We heard an amazing concert by countertenor Terry Barber last night. His range goes from baritone to soprano, and his repertoire from the 1600s to contemporary. Formerly with the Grammy-winning group Chanticleer, Barber records and tours widely. You can hear excerpts from both his sacred and secular music on YouTube. Search on his name as I am having trouble embedding a sample here. (Weak Internet connection.)
Barber also founded, in honor of his mother, Artists for a Cause, which enlists performers for the fundraising activities of worthy nonprofits. Last night’s concert was for the benefit of the Mary D Fund, which provides for the emergency needs of struggling families in Rhode Island’s smallest town. It was held in the church where Suzanne and Erik were married not that long ago, and their pianist, Carrie Todd, accompanied Barber — along with organist Brink Bush and violinist Lisa Gray.
My husband and I are huge fans of Broadway music but loved everything that Barber performed (including the 2004 “Every time I look at you,” Schubert’s “Wohin,” Bernstein’s “A Simple Song,” Mozart’s “Laudate Dominum,” and Cohen’s “Hallejujah.” “Anthem,” from the great Tim Rice musical “Chess,” blew us away. A piece that I recognized from what I used to call my “cancer dance class” was “You Raise Me Up” — tremendously moving.
Heard this interview today on the great environmental radio show Living on Earth. Tom Montgomery Fate talks about trying to “live deliberately” like H.D. Thoreau and connecting to nature and memories of his father in the woodland cabin he often escapes to. His book is Cabin Fever: A Suburban Father’s Search for the Wild.
In the elementary school Suzanne attended, all second-graders learn about Thoreau, and as a parent volounteer, I went with her class to the cabin site at Walden Pond. The children had a quiz sheet with questions like, “What sounds would Thoreau have heard in his cabin?” The teacher asks, “An airplane?” (All the kids say, “No-o-o!”) When the Living on Earth interviewer asked the author about his own retreat being near a noisy highway and a short walk to a pub, I was surprised that he didn’t point out that a Boston-Fitchburg train ran right along the edge of Walden Pond in Thoreau’s day, and that the famous naturalist had an easy walk back home to Concord for a Sunday dinner with his mother. Fate did explain that the Walden mystique was all about a mindset and keeping a balance between what’s important and the often numbing dailiness of modern life.
Asakiyume comments: Living deliberately. Something that’s very important to me about that concept is the notion that you can do it anywhere, in any circumstances. I’ll grant that some circumstances make it really hard: if you’re in a job you hate, or a relationship you hate–basically, if there’s some part of your life that’s putting a huge negative drain on you–I think it’s very hard. But I do think that living deliberately can be done in a suburb, in the country, in a city… not just in the wilderness. I think Thoreau wanted to mark, in actual space, his separation from mundane daily life, and I understand that. But I think it’s the mindset, not the location, that’s important.
Suzanne’s friend Sara, from Pomona College days, has a nice report on KUMN, the public broadcasting station in Albuquerque. It’s about Health Care for the Homeless — a program serving 7,500 people in the Albuquerque area — and in particular, it’s about a successful art therapy program. The story tends to confirm my observations earlier this week on the “Waste Land” documentary — namely, that art can open up the world for even the most disadvantaged.
Comments may be sent to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com. I will post them.
Asakiyume comments: I, too, felt the resonance with the entry you had posted earlier about Wasteland. On the one hand, when someone tells me in passing about various unusual services for the homeless–like this one–I sometimes roll my eyes and get all practical minded (art? art? how about a PLACE TO LIVE and a JOB). And yet, on the other hand, the chance to make art, to be “allowed” (as it were) to be a person who creates, and not merely someone desperate to survive, restores dignity and personhood and also, I’m thinking, a kind of autonomy. So yes: ART!
I am taking a playwriting class at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education with Peter Littlefield, who also does a lot of directing. Here is an opera (Handel’s “Partenope”) he co-directed at the English National Opera. I wish I had a real video, but this is what I could find on YouTube.
