Lilit Marcus writes, “61 years ago, Donald and Dorothy Lutz’s wedding photographer stood them up … . But six decades later, they got a very special belated wedding gift — a beautiful anniversary photo shoot, inspired by the Disney movie ‘Up.’
“The idea began when stylist Lauren Wells — who is married to the Lutzes’ grandson Matt — and her photographer partner Cambria Grace found themselves with a bunch of colorful balloons left over from a photo shoot. After a conversation with her husband, Lauren got the idea for the ‘Up’-inspired shoot and decided the photos would be a gift for her grandparents-in-law. …
“The shoot took place on Boston’s Old Northern Avenue Bridge, chosen for its ‘industrial’ look, and was a true family affair, with Matt’s sister Abby assisting — and keeping pedestrians from crossing the bridge and walking through the shots.”
Read the rest of the story here, and check out the completely charming series of photos. I have taken many photos myself on the photogenic Northern Avenue Bridge. After this, I think it will become a destination. Thank you @FortPointer, whoever you are, for another great lead!
I started really paying attention to Iran (and to Twitter, tops for breaking news) on June 20, 2009, when the tragic, short-lived Green Revolution erupted, fueling unrealized hopes for a more democratic country.
Then I read Jason Elliot’s Mirrors of the Unseen (and blogged about it here) about his travels in Iran, and especially about the people he met and the architecture he admired. He came up with a theory about the architecture that related to the builders’ Islamic beliefs, a love of nature, and a concept of sacred proportions. (If you should see the Nova special on how Medieval architects used the Bible to decide on ideal Gothic cathedral measurements, you will get the idea.)
Elliot loved the people he met in Iran and bemoans the way the Western media depict them. In full agreement with Elliot is the British translator of ancient Persian poetry, Dick Davis, who was on PBS NewsHour last night.
But though the Iranian people may be like people anywhere, the government is not. Residents are frequently obliged to be cautious. Which is how theatrical productions in the privacy of a taxi have come about.
Haleh Anvari of the Guardian‘s Tehran Bureau has that story.
“Unpermitted Whispers is a 35-minute play that takes place in one of Tehran’s ‘Rahi’ taxis, which traverse the city along fixed, often straight-line, routes. Rahis pick up passengers at major intersections and drop them off anywhere along their set route, making for a convenient method of getting around town and one cheaper than the minicabs available in every neighbourhood of the capital.
“In contrast to the minicabs, which provide door-to-door service, the Rahi system affords passengers much more anonymity, allowing for candid and uninhibited conversation. Tehranis frequently share stories that they have overheard in these communal cabs; for many, they serve as an extension of the private sphere in which Iranians feel safe to talk about issues of the day.
“Unpermitted Whispers takes advantage of this unlikely superimposition of public and private to tell the story of three passengers, all women, who are picked up by a male driver at different points along his route. …
“The play’s first scene was performed entirely on the telephone, as we eavesdropped on a conversation of a kind with which many Iranian women are familiar: a young bride wants to go to the theatre with her university friends but needs an alibi as her traditional family and jealous husband will not approve.”
Among my best gifts this season was that my dentist was available when I broke my tooth at the office holiday party and that a dermatologist was available when I decided that a weird rash on my leg was was from a dangerous woodchuck tick bite (which, as I had read that morning, had struck down a grandmother in Maine).
Even though I knew I really didn’t have Powassan disease from a woodchuck tick, I do like knowing sensible medical people are available.
Now I read at Narratively that there is a 24-hour dentist in New York.
Alissa Fleck writes that many patients wind up in Isaac Datikashvili’s office “because they put off getting help until the last minute, when the pain becomes unbearable.
“According to Datikashvili, this phenomenon stems from a deeply ingrained dental phobia, a fear that’s implanted during childhood when kids typically experience some sort of traumatic—and occasionally anesthesia-free—procedure. …
“Once out of high school in Philadelphia, he immediately began working as an EMT, and he grew accustomed then to a sporadic schedule that has given him a unique advantage …
“ ‘When it was time to start applying to graduate schools I could go to medical or dental school,’ he explains. ‘My uncle was a dentist and I followed in his footsteps. I realized I didn’t want to be a general dentist and just do cleanings, though, so I put together the two things I knew how to do.’ By this, he means dentistry and emergency care.”
