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Music for Healing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 9, 2014| 2 Comments »

Longtime concert pianist Byron Janis recently wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal about programs using music to help veterans with PTSD and other traumas to heal.

“Can music heal?” he asks. “There’s been a great deal of study by neuroscientists on the different ways music acts upon the brain, affecting our behavior, memory and the like. …

“I recently witnessed the healing effects of music first hand. As part of their ‘National Initiative for Arts and Health in the Military,’ I was invited by Americans for the Arts to visit the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and participate in ‘Stages of Healing.’ This program, created by Dr. Micah Sickel, helps patients learn how to play a musical instrument and facilitates live performances whose aim, according to the hospital, is to ‘enhance the healing process’ …

I knew what I wanted to play for them—two Chopin waltzes and ‘A Hero’s Passing By’ … I then played two songs from a musical I had written about the Hunchback of Notre Dame. One was a love song and the other is titled ‘Like Any Man,’ which I felt very much suited the occasion. The Hunchback sings that although he is so disabled, he is just like any man.” Read more.

Photo of Byron Janis in 1962: Wikimedia Commons

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92-Year-Old Metallurgist

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Gregg tweeted recently about Robinson Meyer’s Atlantic article on 92-year-old metallurgist Ursula Franklin.

Meyer writes, “It’s hard to describe what Ursula Franklin’s done in her life. There’s just too much.

“The 92-year-old metallurgist pioneered the field of archeometry, the science of dating archaeologically discovered bronzes, metals, and ceramics. Her research into spiking levels of radioactive strontium in baby teeth factored heavily into the U.S. government’s decision to institute a nuclear test ban.

“She delivered the Massey Lectures—an important, annual series of talks delivered by Canadian public intellectuals—in 1989, and she was the first woman to be named University Professor at the University of Toronto, the university’s highest position.

“She was also born in Munich in 1921, and was imprisoned in a Nazi work camp for the last 18 months of the war.”

Meyers’s questions cover much of Franklin’s life, her pacifism, and her trail-blazing for women scientists. It’s a long interview. Here’s a taste.

“Once you were at the University of Toronto … did you see the university change over your time there, and just generally what was it like to be a female professor of engineering during the ’70s and ’80s?”

Franklin answers, “Well, pretty lonely. You know the real difficulty is to protect and advance your women students, and to see that they are in a hassle-free learning environment. When I came to the university, I’d been around long enough to know that I wasn’t one of the gang, and I never would be. I didn’t have a desire to be one of the boys.

“But the great wish—to give my women students a hassle-free, happy learning environment—that’s what’s difficult. The culture of engineering is not a culture of acceptance and understanding of anything that is female and—at the same time—equal. So that’s… that’s a real job. It was a long and hard [work] in this, and it’s by no means yet all done.”

I remember the fuss over strontium 90 in milk. How great to read about this woman ‘s role in uncovering the problem and to see that she is going strong at 92. More at the Atlantic.

Ursula Franklin  photo

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All’s Well in the Greenway

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 7, 2014| Leave a Comment »

What a treat to be outdoors in the Greenway again! Flowers and trees are starting to bloom, and there is always something new to observe.

Although I don’t use my phone on my walk, except to take pictures, a new amenity provided by Fort Point neighbor Life is good is likely to be welcomed by many visitors. I saw one phone-recharging kiosk near the Dewey Square food trucks and one near the Boston Harbor Hotel.

Got my lunch at the Vietnamese food truck Bon Me and ate outside in the sun.

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Recreating the Coral World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 6, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Some posts at Andrew Sullivan I only need to glance at briefly and bells go off: for example, this entry about an artist who works with coral.

Andrew quotes Amelia Urry writing about Courtney Mattison, who became enamored of coral while studying conservation biology at Brown University and moonlighting at the Rhode Island School of Design.

“Mattison’s newest piece, Our Changing Seas III,” says Urry at Grist, “depicts a hurricane-spiral of bleached corals coalescing to a bright center. You can read it as a message of hope or one of impending doom, depending on your disposition …

“At the heart of Mattison’s artwork is her desire to inspire real-life changes in how people view and treat the world’s oceans and environments. Similar to the Our Changing Seas series, Courtney Mattison’s Hope Spots collection comprises 18 vignettes, each of which represents a vital marine ecosystem in its ideal form (that is, protected from various threats such as global warming or pollution).” Read more at Grist, here.

Art: Courtney Mattison
“Our Changing Seas III,” a ceramic coral reef

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Camping in a Bubble

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2014| 2 Comments »

The Globe travel section had some fun recently with unusual sleeping structures offered to travelers. This goes beyond accommodations on stilts in the South Seas.

