Bob Dylan tells Nobel prize committee he will not go to Sweden for ceremony

Swedish Academy that awarded him 2016 Nobel literature prize says other commitments
prevent singer from collecting it in person.
Bob Dylan has told the Nobel prize committee he will not be attending the ceremony in Sweden
to pick up his accolade.
Dylan was named winner of this years Nobel prize for literature in October for his vast body of
lyrics and poetry but has since been reluctant to publicly acknowledge the honour.
The 75-year-olds silence led him to be labelled arrogant by one member of the Nobel
academy, and a brief message on his website that he was the the winner of the Nobel prize for
literature 2016 was taken down the next day.
It took two weeks for the singer and songwriter, who has a notoriously troubled relationship to
his own fame, to accept a call from the permanent secretary of the academy, Sara Danius. He
told them he had been left speechless by the honour and later said in an interview he would
absolutely attend an award ceremony if its at all possible.
However, in a personal letter to the academy, Dylan told them he wishes he could receive the
prize personally, but other commitments make it unfortunately impossible.
He underlined that he feels incredibly honoured by the Nobel prize, they added.
The Swedish Academy said it respects Bob Dylans decision but stressed it is unusual for a
Nobel laureate not to come to Stockholm to accept the award in person.
Dylan is not alone in not attending the ceremony. Novelist Doris Lessing was too old, playwright
Harold Pinter was in hospital and writer Elfriede Jelinek had crippling social phobia. Nonetheless,
the academy noted: The prize still belongs to them, just as it belongs to Bob Dylan.
As this years Nobel laureate, Dylan is required to give a lecture on a subject connected with the
work for which the prize has been awarded. The lecture should be given before, or no later than
six months after, the Nobel Prize award ceremony in Stockholm in December.
Making the award announcement in October, Danius the academy hoped the news would be
received with joy, but you never know.
She compared Dylans work to that of ancient Greek writers Homer and Sappho. Asked about the
comparison, Dylan said: I suppose so, in some way. Some [of my own] songs Blind Willie, The
Ballad of Hollis Brown, Joey, A Hard Rain, Hurricane and some others definitely are Homeric in
value.
The decision to award Dylan the Nobel prize was not without controversy. The French Moroccan
writer Pierre Assouline described the decision as contemptuous of writers while Irvine Welsh,
the author of Trainspotting, said that although he was a Dylan fan, this is an ill-conceived
nostalgia award wrenched from the rancid prostates of senile, gibbering hippies.
Will Self also called on Dylan to follow the example of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre
and turn down the prize.
However, before he died, Dylans songwriting peer and friend Leonard Cohen said that no prizes
were necessary to recognise the indelible mark records like Highway 61 Revisited had made on
popular music. To me, he said, [the Nobel] is like pinning a medal on Mount Everest for being
the highest mountain.

Town builds New Zealand's first penguin tunnel

Tiny blue penguins have their own tunnel to protect them from traffic.
Being a penguin in Oamaru Harbor just got a little bit safer.
Located in New Zealand, Oamaru Harbor has been the home to a colony of blue penguins since
the early 1990s after they took up residence in a defunct quarry. These tiny little birds that only
grow to be a foot tall traversed the same road along the city's waterfront each day, heading to
the sea at first light and returning across the busy street at dusk. Despite efforts to steer the
birds to safer areas, the penguins proved to be "very habitual" in their routes, Philippa Agnew, a
marine biologist who works at the Oamaru Blue Penguin Colony, told the Otago Daily Times.
In addition to traffic, human sightseers posed a problem as well. Mayor Gary Kircher explained to
NewsHub, "People who are wanting to stop and see them, people who are wanting to actually
leave the place, and they've all got to wait for the penguins."
So keep the penguins safe along their preferred route and to minimize traffic congestion, Oamaru
Harbory decided to make things safer for the penguins by building an 80-foot-long underpass
tunnel, a first for New Zealand.
The construction project began in late September. Power and waterlines that were already along
the penguins' route were relocated so the tunnel could be built, and local companies donated
materials and labor to the project, making it a community effort.
By Nov. 3, the overpass was open for travel. Lights were set up to help the penguins navigate the
tunnel and cameras were placed near the tunnel to monitor its use. The cameras also give us a
chance to say "Awww" as the penguins waddle their way to their nests.