Wednesday, July 08, 2009
The insects come for our intrepid blogger and his husband.
The lovely weather lasted two days and then the rain moved in again yesterday. At least we didn’t have the severe storms that hit Boston, but we’re getting soaked again.
Now that we’ve been in the house a little over a full year, some things in nature are restoring themselves to the way it was before the upheaval of construction, and others are cropping up for the first time, taking advantage of the altered conditions.
We're getting big colonies of this fungus, popularly called Indian Pipes. They're very pretty, translucent and kind of ghostly--altogether quite lovely.
We have two varieties of the herb thyme. This one has gone wild in the heavy rains and is now flowering. The flavor in a salad or stew is unbelievably good.
These tall and far from unattractive flower spikes are coming up well over five feet tall all over the property where we haven’t established special plantings. They were never a feature of the woods before we cleared a large amount of the land for the construction, but now they dominate and we don’t mind at all. They prevent far less attractive weeds from growing and they’re wonderfully sculptural. Their name is woolly [something beginning with m] which I’ve heard several times but the m word somehow doesn’t stick with me. Perhaps some of you will know (Dr. T?)
Some very nice birds are frequenting our new garden (OK, we’re shamelessly bribing them by hanging suet on the trees and they love it). We have a pair of nuthatches who are wonderful fun to watch as they can walk up the tree upright, then turn around and walk back down upside down. This one, courtesy of The Nature Group, is holding on sideways.
We also now have a number of woodpeckers in two varieties: downy and hairy, the two varieties looking remarkably similar except the hairy woodpecker is quite a bit bigger bird. I’ve heard the barred owls deep in the night and this morning the dawn chorus was started by a wood lark with its haunting, clear sweet cry, like running a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass and getting the crystal to ring. The flycatchers who raised a brood in a nest under our bridge have now fledged them out and the nest is vacant. In the afternoon, one or the other of our red tail hawks can be seen soaring above the house, and there are a lot of others whose songs we haven’t identified yet.
But it's nature and it's not all benign. We were putting plants in a week or so ago during a lull in the rain and heard a chilling sound not very far into the woods on the east of the property. It was a raspy, high-pitched cry and I immediately thought of a fisher cat. Combat soon broke out as a second animal voice started screaming in fear and, eventually, pain. At one point there was a break in the fight--the victim having apparently broken away, I saw one or two dark forms racing downhill through the underbrush--followed by sounds of capture and kill. Then an eerie silence.
We started getting big ants in the house again, so I called the exterminator. The night before he came, we were both exhausted from a lot of physical work--we'd had a rare sunny and beautiful day--so we decided to soak in the hot tub. When we pulled the cover, we saw where the ants were massing. Hundreds of them had moved into the tub, their larvae filling two wells in the plastic rim where controls are located. Many of them were swimming on top of the water, others swarmed everywhere. Fritz ran into the house for ant spray and we cleaned things up as best we could.
While all this was going on we were hit by clouds of mosquitoes, a bumper crop pumped out by any little pool of standing water left anywhere by the incessant rain. We leapt into the tub and got submerged as quickly as possible but they swarmed around our heads. We did 20 minutes and then got out, covered up and got back into the house ASAP.
*******
Here are the last of the Denver Museum of Art photos. There isn't much of a theme to my Museum pictures--I just shot anything that caught my attention and there was a fair amount of it.
This Chinese wooden horse dates from early in the Han Dynasty--about 200BC. A little over three feet high, the carving of its head and face was extraordinarily expressive.
A horse of a different color--one of Deborah Butterfield's many horses fashioned out of found objects and materials. In mid-August we should see three of her most famous at Portland, Oregon's airport when we arrive to meet my first grandchild who is due very late this month or early next.
In the American West galleries, this striking portrait of a Native-American woman dominated everything around it.
Afternoon tea meets Rube Goldberg. A mechanized art deco tea pot in sterling silver.
In the Spanish-American gallery, a contemporary madonna and child looks back at cultural stereotypes and has a lot of fun doing so.
Now that we’ve been in the house a little over a full year, some things in nature are restoring themselves to the way it was before the upheaval of construction, and others are cropping up for the first time, taking advantage of the altered conditions.