Patients call him at night and “on the holidays, when no other dentist can be reached. ‘We get very busy around Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Labor Day, Memorial Day… ‘ he says, noting that he’s on call 364 days a year; Datikashvili’s only day off is Yom Kippur , when he’ll refer emergency callers to colleagues.”
Read more about him here. Who knows? You may need him if you break a tooth some New Year’s Eve in New York.
There was no joy in Mudville when it looked like there would be no First Night celebration this year in Boston, the birthplace of urban, family-friendly First Nights. But just as one would hope, the news of the founding organization’s shuttering was followed immediately by the mayor and a slew of other First Night fans stepping up to the plate.
By some accounts, this year will be better than ever — with great bands, two fireworks displays, and ice sculptures in other places besides Copley Square. I happened upon one sculpture in Quincy Market today, where I also saw a woman making balloon animals for kids.
For a Monday, there sure were an unusual number of children and babies out and about in the city, not to mention on the subway. I wondered if it was because the children were on vacation or because their parents were. Lots of activities planned for everyone tomorrow, at First Night.
My husband passed along word of a TV special on an ecologist interested in the Siberian tiger who joins forces with a remarkable Korean filmmaker.
From the Public Broadcasting website: “Hunted almost to extinction, the last wild Siberian tigers can only be found in the forests of the far eastern Russian frontier—but not easily.
“Ecologist Chris Morgan embarks on a challenge that will fulfill a lifelong dream — to find and film a Siberian tiger living wild and free in these forests. To help him, Morgan turns to Korean filmmaker Sooyong Park, the first individual ever to film Siberian tigers in the wild.
“Park spent more than five years watching and waiting for a glimpse of the elusive creatures, confined sometimes for months in tiny underground pits or 15-foot hides in trees. His technique was unconventional, but produced more than a thousand hours of wild tiger footage that told the story of a three-generation tiger dynasty.
“During their time together, Park teaches Morgan the secrets of tracking tigers—where to look and what to look for in these vast, seemingly uninhabited frozen forests. Eventually, Morgan’s mentor and guide leaves him to his own private quest, and it is up to Morgan to follow the tracks and markings of these giant cats, searching out spots where tigers are prone to hunt, setting up cameras he hopes will also capture a precious image of a wild Siberian tiger.”
It must take courage to do pursue these creatures. The local bears are so afraid of Siberian tigers that they hibernate in nests up in trees.
Today the public radio program Studio 360 featured a shortened version of a wonderful WNYC documentary about the year 1913. That was the year Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was only one of many “shocking” arts events to usher in the modern age.
From the Studio 360 website: “What a year was 1913! In an exhibition in a New York Armory, American viewers confronted Cubism and abstraction for the first time. In Vienna, the audience at a concert of atonal music by Schoenberg and others broke out into a near-riot. And in Paris, Stravinsky and Nijinsky’s new ballet The Rite of Spring burst on stage with inflammatory results.
“Culture Shock 1913 tells the stories behind these and other groundbreaking events that year, and goes back to consider what led to this mad, Modernist moment.
” ‘I think in a lot of ways it was just the beginning of a century just of absolute chaos and nightmare, and as so often, the artists heard it and reflected it first,’ notes the critic Tim Page.
“WNYC’s Sara Fishko speaks with thinkers, authors, musicians, art curators, and historians about this unsettling era of sweeping change — and the not-so-subtle ways in which it mirrors our own uncertain age.
“This Studio 360 episode is an abridged version of a one-hour documentary Sara Fishko produced for WNYC.” More here.
I liked how the documentary explains that the shock was derived from artists not wanting to master and perfect what was done in the past or to replicate nature but rather to be different and to focus on structure, taking things apart and putting back again differently. Artists themselves organized the Armory Show, not curators or galleries. They went to Europe, where change was erupting like crazy, and they brought back art never seen in conservative America.
A key takeaway was that when we see something really new we often think it is ugly, as people thought the Eiffel Tower ugly. But once they look and look some more, they begin to like it.
That helps me think about some of the art Asakiyume and I saw yesterday at the Worcester Museum of Art. It sure looked ugly to me, but it’s a good idea to keep an open mind. Asakiyume sets a good example in that department.
