The Boston Medical Center, whose patients are mostly poor, has been a pathbreaker in treating the whole person. Its volunteers and staff help patients find services for life issues that may be exacerbating health problems. BMC works with lawyers to get landlords to make building-code-required changes that affect asthma and other conditions. Now it is [...]
Archive for November, 2011
Yoga for the Poor
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged back pain, boston, boston medical center, health, low-income, poor, poverty, robert b. saper, wellness, yoga, yoga journal on November 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Attending Santa School
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged charles howard, expectations, gift, michigan, midland, monica davey, recession, santa, santa claus, santa school on November 29, 2011 | 2 Comments »
A story in today’s NY Times has some delightful pictures of Santas attending a premier Santa school. This year there is increased concern that kids’ expectations may be too high for straightened pocketbooks, and Santas need to know how to handle that. Monica Davey writes, “Santas — including the 115 of them in this year’s [...]
Israeli Self-Portrait Helps Define Arab Spring
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ahmadinejad, arab spring, Good Men Project magazine, green revolution, iran election, israeli, jerusalem, June 20 2009, noam galai, photo, photographer, photography, Rachel Kadish, Utne, Utne Reader on November 28, 2011 | 2 Comments »
My sister buys a subscription to the Utne Reader even though you can read much of it online. She loves the variety of articles it reprints and thinks she should support the effort. At Thanksgiving she told us about an article Rachel Kadish wrote that originally appeared in The Good Men Project Magazine. It’s about [...]
Looking Out Windows
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 19th Century, art, artist, Elizabeth Okie Paxton, hugo, Manohla Dargis, Metropolitan Museum of Art, mfa, museum of fine arts, Open Window, rooms with a view, scorsese on November 27, 2011 | 6 Comments »
I love looking out the upper level of a parking garage at rooftops and chimneys. It makes me think of Dickens novels. And I’ve always been interested in art that shows a view from a window or someone looking out a window. The Metropolitan Museum of Art must like windows, too, given that it mounted [...]
Alpine Garden
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alpine, alpine garden, burlingham, dick case, garden, gardener, gardening, mister smarty plants, osteopath, plant identification, remembering syracuse, syracuse on November 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I never met my Syracuse grandfather. He was an osteopath and died before my time. But I often heard about his avocation, a remarkable alpine garden. A garden needs a gardener, and it is understandable that the garden would fall apart after my grandfather’s death. But in recent years, neighbors got together to reconceive a [...]
Taming Unease
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alienation, art, artist, charles burchfield, Charles Sheeler, edward hopper, gallery, george tooker, grant wood, isolation, magritte, museum, one act, play, subway, theater, tom stoppard, whitney museum, yves tanguy on November 25, 2011 | 1 Comment »
We went downtown to have lunch at the Whitney Museum with friends and to take in the Real/Surreal exhibit. Favorite artists like Charles Sheeler, Mardsen Hartley, and Grant Wood were featured. I liked the eerie emptiness of Edward Hopper’s “Seventh Avenue” and the anxious denizens of George Tooker’s subway world. Sounds unnerving, but in surfacing [...]
Thanksgiving in Harlem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dana discovery center, duke ellington circle, harlem, lake, meer on November 24, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I’m thinking of a hymn I like and a line that seems to go with Thanksgiving, families, friends, and all the familiar faces that make up one’s context. “Roots, hold me close.” An early walk turned up these roots bordering Central Park. Also a fancy streetlight at Duke Ellington Circle. And the Dana Discovery Center [...]
My Father’s Favorite Poem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged 16th century, oxford book of english verse, southwell, times go by turns, wheel of fortune on November 23, 2011 | 4 Comments »
This is a poem about the Wheel of Fortune. Written in the 16th Century, it reminds readers that events go in cycles and that, in time, misfortune can turn to good fortune. The poem could be read opposite ways, but since so many people seem to be feeling down lately, I think it comes across [...]
How to Start a Revolution
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Albert Einstein Institution, gene sharp, how to start a revolution, revolution, ruaridh arrow on November 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I want to give you a quick update on this post, where I described going to the Boston Film Festival and seeing a wonderful documentary about Gene Sharp. Sharp is an elderly man in East Boston whose writings on nonviolent revolution have helped to overthrow repressive regimes around the world. The film is not being [...]
Opera Singer in the Subway
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged busker, indian, it was you, masked ball, minnesota, native american, opera, opera guy, porter square, subway, verdi, wesley ray thomas on November 21, 2011 | 4 Comments »
This morning at Porter Square, none of the escalators were working. As I walked down the long staircase into the subway, I heard music. That is not unusual. We commuters often get to hear a busker or a group of musicians at Porter Square, some of them truly outstanding. Today as I descended I thought [...]
The From Scratch Club
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged albany, cooking, cranberry, festivities, food, From Scratch Club, ginger, holiday, orange, recipe, saratoga, schenectady, sweden, thanksgiving, troy, wordpress on November 20, 2011 | 5 Comments »
We’re hopping an early Acela train Wednesday to join Suzanne, Erik, and other family members for Thanksgiving. I’m assigned to make cranberry sauce, stuffing, and a squash dish. Although I have already placed my ingredients order and can’t use the recipe I just saw at another WordPress blog, you might like to. It’s a maple-citrus-ginger-cranberry [...]
Paper Dragons at Tokyo Bling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged britain, england, library, origami, paper sculpture, siryu, tokyo bling, tokyobling, uk on November 19, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Remember this post on paper sculptures of dragons and other animals left surreptitiously at libraries in the UK? Well, I thought you might like this post from WordPress blogger Tokyo Bling. It features paper dragons by Siryu. More pictures here, with explanations for readers who speak Japanese. And here’s yet another origami artist at work [...]
A Star is Born
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged about new york, jay hunter morris, jim dwyer, Luna & Stella, master class, music, nyt, opera, paris texas, peter gelb, play, ring cycle, siegfried, star is born, theater, wagner on November 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I love stories like this one in today’s NY Times, “Out of the Spotlight, Until the Met Needed a Tenor.” Jim Dwyer writes in his About New York column, “Until a few weeks ago, Jay Hunter Morris had spent much of his early 40s in the invisible universe of the backup opera singer, a life [...]
Saving Minority Languages Through Song
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Aoife Scott, competition, endangerd language, eurovision, language, liet, minority, music, npr, preservation, rare, song contest on November 17, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Thousands of languages are becoming extinct as the last of the people who speak them die off. In a race against time, some determined souls who value the richness and insights that individual languages provide are making efforts to save as many minority languages as possible. We posted about that here. Today National Public Radio [...]
Artist Creates Scenes with Tiny People
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged art, artist, banksy, gwarlingo, michelle aldredge, photo, photographer, photography, sinkachu, street art on November 16, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Michelle Aldredge once again introduces me to an artist I knew nothing about. Check out her wonderful post about the artist Slinkachu at her blog, Gwarlingo. Like Banksy, Slinkachu is part of the London street art scene, Aldredge writes, but “is everything Banksy is not — subtle, empathic, poignant, contemplative.” I won’t try to replicate [...]
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