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Running Backwards

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 14, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Did you catch the National Public Radio story on backwards running? Who knew that there are actually competitions in backwards running? I thought it was something kids do, and only for a minute or two.

“Achim Aretz holds the Guinness World Record for running the half marathon, backward. But now, the 27-year-old German athlete says he’s tired of doing something almost no one else does and wants to head in a new direction. Reporter Caitlan Carroll caught up with him in Hanover, Germany.” Listen to the Interview.

What would Lewis Carroll do with this? I immediately thought of the Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass.

Wikipedia has the story: “The Red Queen’s race is an incident that appears in Lewis Carroll‘s Through the Looking-Glass and involves the Red Queen, a representation of a Queen in chess, and Alice constantly running but remaining in the same spot.

” ‘Well, in our country,’ said Alice, still panting a little, ‘you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.’

” ‘A slow sort of country!’ said the Queen. ‘Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!’ ”

Pretty much anything Lewis Carroll wrote has always made perfect sense to me.

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Music and Community Outreach

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 13, 2012| 2 Comments »

I went to the concert of an oboe-playing friend Sunday. The 3 p.m. event coincided with the anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that took place a year ago in Japan. My friend, of Japanese heritage, was moved by the music he was playing, and so was I. The modern pieces really sounded like an earthquake to me. I had visions of Poseidon, the Bull from the Sea, rising up in anger against humankind, and later of hope dawning.

The Charles River Wind Ensemble, where my friend plays, has a new conductor. I liked Matthew Marsit’s energetic style and his explanations of the pieces. Marsit, a clarinetist himself, is also a conductor at Dartmouth College, where he practices his belief in music outreach to lower-income communities.

“An advocate for the use of music as a vehicle for service, Matthew has led ensembles on service missions in Costa Rica and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, collecting instruments for donation to schools, performing charity benefit concerts and offering workshops to benefit arts programs in struggling schools.  His current work at Dartmouth allows for outreach projects in the rural schools of New Hampshire and Vermont, working to stimulate interest in school performing arts programs.” Read more.

I think musicians can be very giving people. Indian Hill Music in Littleton, Massachusetts, offers scholarships and more. Someone I know on the board tells me that Indian Hill has “a program to bring music instruction to schools in the region that have cut out music due to budgetary constraints. They also offer free concerts, a Threshold choir (music for dying patients), and a number of other outreach efforts.”

In Providence, Rhode Island, Community MusicWorks demonstrates how music builds community and teaches social responsibility. You can read about this and other innovations in Rhode Island’s creative economy here.

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New England Poetry Events

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2012| 3 Comments »

Nancy Greenaway, also known to readers of this blog as the Snowy Owl Poet, just told me about two New England poetry events taking place this spring.

The ninth annual Block Island Poetry Project, featuring Rhode Island Poet Laureate Lisa Starr, will be offering four workshops, starting in April 12 and going to May 13.  Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins will be there there May 12 and 13. I include a photo of Collins from the event website.

The other event is scheduled for a city best known for witches: “The fourth Massachusetts Poetry Festival will be held Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, April 20–22, in historic Salem. The three-day event, which will bring 1,500 poets and poetry lovers to the city, will showcase a variety of extraordinary local and regional poets, and engage the public through poetry readings, interactive workshops, panel discussions, music, film and visual arts, and performances geared toward a diverse statewide audience.” Check the line-up. It looks super.

(I see that my brother’s longtime friend Michael Ansara is on the advisory board!)

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Flying Paper Jellyfish

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Dutch artist Peter Gentenaar makes stunning paper sculptures that Nathaniel Ross at Inhabitat (“design will save the world”) describes as “soaring through the air like flying jellyfish. …

“Peter Gentenaar’s art was born out of the limitations of what he could (or couldn’t) create with store-bought paper. So with the help of the Royal Dutch Paper Factory, he built his own paper factory and devised a custom beater that processes and mills long-fiber paper pulp into the material you see in his artwork. He saw the potential that wet paper had when reinforced with very fine bamboo ribs, and he learned to form the material into anything his imagination would allow.”

Check out the machine Gentenaar uses to create his paper. You can buy one. He describes it thus:

“A machine suitable for beating long fibers, flax, hemp or sisal, as well as for beating soft and short fibers like cotton linters. The machine is built in stainless steel and has a bronze bedplate. The bronze bedplate has the same curve as the knife roll, this gives effective grinding/beating over a surface of: ± 20 x 10 cm. The distance between the roll and the bedplate can be finely adjusted. Also the weight under which the fibers are beaten can be varied from 0 to 60 kilo’s. This means you can use the beater on very delicate fibers and on very strong and rough fibers as well. I never have to cook my fibers. There is a factory guarantee on the beater of one year. At present I’m getting a CE mark, which ensures certain safety standards. There are over 70 beaters of this type sold over the last 12 years and they are all still working.”

