The Associated Press
• Rosanne Cash's latest honor is a medal previously awarded to Toni Morrison, Stephen Sondheim and Georgia O'Keeffe, among others. The singer-songwriter is this year's winner of the Edward MacDowell Medal, presented by the MacDowell artist colony in Peterborough, N.H., which announced the prize Sunday. In a statement issued through MacDowell, Cash said she was profoundly humbled to receive an award that Morrison and others had been given. "I do not place myself in any way equal, but I accept this honor with deepest gratitude, as an encouragement to do my best work, and in the service of future inspiration. My heart is full with this precious recognition," she said. Cash, who turns 65 later this month, has won four Grammys and is known for such albums as Interiors, Seven Year Ache and The River and the Thread. The award committee was chaired by the critic Greil Marcus, who in a statement cited her long history of achievements and her background as the daughter of Johnny Cash. "From the shockingly intimate timbre of Seven Year Ache in 1981 to the reflective darkness of She Remembers Everything 37 years later, as a composer, singer, and someone who can, in a sense, summon ambiance, Rosanne Cash has distinguished herself from her contemporaries as she has escaped the weight of her celebrated forebears," Marcus said.
• Michelle Obama was joined by a famous fellow reader Monday on her popular online series Mondays With Michelle Obama. The former first lady first read The Giraffe Problem, by Jory John and Lane Smith. Then she was joined by Barack Obama, seen over the weekend addressing the country's high school graduating class, as they took turns -- the former president even barked at one point -- on Julia Sarcone-Roach's A Bear Ate Your Sandwich. Michelle Obama has been reading midday Monday for the past several weeks in support of families with small children at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Books she has featured include Julia Donaldson's The Gruffalo and Eric Carle's The Hungry Caterpillar. Next Monday, she will bring on a pair of nonreaders -- the family's dogs, Bo and Sunny -- for the canine-appropriate Can I Be Your Dog? by Troy Cummings. The series can be viewed on the Facebook and YouTube pages of PBS Kids and on the Facebook page of the Obamas' publisher, Penguin Random House.
A Section on 05/19/2020