(My mother was born in 1913. Perhaps something was in the air that year that can explain her rebellious nature.)
Photograph taken by spDuchamp/flickr Marcel Duchamp’s NudeDescending a Staircase, No. 2, was featured in the landmark Armory Show and outraged most visitors because she wasn’t reclining like traditional nudes and she was in motion and it was hard to see her.
My daughter-in-law passed this along. Her colleague, who is related to the founder, told her about it.
Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest on Vanderbilt University’s campus in Tennessee, founded the Magdalene in 1997 to provide practical and emotional help to women often regarded as outcasts — ex-offenders, addicts, street people.
According to the website: “For two years, we offer housing, food, medical and dental needs, therapy, education and job training without charging the residents or receiving government funding.
Our six homes function without 24-hour live-in staff, relying on residents to create a supportive community, maintain recovery, and share household tasks.
Women come to Magdalene from prison, the streets and from across the Southeast and the country. …
“After four months, the women find work, return to school and/or enter Magdalene’s job training program at Thistle Farms, a social enterprise. …
“Magdalene’s programs are grounded in its 24 spiritual principles that advocate living gracefully in community with one another.”
The website also describes the Thistle Farms products: “By hand, the women create natural bath and body products that are as good for the earth as they are for the body. Purchases of Thistle Farms products directly benefit the women by whom they were made.
“Thistle Farms employs over 40 Magdalene residents or graduates. While working at Thistle Farms, women learn skills in manufacturing, packaging, marketing and sales, and administration. It is a supportive workplace where women acquire the skills they need to earn a living wage. Employees have the opportunity to put a percentage of their earnings in a matched savings account provided by Magdalene.” Read more.
Thistle Farms provides lots of ideas for holidays when you especially want to give gifts that help people. (This year I gave a few gifts from SERRV, for example, and my sister-in-law gave care packages from nonprofit San Francisco food incubator La Cocina, and people who bought charm necklaces at Luna & Stella, gave part of the cost to FreeArtsNYC.)
The products are all of such a quality as to make you want them at other times of year, too.
No reason a recycling facility can’t have an attractive design, right? As long as it isn’t expensive.
Michael Kimmelman wrote for the NY Times last month about a municipal facility that must make the recycling staff there feel good about going to work.
“Recycling in New York is a scrappy business,” Kimmelman writes. “Billions have gone toward building water tunnels, power plants, subways and sewage treatment facilities, but little toward an infrastructure of recycling. …
“But a Sims Municipal Recycling Facility will open shortly at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in Sunset Park. The city’s first big, state-of-the-art plant for processing discarded plastic, metals and glass, it promises jobs to nearby residents and, as the cost of exporting garbage out of state rises, some savings for the city. …
“The facility is understated, well proportioned and well planned — elegant, actually, and not just for a garbage site. It is an ensemble of modernist boxes squeezing art, and even a little drama, from a relatively meager design budget. …
“Instead of letting engineers design the plant, as often happens at an industrial site, Sims hired Selldorf Architects, a glamorous New York firm known for doing Chelsea art galleries and cultural institutions. …
“The idea? Partly to game the public review process, but also to build a well-designed plant — welcoming to the public, beckoning from the waterfront.” More here.
Photo: Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times A look inside the new Sims Municipal Recycling Facility in Brooklyn.
In the spirit of the Season, I thought I would share this community-building story from Boston. It shows what can happen when you give the gift of time. It started it out as a one-shot practical thing, shoveling out a neighbor who can’t do shoveling.
And then it grew.
Billy Baker writes at the Globe, “Michael Iceland showed up in front of a stranger’s house in West Roxbury, put his shovel into the snow, and made someone’s day.
“Inside the house was an older woman, and she was stuck, unable to get out of her door, worried she could not get to her mailbox to pay her bills.
“Iceland, 36, a Jamaica Plain resident, cleared that path for her, made a new friend, and felt great about himself in the process.
“It is a common story in the Snow Crew. The brainchild of Joseph Porcelli, the Snow Crew is an online tool to connect the elderly, the ill, and the disabled to people with willing backs. …
“The Snow Crew, Porcelli quickly realized, was about more than snow.
