No stone slabs in the Maldives

The stone thieves have done it again in Brontë country. This time they have taken stone slabs very near the Brontë Parsonage Museum, in the Heathcliff estate. The Telegraph & Argus reports:

Horrified pensioners woke yesterday to find 50 valuable stone slabs had been stripped from garden walls on their award-winning housing estate.
The Heathcliff estate of maisonettes and flats, in Haworth, won design prizes when it opened in 1968 and has some sixty properties with the majority rented by retired people.
Run by housing provider Incommunities, it also offers sheltered accommodation for elderly people.
And whoever carried out the brazen raid walked right past the windows of occupied homes while hauling the heavy slabs to a waiting vehicle.
"They clearly didn't care if they were caught in the act and would probably have just knocked anyone down who dared challenge them," said one resident who asked not to be named.
He lives right beside one of the low retaining walls which run below a public footpath which leads to the famous Brontë Parsonage Museum.
"This is a real jewel of a place to live and it's disgraceful that they'd just park up in a pick-up or van and steal whatever they wanted - which I estimate is about 50 Yorkshire coping stones." (Chris Tate)

The Milwaukee Express celebrates the fact that the Florentine Opera is going to record for the first time Carlisle Floyd's Wuthering Heights:

Floyd’s scenario follows the 1939 film’s storyline rather closely. He obviously admires the film. Floyd is one of the most respected American operatic composers and his many awards and accolades are well documented. (...)
The Florentine Opera Company will present Wuthering Heights at the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts in an unstaged concert to be recorded live for commercial purposes. According to Bill Florescu, general director of the Florentine Opera, “Carlisle had expressed a preference for recording Wuthering Heights when asked during his recent visit to Milwaukee for our company’s performance of Susannah.” The taping of Wuthering Heights will be funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant and by the Aaron Copland Fund for Music Recording and will be released by Bridge Records.
“I love the opera, feeling that it is underappreciated,” Florescu continues. “It has an appealing lyricism that makes a compelling combination with the more dramatic aspects of the score, but not with Carlisle’s usual folk influence—this being his first opera without a Southern setting. Since the work is not being staged, it becomes easier to capture the metaphysical aspects of the score without having to deal with the difficulties which visual stagecraft would entail.” (Steve Spice)

The Huffington Post's The Third Metric features Emily Brontë's Spellbound for his daily meditation:

Today's meditation features a mystical poem by 19th century author Emily Bronte. "Spellbound" explores the captivating nature of a winter storm and the narrator's inability to break free of its power. (Antonia Blumberg)

We didn't expect a Brontë reference in an article about the Maldives islands but here it is, on 50 High Travel (maybe the meditation of the previous article has something to do):

If you want somewhere non sand-based to chill out, there’s a lovely library above reception looking out to sea, where Dickens and Brontë rub spines with The Hunger Games trilogy, and there’s a telescope for stargazing. (Antonia Blumberg)

Washington Post reviews the novel Against the Country by Ben Metcalf:

Without any dependable sense of chronology, elements of plot are subsumed beneath the narrator’s diatribes. Jane Eyre’s life is an idyllic summer camp in comparison with what this young man endures, holed up in his freezing attic room with wasps, ticks, rats.  (Ron Charles)

Kyra Davis, author of Dangerous Alliance, confesses to her Brontë references in USA Today's Happy Ever After:

Wuthering Heights. Bell's nemesis, Travis, is really just a modern-day Heathcliff ... he even has a Catherine.

Thompson on Hollywood! announces some of the most awaited films in the new year:

10. “Crimson Peak” (Oct 16). It seems only fair that after Mia Wasikowska’s naughty minx of a vampire made life difficult for Tom Hiddleston’s morose bloodsucker in “Only Lovers Left Alive” that he would turn the tables on her in this gothic horror tale with echoes of “Jane Eyre,”” Rebecca” and “The Haunting.” (Susan Wloszczyna)

Mother Nature Networks sings the virtues of daydreaming. According to them the Brontës were great at it:

If you’re particularly skilled at zoning out, you’re in good company. Scientific giants like Albert Einstein and literary masters like the Brontë sisters, to name just a few, were all gifted daydreamers. (Sidney Stevens)

BuzzFeed lists the most romantic lines in literature:

 3. “Whatever our souls are made out of, his and mine are the same…If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.”
—Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights 
Suggested by Alex Zrenner on Facebook

The Telegraph & Argus invites you to participate in The Festival of Walks:

 For those wanting to take a step back into the past at your own leisure there are a series of historic walks too around Brontë country and Saltaire.
Follow in the footsteps of the Brontë siblings along moorland paths and beside the Bronte waterfall in a three-hour moderate six mile walk from St Michael's Church, Main Street, Haworth. (Sally Clifford)

Lifehacker describes the work of a librarian today. One particular advice comes with a Brontë mention:

I don't care that you have library fines. In general there should be no shame attached to them. My friends and family sometimes feel it necessary to confess their library fines to me, but unless you're arguing with me about whether or not you should be charged when your dog tears out the last 50 pages of Wuthering Heights, I really don't care. Even I sometimes have to pay fines or pay for lost items. (Andy Orin)

Chirstian Davis Antiques and Curbed Hampstons echo the rediscovery of the Blake Hall staircase in Long Island.

Mujer Hoy (Spain) talks about the new collection of the fashion designer Sarah Burton:

En esta colección de otoño para Alexander McQueen, Sarah ha puesto en juego todos estos aspectos autobiográficos, en una especie de sortilegio de la autoafirmación.Un extraño páramo brumoso (que no dejaba de emparentarse con el paisaje de su infancia) era el escenario elegido para esa mezcla de corte sofi sticado y salvaje inventiva que es marca de la casa. Lo que latía era una sensación de tardorromanticismo, un aire a lo hermanas Brontë; a Heathcliff, el protagonista de la novela de Emily Brontë “Cumbres borrascosas”, embrujado por la gélida mano de la muerte rasgando su ventana; a los búhos, sueños y poemas de Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a quien Burton cita expresamente. Se mostraron vestidos con capas, capuchas de piel, mangas de campana y bordado delicado, con los bajos deshilachados y en forma de volantes. (Andrew O'Hagan) (Translation)

Paul Walker Baker reviews Jane Eyre 1997; Los Libros de María Antonieta (in Spanish) reviews Wuthering Heights.