Arts & Culture

Country Music Award winner Gretchen Peters had an eventful 2010: The BP oil spill washed up on her doorstep, a good friend committed suicide, and her son announced that he's transgender. The last of those in particular, she says, got her thinking about personal conflict.

For his third symphony, the 26-year-old American composer Mohammed Fairouz decided to incorporate text in three languages. Poems and Prayers, which had its debut Thursday in New York, features passages in Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic.

The symphony was commissioned by Northeastern University, where Fairouz teaches. The idea was to write something exploring the conflicts in the Middle East, so for inspiration, Fairouz delved into the region's poetry — both ancient and modern.

He took on competition that was much bigger and much faster, but in the end the judges decided Malachy, a Pekingese with a long mop of fur framing his funny little pushed-in face, was the top dog in the land and gave him top honors at the Westminster Kennel Club show in New York.

The New York Times describes his win thus:

It's not all about sports bars and Bowl parties; Hippo Editor Amy Diaz has a few suggestions for those who want a little art this weekend, including a new exhibit at The Currier, a trio of one act plays, and some opera. 

Richard Starkey always had dreams of being a musician — long before he took up the drums, joined The Beatles and became Ringo Starr. But his career didn't end when the band broke up.

Since Adam wrote here yesterday of science as a meaningful pursuit, or better, of how a science-inspired way of quenching our unquenchable thirst for knowledge about ourselves and the world will add meaning to one's life, I'd like to take off on a tangent also springing from Umair Haque's recent blog post in the Harvard Business Review.

You can catch up on the Oscar-nominees this weekend, but there's also a chance to catch a rocumentary on Portsmouth's music scene in the 90's and ask the screenwriter of Ground Hog Day why he wanted Bill Murray to live forever.  Hippo Editor Amy Diaz has the popcorn.