“ ‘Originally, I thought I was addressing a problem, that people needed to be shoveled out,’ he said. ‘It turns out that was a symptom of a larger problem of people not knowing each other and not being connected to their neighbors.’
“That small gesture, helping a stranger, made them no longer strangers. From it, many have reported developing ‘extremely profound relationships on both sides of the equation,’ said Dale Mitchell, executive director of Ethos, a nonprofit in West Roxbury that became a partner in the Snow Crew.”
I wonder what comparable community-building activity happens in places without snow. In spite of all the problems snow causes, I do love it, not least because a neighbor you hardly know may see you are stuck and come over with the snow blower.
The secret to neighborhood parties is to leave while it is still fun. We have three this week. I feel lucky to live where people do this.
This year my house gift is A Jiri Tea from Kenya: “100% of profits support Orphan Education in Western Kenya.”
At the first neighborhood party, I stayed about 45 minutes. I had nice chats with four women, but you know, sometimes I get in a rut and bring up the same topics I have brought up for years.
The first woman and I talked about the parking situation on the street and how train commuters park all day although they are not supposed to.
The second woman and I talked about the parking situation on the street and how the town did a study and never pursued any recommendations.
The third woman and I talked about how great the new minister is but how the old assistant minister was given a bum deal.
The fourth woman and I talked about her daughter-in-law’s work helping Chinese nationals invest in the U.S. economy for an EB-5 visa. I definitely didn’t talk about EB-5 visas at a party in the past. I just learned about them at a September conference.
Here I am at the office holiday party, where I contributed a gumdrop tree (below) for the Yankee Swap, and the person who got it decided it would become her Christmas tree this year. I left this party early, too.
Michelle Aldredge runs an outstanding arts blog called Gwarlingo. Recently, she wrote about snowflake art by the identical twins who created the Big Bambú installation at the Met. (I wrote here about the second life of Big Bambú when it was done being art.)
Asks Aldredge on December 21. “What do photographs of snow have to teach us about artistic originality?
“Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, and snowflakes have been on my mind, specifically the snowflakes of Doug and Mike Starn.
“Born in New Jersey in 1961, Mike and Doug Starn have worked collaboratively in photography since the age of thirteen. …
“The Starns’ approach [to snowflakes] is partly science, but mostly art. It took the brothers years to hammer out the logistics that would allow them to capture flakes during their fleeting existence — there were microscopic lenses, plasma-emitting lights, snowstorm photo sessions. But the results speak for themselves. There is a poetic quality about their flakes.” More.
The twins called Os Gemeos, whom I wrote about here are an artistic team, too. In fact, they say, they always know what the other twin is thinking as they work on giant murals like the one they did in Dewey Square, Boston.
After seeing the musical Sideshow, I became aware that even Siamese twins may have very different personalities, but it’s intriguing to think about the close communication many twins have.
Jenna Gottlieb of the Associated Press has a great story about elves.
“In this land of fire and ice,” she writes, “where the fog-shrouded lava fields offer a spooky landscape in which anything might lurk, stories abound of the ‘hidden folk’ – thousands of elves, making their homes in Iceland’s wilderness.
“So perhaps it was only a matter of time before 21st-century elves got political representation.
“Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from to the tip of the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer. They fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church. …
“It’s not the first time issues about ‘Huldufolk,’ Icelandic for “hidden folk,” have affected planning decisions. They occur so often that the road and coastal administration has come up with a stock media response for elf inquiries, which states in part that ‘issues have been settled by delaying the construction project at a certain point while the elves living there have supposedly moved on.’ …
“Terry Gunnell, a folklore professor at the University of Iceland, said he was not surprised by the wide acceptance of the possibility of elves.
” ‘This is a land where your house can be destroyed by something you can’t see (earthquakes), where the wind can knock you off your feet, where the smell of sulfur from your taps tells you there is invisible fire not far below your feet, where the northern lights make the sky the biggest television screen in the world, and where hot springs and glaciers “talk,” ‘ Gunnell said.