I just had one class so far, and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun. The students are an interesting mix of ages and backgrounds, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know everyone. One woman, as it happens, teaches in a Boston elementary school where I volunteer.
I really like Peter’s sort of associative approach to playwriting, in which you mess around with images and ideas that interest you, then set them aside while you play with different images and ideas, and ultimately see how they converge. To me the attraction is that you’re less likely to get bored with what you are doing than if you were trying to force an idea into a structure. (I really am sick of writing coaches who harp on “structure.” I believe a structure will emerge.) We did a really funny exercise for openers.
Although I have often tried to write plays, the only actual class I ever had was in writing for TV, which I took while getting a master’s in communications at Syracuse’s Newhouse School. It was all about the formula: one, two three, gag (joke); one, two three, gag; one, two three, gag. Spirit crushing.
For fun, watch the first few minutes of opening-night comments on my teacher’s production of Partenope.
Comments may be sent to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com. I will post them.
Asakiyume comments: I’m so excited about this playwriting class. You must have such a great sense of theater from *watching* so many plays, and you’ve definitely got stories to tell. I hope you’ll share any scripts that you do write. (Your thing about television screenplays, with the “one, two, three, gag” made me laugh because of the alternative meaning of gag–which is what, of course, someone with an artistic vision and free spirit must surely do if trapped with such a formula.)
Not to give away anyone’s exact birthday or age, I just want to say that Birthday Week in our family is fast approaching for Suzanne, John, and me and is associated with the ruby birthstone. Both Suzanne and I wear Luna & Stella jewelry items that include a ruby.
Some years ago, before Suzanne knew about birthstones, her dad took this birthday picture on our front steps in upstate New York.
She had just turned two. The T-shirt is French.
Please note that you can comment on this blog by sending e-mail to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com. I will post comments.
I first read about Oliver Radtke and his website dedicated to preserving Chinglish in around 2006. Radtke was alarmed that some of the more charming English translations of signs were disappearing in China prior to the Beijing Olympics. He elicited the help of international visitors to China, requesting them to e-mail their pictures to him for posting. As I went to Shanghai in early 2007, I was able to join the fun. Radtke used a photograph I took of an escalator sign in his first Chinglish book.
My sign said “Keep your legs.” Other samples included signs in parks, like “Show mercy to the slender grass.” Menus, of course, were great hunting grounds, and Radtke posted numerous examples, including “man and wife lung slice” and “advantageous noodle.”
Radtke doesn’t have a corner on the market,, though. Many people have been having fun with Chinglish over the years. Read more at Wikipedia.
Of course, I would sound much more ridiculous trying to speak or write Chinese — or any other language, for that matter. I admire anyone who launches into such foreign terrain. But I do think there is something fascinating and instructive about how speakers of other native tongues use one’s language. I always appreciate the more awkward translations for how they show a different culture’s thinking.
I blogged in May about the late Paul Nagel, the great biographer of the John Adams family and a friend from the years my husband and I spent in Minneapolis.
Today his son sent a lovely memorial piece by Paul’s longtime buddy Norbert Hirschhorn. Bert’s article appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Read it here. Bert is a physician who has written investigative medical articles on the real illnesses that likely killed historic figures. He is also a poet. His website and photo are here. He divides his time between London and Beirut, where his wife is a professor at the American University. The following poem, written about a period he spent in Finland, might be an elegy for Paul.
About a year ago, I read an article in the Boston Globe about an elusive British street artist known as Banksy. Some Banksy-style art had appeared on a restaurant wall alongside a parking lot in Chinatown, and rumors were flying that Banksy himself had snuck into Boston under cover of darkness to make his mark.