Diane Bair and Pamela Wright report, “Cradled in a ‘human nest’ made of twigs and branches, on a hillside above the Pacific Ocean, we drifted off to dreamland to the sounds of barking sea lions and crashing waves, a relaxation mix tape made by Mother Nature herself.

“This is camping? Nope. It’s a kind of ‘glamping,’ a.k.a. glamorous camping. While the human nest isn’t wildly luxurious, it’s certainly unique, one of the hallmarks of the glamping experience. ‘Yurts, treehouses, domes, eco-pods, barns, bell tents, cabins, and safari tents — whatever you choose, it’s going to be original,’ says Katie Stearns of Glamping Hub, an online site with 1,200 listings. In addition, ‘you have an incredibly unique access to nature,’ Stearns says.”

Click here to see photos of an Oregon tree-house for grownups, glass igloos in Finland, and lots of other imaginative places to bed down around the world.

Photo: Boston Globe
“Dreamcatcher” bubble, part of a colony of five bubbles set in a Provencal pine forest near Marseille

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“Spamalot” at the Players

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 4, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Wow, what an awesome job the Concord Players did with this goofy musical by the folks who brought you Monty Python!

Spamalot had so many insane costume changes, extravagant production numbers, and giddy jokes that it never allowed you a minute to think how silly it all is.

We laughed a lot. They say laughing is good for your health, and I can see why it is good for mental health at least — when you are really laughing, you can’t think about anything but the thing that is making you laugh. So you’re really “living in the moment,” as the gurus advise.

Tom was one of the trumpet players (not the one who gets shot by the conductor for playing the wrong trumpet themes in the overture), and Claire gave a party after the matinee. Wisely, she decided not to emphasize Spam for the meal (“No one would have come to the party,” she said) and instead presented a delicious spread with a Cinco de Mayo theme.

Several guests cracked out their smart phones to inform us about what Cinco de Mayo celebrates (the 1862 defeat of the French by Mexicans at Pueblo — not sure I feel much wiser, though).

Spamalot is sold out. But it was sold out today, too, and I saw a few empty seats, so take a chance — maybe a ticket holder won’t show up. The woman next to me was offended by some of the naughtiness and irreverence and left at intermission. So you could always come for the second half.

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Sunshine in Rhode Island

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 3, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Photos: Above, Herreshoff Marine Museum, Bristol, RI.
Below: Suzanne’s Mom

A certain napless two-year-old wore out five devoted adults in Rhode Island today — but what a fine time we had! From the Blithewold estate, to the yacht museum, to the playground, it was a grand way to spend a warm spring day near the sea.

And so, to bed … zzzzzzzzzzzz.

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Conduct Your Own Orchestra

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 2, 2014| 2 Comments »

I can think of a few people I know who would love to conduct an orchestra just once.

A couple years ago, I was telling Suzanne and Erik how the Melrose Symphony Orchestra had a drawing at the Holiday Pops concert for an audience member to conduct the last number, and Erik said he would really love to do that. Given that he won a business-plan competition yesterday, he might feel like conducting an orchestra right now. Since there’s no orchestra handy, the next best thing might be an electronic simulator.

Writes Liz Stinson for Wired, “Most of us will never get the chance to conduct a real symphony orchestra, and that’s probably for the best. But a fake symphony orchestra made up of towering speakers, motion controllers, and touchscreens? Totally doable.

“A new installation at the Mendelssohn Museum in Leipzig, Germany lets you do exactly that, no music school required. The Mendelssohn Effektorium, by design studio WhiteVOID, is an interactive installation that allows you to have complete control over a virtual symphony. In this world you’re Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, and your instruments come in the form of 13 upright speakers with digital displays on them.

“Each of these speakers corresponds to a certain instrument group: woodwinds, brass, percussion, vocals and so on. It’s up you how much spotlight each instrument gets and how fast the tempo moves.” More at Wired. Be sure to play the video demonstration of someone conducting this way.

Photo: WhiteVOID
A Leap Motion sensor calculates your speed based on the pendulum interval of your movements and adjusts the tempo accordingly.

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Happy May Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 1, 2014| 2 Comments »


Photo: Bryn Mawr College

Happy May Day, the old-fashioned kind that involves surprise flowers and dancing around the May Pole.

This year’s came in like a lion, with icy rain, and is going out like a lamb. Spring can’t be stopped now.

Here are a few photos of the season.