” ‘In short, everyone is aware that the land is alive, and one can say that the stories of hidden people and the need to work carefully with them reflects an understanding that the land demands respect.’ ”
We watched a lovely thing on PBS recently, an opera about the Christmas armistice in World War I. You have probably heard of it. The combatants decided to take Christmas off. A movie was made about it, taking a few liberties with the story. Then the Minnesota Opera Company commissioned composer Kevin Puts to write an opera based on the movie.
From the composer’s website: “Silent Night is an opera in two acts by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell, based on the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, directed by Christian Carion and produced by Nord-Ouest Production. Commissioned by Minnesota Opera with co-producer Opera Company of Philadelphia, it opened on November 12, 2011 at the Ordway Theater, St. Paul Minnesota … The opera is sung in English, German, French, Italian and Latin.“
The interplay of the five languages was charming, especially when the German officer translated English into French and French into English so the three main officers could understand one another.
Read Allan Kozinn’s comments about this Pulitzer Prize winner at the NY Times ArtsBeat blog, here.
I will say that, delightful as it is to see the soldiers put down their arms and show each other pictures of loved ones back home, it makes the misery and futility of war doubly painful as the men are ordered back to battle and the camera pans over the lifeless bodies and the very young faces.
Peace is something to think about at Christmas. Ordinary people just want to live in peace.
Reporter Andrea Shea says, “It starts off kind-of guerilla with its hand-held camera shots of people in the Museum of Fine Arts’ Shapiro Family Courtyard. But soon the now-trending video captures the swift bloom of a holiday-spirited ‘flash mob.’ At least that’s what the MFA is calling it. It’s actually more of a ‘pop-up’ performance by 50 or so students from Berklee College of Music.
“Music stands appear, followed by a posse of string players and a choir. Their rendition of ‘O Holy Night’ peaks with soloist Mark Joseph. This surprise concert came together on last Saturday. The video was posted Wednesday.”
As of this posting had nearly 182,550 views.
Shea continues, “What’s being dubbed the ‘XMAS flash mob’ was 25-year-old Berklee grad Evan Chapman’s idea. He’s in charge of an organization called the Loft Sessions that showcases up-and-coming artists. …
” ‘It’s a little surreal to be honest,’ he said, ‘I mean, in the back of my head I think I was hoping it would do this well — but I never thought that it would.’ ” More.
A commenter on YouTube says of the video, “OK, so maybe this is a sort of poser version of a flash mob in that it was so incredibly well organized with microphones and folks bringing their instruments and music and such…but it ROCKS nonetheless! Why didn’t I go to Berklee when I had the chance?!?!”
Fellow parishioner Phil Villers has a strong social-justice side, having volunteered for years with Amnesty International and similar organizations. He also runs businesses. Bella English recently wrote about his latest venture for the Boston Globe, describing how the for-profit company benefits low-income people around the world.
Writes English, “Phil Villers has founded several high-tech companies, but the one he oversees now offers something much more basic: a way to alleviate hunger in developing countries. GrainPro, Inc., which Villers runs out of Concord, makes airtight, impermeable bags of polyvinylchloride, similar to the material used by the Israeli Army to protect its tanks in the desert heat.
“The bags are critical because about one-fourth of grain products grown in developing countries or shipped to them — rice, peanuts, maize, seeds, beans — are lost to insects or rodents, or rot in cloth or jute storage bags.
“GrainPro’s ‘cocoons’ are made of the same material as the company’s bags, and … can reduce grain losses from 25 percent to less than 1 percent, Villers says. [The] company concentrates on hot and humid countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. …
“ ‘We eliminate the need for pesticides, and we can protect food supplies against all kinds of calamities such as typhoons and earthquakes,’ Villers says.
“During Typhoon Haiyan, which recently devastated the Philippines, the rice, cocoa, and seeds stored inside the cocoons were protected. In fact, GrainPro’s products are all made at a factory on the former US Naval Base at Subic Bay, 75 miles from Manila.” More.
One thing I would’ve like English to ask him about is how the plastic gets recycled. Too often one public good seems in conflict with another public good. More than likely, Villers has a plan for recycling.
Photo: Essdras M Suarez/ Globe Staff “We eliminate the need for pesticides, and we can protect food supplies against all kinds of calamities such as typhoons and earthquakes,” said Phil Villers, on his “ultra-hermetic” grain bags and storage “cocoons.”
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