My office is quite near Chinatown, so with very few clues, I set out one lunch hour to find the art. A woman thought I looked lost. She was sure she knew where the restaurant mentioned in the newspaper was located. She didn’t actually, but I followed her a while and had a nice chat. She was amazed to hear what I was looking for: “Banksy? Banksy was here?!” It took a couple lunch hours, but I finally got this picture.
And I wasn’t the only one taking pictures. The parking lot attendant looked very annoyed. A year later the art is covered with ordinary graffiti, sprayed-on tags. I never did hear if it was an authentic Banksy, but I really like it.
If you want to know more about street art in general and Banksy in particular, see the offbeat documentary “Exit through the Gift Shop,” in which Banksy has to come to LA to rescue a street-art exhibition that takes in an awful lot of people.
We watched a couple unusual documentaries last night and last weekend. Often by the time films are available on Netflix, all I remember about the review is that someone highly recommended them. I know only that we will get a big surprise.
“Marwencol” and “Waste Land” were amazing surprises. They turned out to have something in common, too — the idea that art can lift people from despair, help them see things in a way that opens up their world. What was different between the movies was that for the troubled guy who created art in “Marwencol,” showing his work in a NYC gallery is quite beside the point of his healing process and probably the last thing he needs.
The movie is beautifully executed, but one has the sense that the young filmmakers who think the protagonist will benefit from the big-time art world don’t understand psychology very well.
The protagonist of “Waste Land,” successful Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, although equally idealistic, understands his subjects better, having experienced a life similar to theirs in his impoverished childhood. He decides to combine an art project with helping “garbage pickers” in the world’s biggest landfill, in Rio. Getting to know a few of the workers really well, he develops tremendous admiration for them and their deep dignity. He pays a few to work with him on giant portraits on themselves, portraits that play on the themes of some famous paintings. They use recyclables to complete the images, which are then photographed and shown in galleries and at auction. The proceeds come back to the people and help them both individually and collectively.
But the biggest transformation is not monetary but rather what Vik anticipated based on his own life experience — that by seeing things in a new way, they would get new ideas about themselves and their possibilities.
Have you been reading about Elizabeth Warren, the temporary head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? People say she is too controversial to be approved by the Senate and that maybe her employee, Raj Date, a former banker, would be a good compromise candidate. Maybe so, but I just want to tell you about the extraordinary consumer advocate that I know Elizabeth Warren to be.
As a professor at Harvard Law School and an expert on bankruptcy, she has worked tirelessly to reverse the erosion of the of the middle class and lower-income families that has occurred over the last few decades. The CFPB was really based on her work, and she is the right person for the job. Growing up among a lot of older brothers, she learned to argue for herself and be persuasive. I have sat in meetings and heard her talk about her research and outreach, and my jaw just dropped. She is so passionate, and her arguments are so clear and incisive. She is capable of persuading many others who think they have different positions, because she always can find the common interest. But I think the country needs a consumer advocate who doesn’t back down.
Elizabeth Warren has a powerful effect on people. One day several years ago, I was standing in a grocery checkout line and by chance I overheard the cashier telling a customer that when she was thinking of filing for bankruptcy, she contacted Elizabeth Warren and received energetic help — for free. Later she would e-mail Warren anytime and get a response and advice. Probably Warren can’t answer such e-mails now, but I will check with that cashier next time I see her.
If Elizabeth Warren hired Raj Date, then he is a good guy. But if he is a real consumer advocate, I don’t see that his chances of being approved by the Senate are any greater than hers.
Comments may be sent to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com. Luna & Stella is apolitical, but Suzanne said I could write about anything that interests me, and that is what I have been doing.
Earlier this week, I was walking in the Greenway and noticed that new sod had been placed and roped off.
The sign said, “Grass is resting but feel free to hang your art on the rope.” I thought, “Wow, someone in the Greenway Conservancy is really thinking!”
Today I came back. I believe I was the first to hang my art on the rope.