We're getting big colonies of this fungus, popularly called Indian Pipes. They're very pretty, translucent and kind of ghostly--altogether quite lovely.
We have two varieties of the herb thyme. This one has gone wild in the heavy rains and is now flowering. The flavor in a salad or stew is unbelievably good.
These tall and far from unattractive flower spikes are coming up well over five feet tall all over the property where we haven’t established special plantings. They were never a feature of the woods before we cleared a large amount of the land for the construction, but now they dominate and we don’t mind at all. They prevent far less attractive weeds from growing and they’re wonderfully sculptural. Their name is woolly [something beginning with m] which I’ve heard several times but the m word somehow doesn’t stick with me. Perhaps some of you will know (Dr. T?)
Some very nice birds are frequenting our new garden (OK, we’re shamelessly bribing them by hanging suet on the trees and they love it). We have a pair of nuthatches who are wonderful fun to watch as they can walk up the tree upright, then turn around and walk back down upside down. This one, courtesy of The Nature Group, is holding on sideways.
We also now have a number of woodpeckers in two varieties: downy and hairy, the two varieties looking remarkably similar except the hairy woodpecker is quite a bit bigger bird. I’ve heard the barred owls deep in the night and this morning the dawn chorus was started by a wood lark with its haunting, clear sweet cry, like running a wet finger around the rim of a wine glass and getting the crystal to ring. The flycatchers who raised a brood in a nest under our bridge have now fledged them out and the nest is vacant. In the afternoon, one or the other of our red tail hawks can be seen soaring above the house, and there are a lot of others whose songs we haven’t identified yet.But it's nature and it's not all benign. We were putting plants in a week or so ago during a lull in the rain and heard a chilling sound not very far into the woods on the east of the property. It was a raspy, high-pitched cry and I immediately thought of a fisher cat. Combat soon broke out as a second animal voice started screaming in fear and, eventually, pain. At one point there was a break in the fight--the victim having apparently broken away, I saw one or two dark forms racing downhill through the underbrush--followed by sounds of capture and kill. Then an eerie silence.
We started getting big ants in the house again, so I called the exterminator. The night before he came, we were both exhausted from a lot of physical work--we'd had a rare sunny and beautiful day--so we decided to soak in the hot tub. When we pulled the cover, we saw where the ants were massing. Hundreds of them had moved into the tub, their larvae filling two wells in the plastic rim where controls are located. Many of them were swimming on top of the water, others swarmed everywhere. Fritz ran into the house for ant spray and we cleaned things up as best we could.
While all this was going on we were hit by clouds of mosquitoes, a bumper crop pumped out by any little pool of standing water left anywhere by the incessant rain. We leapt into the tub and got submerged as quickly as possible but they swarmed around our heads. We did 20 minutes and then got out, covered up and got back into the house ASAP.
*******
Here are the last of the Denver Museum of Art photos. There isn't much of a theme to my Museum pictures--I just shot anything that caught my attention and there was a fair amount of it.
This Chinese wooden horse dates from early in the Han Dynasty--about 200BC. A little over three feet high, the carving of its head and face was extraordinarily expressive.
A horse of a different color--one of Deborah Butterfield's many horses fashioned out of found objects and materials. In mid-August we should see three of her most famous at Portland, Oregon's airport when we arrive to meet my first grandchild who is due very late this month or early next.
In the American West galleries, this striking portrait of a Native-American woman dominated everything around it.
Afternoon tea meets Rube Goldberg. A mechanized art deco tea pot in sterling silver.
In the Spanish-American gallery, a contemporary madonna and child looks back at cultural stereotypes and has a lot of fun doing so.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Five and a half years ago as Fritz and I were preparing our Massachusetts wedding, we had some talk back and forth about how we’d refer to each other. Partner was OK but had never really excited us (corporate somehow); lover seemed a little too private, although many gay men had been using it for decades; husband had inevitable heterosexual connotations. Was there, I wondered, a new term coming out of the inventive gay mind for a man married to another man?
Well, faute de mieux, we eventually decided on being each other’s husband and are totally comfortable with that. But last night I discovered that there actually IS a term for a man married to another man or for a woman married to another woman:
Dolos (pl, dolosse) n.