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Ronnie Interviews a Mystery Writer

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 30, 2014| 3 Comments »

My friend Ronnie is a former broadcaster, a poet, and a food maven, who lived in France for years and later wrote a book called Eat Smart in France. Recently Ronnie interviewed the mystery writer Cara Black for a blog called My French Life. Black writes about Paris. Her latest novel is Murder in Pigalle.

Ronnie asks, “What drew you to this part of town?

Black: “There are two worlds in Pigalle. The world of the day with families and people who work in the shops, and the world of the night, where people work in the clubs. …

“I really like Pigalle. I discovered so much I didn’t know. [But] I get intrigued by different districts, their flavor and feeling. If I ever figure them out, I’ll probably stop writing about them.” More of the interview here, including a observations on the German occupation of Paris during WW II.

For a wonderful, unusual book with the occupation of Paris as a setting, I recommend Léon and Louise. It’s an odd love story taking place over many decades in France, written by a Swiss and translated into English. I haven’t read many books by Cara Black, but if you like novels that teach you something about a different part of the world in a rather fanciful way, I recommend Léon and Louise, by Alex Capus.

Photo of Ronnie Hess

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New at Lugano Museum

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 29, 2014| 3 Comments »

Photo of Lugano: Wikimedia Commons

Before Suzanne met Erik, she lived for a few years in Lugano, Switzerland. When I visited her, I took in the art museum and remember being exposed to the work of Austrian painter Egon Schiele for the first time.

Today Andrew Sullivan had a post about Museo d’Arte di Lugano, and naturally I zeroed in.

Andrew quotes Andy Cush on the museum’s latest exhibit: “36 ventilators, 4.7m3 packing chips, a new installation from the Swiss artist Zimoun … The artist filled a space inside Switzerland’s Museo d’Arte di Lugano with lots and lots of polystyrene packing peanuts, and uses 36 fans to whip them into a stormy frenzy.”

Watch the video of crashing packing-popcorn waves at Andrew Sullivan’s blog, here.

Lugano is a charming, Italian-speaking city. I passed through there as a teenager, with no premonition of my future connection to the place, just astonishment at palm trees in snow-capped Switzerland. Funny how things turn out.

 

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Julie Weinstein Quilting

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 28, 2014| 4 Comments »

Although I have known Julie Weinstein mostly as a graphic designer, I learned from many conversations over the years that she has experience in a variety of fields. Lately she has been concentrating on quilting.

I went to see the delightful pieces below at the Emerson Community Arts Center’s Earth Month exhibit, “Life on the Edge.” Completely charming. The panels were inspired by seeing birdwatchers and wondering if the birds watch the watchers. In one panel a woman is birdwatching with binoculars. In another, a bird lifts binoculars to study the woman.

The Umbrella website says, “This year’s theme, ‘Life on the Edge,’ invites us to consider those experiences and places where people and habitats intersect. Also called ecotones, liminal or transitional zones, these points of intersection can spawn collaboration, conflict, beauty, chaos, change, and more.” The show is up until May 5. More details here.

Interesting to see the word “liminal” used for the intersection of people and habitats. At Asakiyume’s blog, her literary readers use liminal and the word “interstitial” to refer to places between worlds and ways of being. Like the platforms where Harry Potter catches a train that ordinary people can’t see.

Come to think of it, that is not so different from the intersection of the natural world and the developed one the art show describes. It’s a place where you might see three large wild turkeys sashaying down the middle of a downtown street, as my husband and I did on a recent Sunday morning.

Quilts: Julie Weinstein

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Vanessa Gould Documentarian

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Greenfusefilms.com

Vanessa Gould, the sister of one of Suzanne’s elementary school buddies, is a documentarian. A while back, she made a Peabody-winning film about makers of advanced origami called Between The Folds. More recently, she was given unheard-of access to the New York Times obituary desk.

Her parents just sent an e-mail about the resulting movie and what Vanessa has been up to in general.

“Vanessa recently worked on Showtime’s Years of Living Dangerously, a nine-part series tackling the challenges of climate change. … Vanessa was a producer on several of the stories and did additional cinematography on others. You can see most of her work in episodes three (“Super Storm Sandy”) and nine (“Chilean Andes”). Episode three, “The Rising Tide” with Chris Hayes, airs tonight, Sunday, April 27, at 10 pm on Showtime. … Here are links: http://www.yearsoflivingdangerously.com and https://www.facebook.com/YearsOfLiving. …

“Soon after making Between The Folds, one of the artists in the film passed away. Vanessa alerted the Times of his death, aware that it was unlikely they would run an obituary. And yet – somewhat amazingly – they did, and she assisted them in the unusual process of putting together an editorial obituary. Only three or four such obituaries are written by the NYT staff each day. The whole story of how these obituaries are selected and written, as well as the social history they tell, became her fascination. Hence OBIT will be her next film. Check out these links: http://www.obitdoc.com, http://www.greenfusefilms.com, and www.vanessagould.com.”

