As Nell Wulfhartsays: “Your therapist won’t tell you what to do. I will.”
3. Hemingway’s sentence. They’re much more complex than “Courage is grace under pressure,” as I learned this week from two (count ‘em, 2!) different sources, Joan Didion and Philip Roth.
4. Hannah Fry will drive you wild – about mathematics. What a fantastic teacher. Here she is on the virtues of A4 paper, and all her other posts.
5. Fire forest rangers? Why would you do that, Donald? As one of them wrote: “When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money.”
And speaking of resisting, here’s the latest, from Illinois Governor JB Pritzker: “We don’t have kings in America, and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one.” And this from Mark Greif who claims “There is everything to be gained from every refusal, from plain unwillingness to fall into line.”
6. Strange birds, odd sounds. First, the birds: a Great Grey Owl, then a Steppe Eagle, and a Gyr Falcon. Next, the sounds.
7. Twenty-four pieces of good news. The first 23 are here, with charts and maps showing where the world is getting much better, from falling teen births and smoking rates, to rising literacy.
The 24th is that last week the Shoppers Foundation for Women’s Health, the charitable arm of Shoppers Drug Mart, which is owned by Loblaws, which is controlled by George Weston Limited, which is controlled by the Weston Family (breathe here)…gave $10 million to the Manitoba Government’s new Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2Spirit+ Peoples (MMIWG2S+) Healing and Empowerment Fund.
And speaking of Loblaws, last week I hailed the British program, Ask for Angela, that helps women feel safe when they go out to pubs and restaurants. A number of readers flagged that Loblaws (including Shoppers) has been running the same program here for the past two years, in partnership with Victim Services Toronto.
8. Yes, they exist. Directors with no bad films. Plus, the 10 greatest movie scores of all time. And LibriVox.org, a resource offering 40,000 free public-domain audiobooks read by volunteers.
9. Gustavo Gimeno, Lang Lang, Anoushka Shankar, Joshua Bell and more…Last week, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra announced its 2025-26 season. Here’s the preview video…and the full feast for your ears, eyes and worried soul.
Speaking of great music, here’s Scottish actor (and clearly, singer) David Tennant in the opening scene from last week’s BAFTA’s in London: “When you stand up, you know who I’m going to be. I’m going to be the man who stands up next to you.”
And more great music? I didn’t know Roberta Flack was a musical prodigy who trained as a classical musician.
10. Love conquers all. Anderson Cooper’s mom was Gloria Vanderbilt. But his nanny was more. Plus Margaret Thatcher was never keen on feelings. Then, will hospital food save you or kill you? And, how to soften what you say to your partner. Next, a new Oxford study reveals cheese-eating and open fires are linked to a longer life. Finally, who lives longest, and where.
11. What I’m liking. The Frozen Thames. “In its long history, the river Thames has frozen solid forty times. These are the stories of that frozen river.” This book, by Canadian Helen Humphreys in 2008, is based on events that actually took place each time the river froze between 1142 and 1895. An odd, moving and very timely book.
12. What you’re writing. There’s still time to enter the 100-word memoir contest. Here are the rules and rewards. Deadline for submission is next Saturday, March 8, 2025 at 11:59:59 p.m. Eastern Time. So…write like the wind!