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Staff are arranging for locksmiths and services for students who left personal belongings and keys in the building.

Second year student Clare Reilly said: “It’s not about that (keys and personal belongings), four years of work is gone for all those students, the deadline was at 5pm today.

"Even the archive and library in there will be gone.

"There’s so much work and history in the building and it’s gone. I’ve got two years to go but we might not be allowed back in.”

The deadline for the degree shows was 5pm today.

Imagine all of your work being destroyed on the very day you were supposed to be finished.

(From here.)

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Firefighters are tackling a major blaze at a historic building at one of Europe’s leading art schools.

The fire at Glasgow School of Art’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh building was reported at about 12.30pm.

The Scottish fire and rescue service said four appliances had been immediately sent from Cowcaddens, Yorkhill and Maryhill fire stations, and firefighters were on scene within four minutes.

Smoke could be seen billowing from the roof of the building and flames coming from some windows on the upper floors.

A post on Twitter from the school said: “The Mackintosh building is on fire, all have been evacuated & we will post updates as we get them. Currently setting up an incident number.”

From here.

As someone who (a) grew up outside Glasgow and (b) went to art school, it’s no surprise that I’ve spent a lot of time in Glasgow School of Art – whether it was short courses there while I was in high school, going to the degree shows each year or just visiting for the sake of it to see what’s happening, it was a regular haunt whenever I was in town, especially in later years; when I went back to Scotland for the first time in five years, I made a point of going up the hill just to see the building again, even though it was closed at the time I was there.

There’s something particularly heartbreaking about this news. It’s not just that a genuinely beautiful, unique building is likely destroyed – updates have suggested that the Mackintosh library has been completely gutted – but that it’s May! The degree shows, the final end-of-course work for the final year students, will have been either finished or about to be finished, and now all that work will have been destroyed as well. I can’t even imagine what it would feel like to see the culmination of four years of your life literally going up in smoke.

My heart goes out to everyone affected by this. It’s horrible. So, so tragic.

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Don Ohlmeyer and Warren Littlefield were running NBC at the time the pilot script was delivered. Sitting in a meeting in Warren’s office with John, my sense was that the network executives were respectfully underwhelmed. Referring to one of the stories in the pilot that was about Cuban refugees fleeing to America on inner tubes and should we or should we not send the Coast Guard out to help them, one of the execs suggested that it might be better if [Bradley Whitford’s character] Josh Lyman went out and saved them himself. I tried not to make it an awkward pause before I said, “You mean actually swim?” He said, “No, that would be ridiculous. I mean he rents a boat. A motor boat, a skiff, but the boat’s too small to get all the refugees on board and he has a moment like Oskar Schindler where he’s saying, ‘I could have rented a bigger boat! I could have saved that guy over there and those kids over there!” It was hard to avoid the awkward pause then because I honestly didn’t know if I was being messed with or not, and I didn’t want to insult the executive or appear to be difficult to work with (even though I badly needed the network to pass because by this point ABC had ordered 13 episodes of Sports Night) so I said, “That’s worth thinking about.”

Aaron Sorkin from the Hollywood Reporter’s oral history of The West Wing.
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A Newington, Conn. teen decided to ask her dream date to prom: Vice President Joe Biden.

Talia Maselli wrote a letter to Biden inviting him to the Newington High School prom, not expecting a response from the Vice President.

“Joe Biden makes me laugh,” Maselli told the Hartford Courant. “He just cracks me up.”

In her note, Maselli explains that she would only enjoy her prom with Joe Biden on her arm.

“I am inviting you so far in advance because I’m sure many 17-year-old girls send you prom invitations, and I had to beat them to it,” she said in the letter. “I could only tolerate a high school dance if I was to be escorted by the most delightful man in America.”

She even warned that she would bring House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in his place if Biden declined.

Maselli ultimately decided not to attend her prom.

“I was never really looking forward to going to prom,” she told the Courant. “I’m looking forward to going to Washington D.C.”

Yet on May 10, the day before her prom, a delivery man arrived at Maselli’s door with a corsage and a note from Biden inviting her to the White House.

“I am flattered, but my schedule will not permit me to be in Connecticut on Friday evening,” the Vice President said in the letter. “But I hope you will accept this corsage and enjoy your prom as much as I did mine.”

Maselli at first thought it was an elaborate practical joke, but she phoned Biden’s assistant, who confirmed that the note was real.

Talia Maselli, it is now your destiny to grow up to become Leslie Knope.

(From here.)