Art: Peter Gentenaar

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Libraries for the World

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The other day John brought up the topic of Andrew Carnegie. Whatever else might be said about this 19th Century steel baron, you have to give him credit for putting so much of his fortune into philanthropy, especially libraries.

Today John Wood is carrying on that work in impoverished countries around the world. As Nicholas Kristof writes in the NY Times, “Wood’s charity, Room to Read, has opened 12,000 … libraries around the world, along with 1,500 schools. …

“He has opened nearly five times as many libraries as Carnegie, even if his are mostly single-room affairs that look nothing like the grand Carnegie libraries. Room to Read is one of America’s fastest-growing charities and is now opening new libraries at an astonishing clip of six a day. …

“He also runs Room to Read with an aggressive businesslike efficiency that he learned at Microsoft, attacking illiteracy as if it were Netscape. He tells supporters that they aren’t donating to charity but making an investment: Where can you get more bang for the buck than starting a library for $5,000? …

“ ‘In 20 years,’ Wood told me, ‘I’d like to have 100,000 libraries, reaching 50 million kids. Our 50-year goal is to reverse the notion that any child can be told “you were born in the wrong place at the wrong time and so you will not get educated.” ‘ ” Read more.

Photograph of John Wood: Room to Read

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Two Lovely Poems

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on March 9, 2012| 2 Comments »

The Poem-a-Day service of the Academy of American Poets featured two of my favorite poets this week. I love the personable vibes from these women, the particularity, the quirkiness.

My father got me interested in poetry, giving me a volume of Emily Dickinson and telling me I could “get started” on her, but he admitted that he didn’t think there were any “great” women poets. I think he was wrong about that. I don’t know if he ever changed his mind.

Dear March – Come in
by Emily Dickinson

Dear March – Come in –
How glad I am –
I hoped for you before –
Put down your Hat –
You must have walked –
How out of Breath you are –
Dear March, how are you, and the Rest –
Did you leave Nature well –
Oh March, Come right upstairs with me –
I have so much to tell –

I got your Letter, and the Birds –
The Maples never knew that you were coming –
I declare – how Red their Faces grew –
But March, forgive me –
And all those Hills you left for me to Hue –
There was no Purple suitable –
You took it all with you –

Who knocks? That April –
Lock the Door –
I will not be pursued –
He stayed away a Year to call
When I am occupied –
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come

That blame is just as dear as Praise
And Praise as mere as Blame –

@@@@@@

Silence
by Marianne Moore

My father used to say,
“Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow’s grave
or the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self-reliant like the cat—
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse’s limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth—
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint.”
Nor was he insincere in saying, “Make my house your inn.”
Inns are not residences.

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Little Women

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Twenty years ago I helped out on what local people jokingly refer to as the Concord Passion Play: Little Women. It’s performed every 10 years by the Concord Players because (a) author Louisa May Alcott lived at Orchard House in Concord and (b) she was a founder of the theater group that became the Concord Players.

Kate Clarke is directing the show this year, and she just got some great publicity in the Boston Globe.

“ ‘Preparing to direct the play, I started to do some research and was fascinated to discover just how meaningful the book is to so many people,’ Clarke said.

“ ‘Even the rock star Patti Smith wrote in her recent memoir that “Little Women” was what made her feel as a young high school student that she could be an artist. It motivated her to go to New York and become a performer. I started thinking, “Good Lord, Jo March is everywhere! Why do people find her so compelling?”

“ ‘That’s the question I’ve been tackling with this group of actors. Yes, it’s about the Civil War era, and the societal restrictions that females were under at that time. But the fact that the book’s popularity has endured reflects what compelling characters these young women were.

“ ‘This story is so uniquely Concord and yet reaches far beyond the boundaries of Concord, just as it is a story about the 1860s that also brings up a lot of contemporary issues,’ Clarke said.” Read more.

Here’s photo by Jon Chase for the Boston Globe. Pat Kane, an incredible costume designer, is in the middle. (I don’t think she remembers, but the first time she worked for the Concord Players was when I sought her help on a one-act I directed, Stoppard’s After Magritte.)

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Juvenile Offenders Speak Through Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 7, 2012| 2 Comments »

Today I walked over to the Moakley Courthouse on Boston Harbor to see an art exhibit that the Actors’ Shakespeare Project put together with youth in detention. It consisted of large photographs in which a young person, sometimes in costume, acted out a word from Shakespeare. I did not feel that the presentation in the low-ceiling hallway did the works justice — and having to go through metal detectors to look at them is a bit of a downer — but the concept is positive.

