Odds and Ends: Naked art, feisty lunch ladies, pilot follies

Touch the naked people, get kicked out of museum

Some visitors to a new exhibit at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art are being asked to leave because they are touching nude performers.

The performers featured in Marina Abramovic’s new exhibition have complained of being pushed, prodded and poked by some patrons.

The museum acknowledged it has had problems with some visitors touching the live art. It is declined to talk about specific cases, but says visitors caught doing it are escorted out.

The exhibition opened March 14 and presents a view of Abramovic’s career over four decades.

It includes nude performers standing in a narrow doorway that visitors can pass through. Elsewhere, a naked woman reclines with a fake skeleton on top of her.

Lunch lady revenge: cheese sandwiches

Students at New Jersey’s Atlantic City High School have learned not to mess with the lunch ladies.

Cafeteria workers served only cheese sandwiches Wednesday and Thursday as punishment for a food fight.

School Superintendent Fredrick Nickles said the school supplies only the basic food requirement when there’s been a food-throwing incident. Nickles said the policy has been effective over the years.

Only the group that engaged in the fight out of the school’s three lunch periods was punished.

Parent Bridgitte Reid became angry after her daughter explained the menu. Reid called it “prison food.”

A full meal was on the menu for students Friday.

Pilot crashes while seeking directions from tractor driver

A small plane has crashed when the pilot lost his bearings and decided to ask a tractor driver for directions, a Russian news agency reported. No one was hurt.

RIA-Novosti quoted a local police spokesman as saying the accident happened Friday in southern Russia’s Stavropol region.

It said the pilot lost his way, saw a tractor below and decided to land to get advice from the driver.

Oleg Ugnivenko, a spokesman for the regional branch of Russia’s Emergency Situations Ministry, said the An-2 agricultural plane grazed the tractor while landing in the field and broke its landing gear.

George Washington’s library books were due 220 years ago

If George Washington were alive today, he might face a hefty overdue library fine.

New York City’s oldest library says one of its ledgers shows that the president has racked up 220 years’ worth of late fees on two books he borrowed, but never returned.

One of the books was the “Law of Nations,” which deals with international relations. The other was a volume of debates from Britain’s House of Commons.

Both books were due on Nov. 2, 1789.

New York Society Library head librarian Mark Bartlett says the institution isn’t seeking payment of the fines, but would love to get the books back.

The ledger also lists books being taken out by other founding fathers, including Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr and John Jay.

The entry on Washington simply lists the borrower as “president.”

From Herald news services

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