1. (South African, uncommon) The bones that are thrown for divination.
2. (South African, uncommon) The ankle bones of sheep or goats formerly used by children as playthings.
3. Interlocking blocks of concrete, used for protection of seawalls and to preserve beaches from erosion.
4. A gender-neutral alternative to the titles 'husband' and 'wife' for those in same-sex relationships, as in, He is my dolos; we became dolosse on June 17th, 2008. It is intended to convey the intrinsic strength of the engineered form, made even stronger when tangled together by the force of ocean waves.
*******
Over on Facebook, Christopher Ugo tagged me on a Ten Books meme. The deal is to name ten books that always have and always will stick with you, and not to drag it out—think for ten minutes, tops, and come up with the first ten you can think of.
Chris admitted that it was difficult given the millions of books out there and the fact that every genre was eligible, including plays—which of course played right into my career.
After that, the usual rules apply: tag ten others and watch it spread.
Here are my ten, with some explanation why:
1) The Bacchae by Euripides (play). Fifth century B.C., but in the 1960s, Euripides’ politically explosive examination of the confrontation between a sexually repressed young tyrant and Dionysius, god of excess read and played like what was going on in the streets all over this country. There were hundreds of productions, audiences in awe of the god’s seduction of Pentheus and the fury of the Dionysian women who tore him to pieces with their bare hands.
I designed sets and costumes for it early in my career in a fascinating production that the director and I placed in an Edwardian drawing room where elite Londoners gathered to read material that would not normally be accepted in public. Some it transfigured, others it destroyed--just as in the play.
2) Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom by Suzan-Lori Parks (play). The last play I designed at MIT, by a brilliant young African-American playwright who uses language with dazzling skill.
3) Pacific Overtures by Steven Sondheim (music & lyrics) and John Wiedman (script) (musical theater). One of my best design experiences ever. Pacific Overtures is a brilliant piece of theater.
4) Angels in America by Tony Kushner (play in two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika). When I read these two plays for the first time, I was elated that there was an American who could still write this superbly.
5) The Rise and Fall of Paradise: When Arabs and Jews built a kingdom in Spain by Elmer Berdiner (history). This book began my thirst for knowledge of the real interface between Islam and Europe in the middle ages (completely distorted in my Catholic school history courses). I did an in-depth study for several years and wound up teaching the subject to students who were stunned by the immense discoveries and advances in all branches of math, science, medicine, agriculture, pharmacology, chemistry, engineering, geography, etc. that were made by Islamic pioneers centuries before the Europeans to whom they are routinely credited.
6) A Distant Mirror: The calamitous 14th century by Barbara Tuchman (history). Writing on history at it’s very best.
7) Wagner and the Art of the Theater by Patrick Carnegy (biography, arts history). The way we attend theater today descends directly from practices at Wagner’s own theater. Carnegy gives a full picture of the single most theatrically experienced and skilled composer in opera history.
8) The Loon Trilogy (Song of the Loon, Song of Aaron, Listen--the Loon Sings) by Richard Amory (fiction). From the 1960s, an idyllic fantasy of the joy gay life could be if there were acceptance and freedom for homosexuals—much of which has eventually happened. If not the first, The Loon Trilogy was among the very first works in American literature to depict happy, mentally healthy, sexually liberated and validated men in stories that didn’t end in their murder or suicide.
9) The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality and the shaping of American culture by Douglas Shand-Tucci (history, sociology). A shocking history of institutionalized homophobia and persecution at one of the country’s leading universities at a time when Boston/Cambridge was perhaps the great center of homosexual culture in the country.
10) Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell (history). Controversial, but a moving and scrupulously researched account of a real past in which here were male-male and female-female marriages, including in the early Christian church. Not light reading, but very rewarding.
*******
It was Men’s Week in Milan as the big designers showed their new collections.
*******
In her rambling, very strange press conference speech the other day, Sarah Palin said that she had decided to resign as governor after "prayerful consideration that sacrificing my title helps Alaska most".
