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Movie Reviews
4:29 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Back To Woodstock, And To The Spirit Of The '60s

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Credit Jacob Hutchings / Strategic Motion Ventures LLC
A big-city lawyer (Catherine Keener, right) must adjust to the hippie lifestyle when she and her daughter (Elizabeth Olsen, left) go to Woodstock to visit her mother (Jane Fonda) in Peace, Love & Misunderstanding.
Credit Jacob Hutchings / Strategic Motion Ventures LLC
Zoe (Olsen) finds romance in Woodstock with the local butcher, Cole (Chase Crawford).
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By Andrew Lapin

Several characters in Peace, Love & Misunderstanding, a bland comedy about generational disconnect, read and worship Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. And just as Whitman's paean to "thee old cause" celebrated "thou stern, remorseless, sweet idea," so too does the film push, much less sternly and sweetly, its own idea: that the spirit of the 1960s is alive and well and (still) living in Woodstock.

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Poetry
4:25 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

New U.S. Poet Laureate: A Southerner To The Core

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By editor

Originally published on Thu June 7, 2012 4:54 pm

The United States named its 19th poet laureate today: Natasha Trethewey, a professor of English and creative writing at Emory University in Atlanta. She is the nation's first poet laureate to hail from the South since the initial laureate — Robert Penn Warren — was named by the Library of Congress in 1986.

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Youth Radio
4:25 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Calif. School District Finds Gentler Path To Discipline

Credit Robyn Gee
A gavel rests in a makeshift courtroom at Richmond High School in Richmond, Calif. The local school district has cut the number of student suspensions in half in six years by adopting a youth court program and other new discipline methods.
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By editor

Originally published on Thu June 7, 2012 5:57 pm

Each school year, more than 700,000 California students — predominantly black and Latino — are suspended or expelled.

Robert, a talkative sixth-grader in the city of Richmond, has been suspended three times from his elementary school in the West Contra Costa Unified School District. If he gets suspended one more time, he says, he might get expelled. [NPR has withheld his last name because he is a minor.]

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Movie Reviews
4:03 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

In 'Patagonia,' Pristine Rivers And A Plan For Dams

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Credit Brian Lilla / First Run Features
The Baker River is one of two waterways that would be dammed in a proposed hydroelectric project in the fabled Patagonia region of Chile. This section of the river would become a reservoir under the plan.
Credit Brian Lilla / First Run Features
Lalo Sandoval and his granddaughter Sara row the Baker River in Chile. Many of the residents of the Patagonia river valleys still travel via ox cart and small boat.
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The way the Andes divide Patagonia, Argentina gets most of the land and Chile most of the water. As shown in Patagonia Rising, a new documentary, the landscape on Chile's side of the border is similar to coastal British Columbia or the Alaska panhandle: chilly, forested, mountainous and very wet.

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Movie Reviews
4:03 pm
Thu June 7, 2012

Paul Williams is 'Still Alive,' And Taking Every Gig

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Credit Abramorama
Paul Williams, subject of the documentary Paul Williams Still Alive, wrote some of the most enduring songs of the '70s — including "Rainbow Connection" from The Muppet Movie.
Credit Abramorama
Paul Williams, now in his 70s, still tours around the world, including in such far-flung locales as the Philippines.
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A diminutive giant of the 1970s, Paul Williams composed some of the decade's sweetest and most enduring songs — including The Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays," Helen Reddy's "You and Me Against the World," Three Dog Night's "An Old Fashioned Love Song," and "Rainbow Connection" for The Muppet Movie.

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