I wonder if OBIT will show to what extent the obituaries of famous people are written before they shuffle off this mortal coil. Come to think of it, do any newspapers let people submit their own obit in advance? I recently read a hilarious one that a small paper accepted from the deceased at the insistence of his grandson. It revealed a guy with a terrific sense of humor — not a bad tribute.

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Peter Churchmouse

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 26, 2014| 6 Comments »

Photo: 1Funny

Funny thing about memory. I went on Google to find a children’s book my mother liked to read to the children. I thought it was called Gabriel Churchmouse, but in fact it was Peter Churchmouse. It was the churchkitten who was called Gabriel.

Other people on the Internet  had similarly fuzzy memories. One person thought the phrase “I could listen and listen and listen” referred to words that one character heard another say, but I am reasonably sure the phrase was what Gabriel said to Peter when the churchmouse played the organ (or maybe when Peter sang; a picture comes back to me of Peter raising his eyebrows when he sang).

Amazon describes the book thus: “Cute story about Peter, a churchmouse who was so hungry he ate the hymn books. A cat was brought to get rid of him as he was thought to be a rat. When Peter found out the cat was a kitten and the kitten found out the rat was a mouse they grew into a close friendship!”

Peter was eating hymnals to alert the parson to the existence of a hungry churchmouse. He knew that every parson loves a churchmouse. But Parson Pease-Porridge, who was given to exclaiming, “I’ll be twitched!” and was in  need of decent glasses, thought the large bites must belong to a rat.

Here’s a description from an Amazon customer: “Beautifully illustrated, tenderly told stories about a soft-hearted, near sighted, sleepwalking parson, a Churchmouse (not rat!), church kitten and (puppy) dog all learning to live with, and despite, each other. The stories will teach tolerance to young children, and are amusing and witty, too, for older readers, including adults. I read these stories to my daughter 30 years after my mother read them to me and I suspect my daughter will be reading them to her children as well.”

Well, that would be if she can find a copy. The series, by Margot Austin,  is out of print. Read about Austin (1907-1990) on Wikipedia, here.

An animated 1944 short film about another book in the series, Gabriel Churchkitten, lacks Austin’s adorable illustrations, but has the benefit of reminding me that Gabriel had a thinking cap and that there was a churchpuppy called Trumpet.

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The Extreme Life of the Sea

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Masaki Miya et al. Wikimedia Creative Commons
Anglerfish use bioluminescence to attract their prey in the darkest depths of the ocean.

When John was little, he liked a book called Fish Do the Strangest Things. Strangeness is a great focus for a nature book, because everyone likes offbeat critters.

Steve Curwood, founder of the radio show Living on Earth, recently interviewed the author of a book that focuses on the strangeness of ocean life.

CURWOOD: “In an engaging new book called The Extreme Life of the Sea, biologist Steve Palumbi and his novelist son Tony deepen our understanding of how strange sea life has managed to survive against all odds. … Why did you write this book. Why now?

PALUMBI: “Well, the real reason is that we’re trying an experiment: can you take the narrative style and approach that a novelist would use and combine it with what a scientist would do? … You don’t really care about the plot until you care about the characters, and so we wanted to write a book that made you care about the characters.

CURWOOD: “Now, you write about the extreme life of the sea, the oldest, the hottest, the shallowest, to name a few. Why did you choose this approach?

PALUMBI: “Because it was a way of getting people’s attention to the really sort of amazing things that these critters do. Organisms in the sea live in some of the hottest places, they live in some of the coldest places, and how they do that is something marine scientists have paid a lot of attention to. So it was really a way to make it more engaging, more fun, and to let us move credibly between different kinds of organisms all in the same chapter. …

CURWOOD: “You had one extreme that you called immortal.

PALUMBI: “That’s an amazing jellyfish called turritopsis, and it has the remarkable ability to age in reverse. So when the environment is bad, this animal can essentially go from its adult body form back, back, back to its larval form, and then start all over again. … It’s called transdifferentiation. It’s the only critter known to be able to do that.”

More here, where you can read the rest of the transcript and listen to the recording. It’s all pretty amazing.

Photo: Eddie Welker, Flickr Creative Commons 2.0)
Clownfish

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