The art is a copy of a collage I made for a greeting card. Actually for a sympathy card when my Aunt Maggie died. She liked purple. I enjoy making greeting cards from collage materials — postcards, magazine art, brochures. I collect these scraps all the time, and when I’m gearing up to make a card for someone, I sift through and pull out pieces that remind me of the person. If I really like the card a lot, I make copies.
A shot of the original card is below.
Comments may be sent to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com.
For several years now, there has been a concert series right in the middle of all the comings and goings at Boston’s busiest Amtrak Station. Sometimes chamber music is played, sometimes it’s movie music, sometimes it’s cabaret. The concerts go from 11:30 to 12:30, and people just wander in and wander out. It’s great to see the look of surprise on travelers’ faces and the cellphone cameras being whipped out. Chairs are set up for those who want to sit to listen, or to eat their lunch. This year’s schedule is here.
Today we heard jazz harpist Deborah Henson-Conant, who has a website with a great URL, www.hipharp.com. She plays a small, 11-pound, blue electric harp from France and dances and sings while playing blues and jazz and songs she wrote. She has been called the Jimi Hendrix of harp and had us all singing along.
See the demo. It starts out with an original song that she also performed in South Station today.
Last weekend my son, daughter-in-law, and grandson stayed in a cabin near Groton, New Hampshire, because John was going to be in a triathlon (swimming, biking, running) the next day. The cabin was in the woods near a lake. In the night, they heard a strange sound, and although she had never seen a moose, my daughter-in-law had a theory that it was a moose. When she got home, she did an Internet search, and sent me a little audio of the sound they heard in their cabin. Here it is.
If you e-mail me at suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com, I will use your comments in a post.
Having blogged about the troubling documentary “Waiting for Superman” here, I thought you might be interested in hearing about a school district that has found one way to overcome a significant barrier to quality education.
The documentary’s critique of U.S. public education centers on the inadequacy of teacher evaluation and the near impossibility of firing bad teachers.
Montgomery County (MD) doesn’t have that problem. Can you guess why?
Deep, broad collaboration. Critical constituencies are in on the evaluation and the decisions about coaching and firing.
A June 5 NY Times story by Michael Winerip, “Helping Teachers Help Themselves,” explains.
“The Montgomery County Public Schools system here has a highly regarded program for evaluating teachers, providing them extra support if they are performing poorly and getting rid of those who do not improve. The program, Peer Assistance and Review — known as PAR — uses several hundred senior teachers to mentor both newcomers and struggling veterans. If the mentoring does not work, the PAR panel — made up of eight teachers and eight principals — can vote to fire the teacher. … In the 11 years since PAR began, the panels have voted to fire 200 teachers, and 300 more have left rather than go through the PAR process, said Jerry D. Weast, the superintendent of the Montgomery County system, which enrolls 145,000 students, one-third of them from low-income families. In the 10 years before PAR, he said, five teachers were fired. ‘It took three to five years to build the trust to get PAR in place,’ he explained.” Read more here.
Having started out my work life as a teacher, I feel pretty strongly that teachers have been given a bad rap lately and that most are experienced, creative, and deeply dedicated (and overworked and underpaid). My daughter-in-law is also a teacher.
But there is no doubt that the bad apples are hard to fire and that every year that they get away with bad teaching turns thousands of children off the whole idea of education, to the lasting detriment of the nation. So I hope everyone will think about the PAR program described in the Times and how they might help influence school policy.
I will post comments sent to suzannesmom@lunaandstella.com.
Got to love this unemployment story on a 17-month job search by an older worker.
“Count 97-year-old Mary Poncin of Warwick (RI) among the long-term unemployed who have finally found work. Poncin has been hired as a greeter at Kent Hospital after nearly 17 months of being unemployed. She was laid off in January 2010 from a retail sales job. Her first job was as a waitress at a diner in the 1930s, earning $1 a day.” AP
If I were aged and sick and were fortunate enough to be greeted by her at the hospital, I think it would give me hope. Good for Kent Hospital to see a good thing!
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