Deborah Becker of WBUR reported that the photographs were part of a larger effort to turn young offenders around with the help of art: “Using the arts as a way to heal and transform is the theme of an exhibit at Boston’s federal courthouse. The artists are children who have been involved with the Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS), the agency that handles youngsters charged with crimes.

“At a recent reception of the artists and DYS officials, 17-year-old Ricky Brown was among the young people proudly describing his work. He helped paint a mural that covers the entire wall of a DYS district office in Springfield. He says it sends a message about kids in the juvenile justice system.

“It brightens up the whole building,” Brown said. “It makes sure to say that we’re not only there to get locked up. It’s there to let people know that we do work together, we do do something positive.”

Read more.

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Angel’s Cellphone

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Dirk-Jan Visser for The New York Times

I’m a sucker for any story about an angel because it gives me a chance to mention that Suzanne’s birthstone-jewelry company, Luna & Stella, has a lovely angel charm.

That is why I zeroed in on this article.

John Tagliabue writes in today’s NY Times, “The statue of an angel outside St. John the Evangelist Cathedral in ‘s Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, holds a cellphone, which has two numbers.

“That is because, shortly after the statue was unveiled last April, a local couple, the parents of two children, set up a number so people could call the angel. Business cards soon appeared in pubs, restaurants and hotels with a picture of the angel and the number. So successful was the line that the couple opened a Twitter account, @ut_engelke, managed by the husband, which now has about 2,700 followers.”

Then the church, not amused by @ut_engelke, set up its own number. It charges for calls, and people get to hear recorded messages about the church.

The woman who answers the original phone number doesn’t charge. She answers with “Hello, this is the Little Angel,” and she just sees where it leads.

“ ‘In most cases there is laughter, but there are callers who have no faith in friends or relatives, so they would like to talk to someone they have some kind of faith in,’ she said. A widow in her 80s called from Amsterdam to complain of loneliness …

“ ‘She said she’d lost faith in humanity, in her own family,’ said the woman who lends the angel a voice. Two weeks later the elderly woman called again, to thank the angel. Things had gotten better.” Read more.

I would be interested in your angel stories.

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Symphony for Ships’ Horns

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2012| Leave a Comment »

John is quite a rich source of blog ideas. Here’s a story he knew I’d like. It’s about a symphony for ship horns.

“The Harbour Symphony is original music written for the horns of the ships in the St. John’s harbour [Newfoundland, Canada]. This signature fanfare of the Sound Symposium transforms the ships in the harbour into an orchestra on water. Each Harbour Symphony begins with a radio countdown transmitted to the bridge of the ships by the Coast Guard where players stand at the helms of tugboats, trawlers, and ocean-going freighters.

“At the signal, a giant, floating horn section reverberates off the Southside Hills and through the streets of old St. John’s, echoing the soul of this 500 year old seaport.

“The acoustic characteristics of the bowl-shaped St. John’s Harbour encourage the sound to resonate and carry for up to 12 miles. The best place to listen is up on Signal Hill, on the Southside Hills, or in the Outer Battery. These locations give a sweeping view of the Harbour and the city. You can hear the delay of the horns as the sound travels over a mile across the water, and hear the sounds resonate against the surrounding hills.” Read more.

I wonder if Cousin Claire in Gabarus, Cape Breton, knows about this. Of course, I don’t know my geography very well. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, is probably nowhere near Newfoundland. If you are better at geography, please give me an idea how far apart these places are.

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Lichen on Trees, East Coast Version

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 4, 2012| 1 Comment »

Suzanne has found us two “vacation rentals by owner ” in the last six months: one on the West Coast and one on the East. Other than being just right in their own ways, they had little in common. Except for one curious thing.

They both featured trees covered with some kind of moss or lichen. What should we make of this coincidence?

In my West Coast post, I did a little research and found a site suggesting that the mosses and lichens in California had a symbiotic relationship with trees. Another site said, “Tree decline is often not a simple cause and effect relationship but sometimes a complex web of interacting factors.” So I still have no idea if lichens are good, bad, or indifferent.

Today I offer some pictures from Little Compton, Rhode Island, where one of the seven of us celebrated a special birthday this weekend.

BTW, if you are looking for sweet seaside towns that time forgot, try the Rhode Island Farm Coast.

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Light and Shadow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

You have to have light to have shadows. You have to have shadows to see the possibilities of light.

I took one of these shadow photos in early morning and one in late afternoon. When I went for a walk around noon, I carried my camera in case there might be other shadows that interested me. In the end I concluded that shadows on houses interest me more than shadows on sidewalks. Something to do with knowing that lives are lived inside the houses?

Probably my favorite Dickens novel is Bleak House. I have read it several times. A recurring motif is light and shadow. I am reminded in particular of the young couple walking through light and shadow, shadow and light. They are to experience much that is good, much that is dark. Some people accuse Dickens of writing plots that are too convoluted and bizarre, but what could be more true to life than that?

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It’s Not Easy Being Christo

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 2, 2012| Leave a Comment »

You may have read about the monumental projects of the artist Christo. Perhaps you even went to see “The Gates” when his orange banners dotted Central Park.

Well, Christo is at it again, proposing to “drape 5.9 miles of fabric across a 42-mile stretch of the river” in Colorado for two weeks. And he’s once again exposing himself to the hostility of people who feel passionately protective of a particular space. It’s the cost of doing business.

In this February 10 Denver Post article: “Christo sits stone-faced as they call him a liar, a cheater, a con man, a killer, as they politely suggest he is a fool, as they angrily denounce him as an enemy of nature. He is the world’s most famous artist and this is what he must endure for these odd projects he dreams up. Here, in southern Colorado, where he hopes to drape 5.9 miles of silvery fabric over the Arkansas River, it is the same as it was in Manhattan where he battled 25 years to hang orange material from 7,503 gates in Central Park, and in Berlin, where he had to persuade 612 German parliamentarians, one by one, to let him wrap his cloth around the Reichstag.” Read more.

Whatever else you might say about him, the man has patience. An even more recent article in the Denver Post, February 22, indicates that he has moved the target date from August 2014 to August 2015. (The first of many target dates was summer 2001.)

“At the two final public hearings for the Over the River project earlier this month, the Fremont County Board of Commissioners fielded almost 10 hours of heated support and opposition as well as 575 letters. On Tuesday, the three-member board decided it would not make a decision regarding the artist’s request for a temporary-use permit at its next scheduled meeting Feb. 28.

” ‘We simply feel we are not ready for a formal vote,’ said Commissioner Debbie Bell, noting that the board is scripting a list of conditions for the project. The board could make a final decision at its March 13 or March 27 meeting, she said. …

“Christo’s decision to delay reflects his desire to share yet-to-be-developed emergency-management plans that detail traffic, safety and other issues during the installation process. It also restores the 28-month construction period, which was pinched when federal approval stretched nearly three years.” Read more.

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World Book Day

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 1, 2012| Leave a Comment »

March 1 is World Book Day. Who knew?

Alison Flood and Michael Bonnet write about the event in The Guardian: “Celebrated in over 100 countries around the world, World Book Day is the UK’s largest festival of reading and aims to encourage a lifelong love of literature in children. Thousands of schools and nurseries are joining in, with more than 14m book vouchers given out to children, and hundreds of events – from Where’s Wally ‘flash mobs’ to author talks and literary fancy dress competitions – taking place up and down the country.” Read more.

The World Book Day website says this is the event’s 15th year. “It’s a celebration of authors, illustrators, books and (most importantly) it’s a celebration of reading. In fact, it’s the biggest celebration of its kind, designated by UNESCO as a worldwide celebration of books and reading.”

 

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Library in a Phone Booth

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on February 29, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Do you ever look at ArtsJournal? It has the best links!

Today there’s a fun link to the Post-Standard in Syracuse about a library in a phone booth.

Writes Maureen Nolan: “The Little Free Library credo is ‘take a book, leave a book.’ That’s pretty much the only rule. Every Little Free Library is supposed to have a volunteer community steward, and Mother Earth, whose given name is Taywana James, is a natural. She lives barely a block from the library. She is a mother, poet and artist involved in a number of projects to better the Near West Side, and she loves books.  …

“Rick Brooks, co-founder of the Little Free Library movement, estimates there are 300 to 400 little libraries in 33 states and 17 countries. He doesn’t know if most people bring books back. In the Little Free Library movement, the return rate doesn’t seem to be a critical data point.” More here on Little Free Libraries.

I am reminded of the Uni Project, which I blogged about here. It’s a portable reading room, first deployed in New York City last September.

One of the founders of the effort, Sam Davol (also a cellist in the band the Magnetic Fields), writes about the Uni Project here: “On Sunday, Sep. 11, the Uni was put into service for the first time. Lower Manhattan residents joined us to inaugurate the Uni by gathering to browse and read our small collection on a difficult morning. While most of the surrounding blocks were locked down and public libraries in Manhattan were closed, the Uni began its journey among good people who came out to visit a public market and meet the Uni.”

(That was the same day Suzanne and Erik startled the guardians of the people by renting a small boat and going sailing in New York harbor.)

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