Well actually, no. Had she resigned her title, she would then have had to pack up her beauty queen tiara and send it back. Not that she realized it, but what she was actually resigning was her office. Ah, Sarah, the hits just keep on coming. As one wag put it, if Ms. Palin does decide to seek the presidency in 2012, Tina Fey is going to have SO much work--and SO much material work with.
Well, faute de mieux, we eventually decided on being each other’s husband and are totally comfortable with that. But last night I discovered that there actually IS a term for a man married to another man or for a woman married to another woman:
Dolos (pl, dolosse) n.
1. (South African, uncommon) The bones that are thrown for divination.
2. (South African, uncommon) The ankle bones of sheep or goats formerly used by children as playthings.
3. Interlocking blocks of concrete, used for protection of seawalls and to preserve beaches from erosion.
4. A gender-neutral alternative to the titles 'husband' and 'wife' for those in same-sex relationships, as in, He is my dolos; we became dolosse on June 17th, 2008. It is intended to convey the intrinsic strength of the engineered form, made even stronger when tangled together by the force of ocean waves.
*******
Over on Facebook, Christopher Ugo tagged me on a Ten Books meme. The deal is to name ten books that always have and always will stick with you, and not to drag it out—think for ten minutes, tops, and come up with the first ten you can think of.
Chris admitted that it was difficult given the millions of books out there and the fact that every genre was eligible, including plays—which of course played right into my career.
After that, the usual rules apply: tag ten others and watch it spread.
Here are my ten, with some explanation why:
1) The Bacchae by Euripides (play). Fifth century B.C., but in the 1960s, Euripides’ politically explosive examination of the confrontation between a sexually repressed young tyrant and Dionysius, god of excess read and played like what was going on in the streets all over this country. There were hundreds of productions, audiences in awe of the god’s seduction of Pentheus and the fury of the Dionysian women who tore him to pieces with their bare hands.
I designed sets and costumes for it early in my career in a fascinating production that the director and I placed in an Edwardian drawing room where elite Londoners gathered to read material that would not normally be accepted in public. Some it transfigured, others it destroyed--just as in the play.2) Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom by Suzan-Lori Parks (play). The last play I designed at MIT, by a brilliant young African-American playwright who uses language with dazzling skill.
3) Pacific Overtures by Steven Sondheim (music & lyrics) and John Wiedman (script) (musical theater). One of my best design experiences ever. Pacific Overtures is a brilliant piece of theater.
4) Angels in America by Tony Kushner (play in two parts: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika). When I read these two plays for the first time, I was elated that there was an American who could still write this superbly.
5) The Rise and Fall of Paradise: When Arabs and Jews built a kingdom in Spain by Elmer Berdiner (history). This book began my thirst for knowledge of the real interface between Islam and Europe in the middle ages (completely distorted in my Catholic school history courses). I did an in-depth study for several years and wound up teaching the subject to students who were stunned by the immense discoveries and advances in all branches of math, science, medicine, agriculture, pharmacology, chemistry, engineering, geography, etc. that were made by Islamic pioneers centuries before the Europeans to whom they are routinely credited.
6) A Distant Mirror: The calamitous 14th century by Barbara Tuchman (history). Writing on history at it’s very best.
7) Wagner and the Art of the Theater by Patrick Carnegy (biography, arts history). The way we attend theater today descends directly from practices at Wagner’s own theater. Carnegy gives a full picture of the single most theatrically experienced and skilled composer in opera history.
8) The Loon Trilogy (Song of the Loon, Song of Aaron, Listen--the Loon Sings) by Richard Amory (fiction). From the 1960s, an idyllic fantasy of the joy gay life could be if there were acceptance and freedom for homosexuals—much of which has eventually happened. If not the first, The Loon Trilogy was among the very first works in American literature to depict happy, mentally healthy, sexually liberated and validated men in stories that didn’t end in their murder or suicide.
9) The Crimson Letter: Harvard, Homosexuality and the shaping of American culture by Douglas Shand-Tucci (history, sociology). A shocking history of institutionalized homophobia and persecution at one of the country’s leading universities at a time when Boston/Cambridge was perhaps the great center of homosexual culture in the country.
10) Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe by John Boswell (history). Controversial, but a moving and scrupulously researched account of a real past in which here were male-male and female-female marriages, including in the early Christian church. Not light reading, but very rewarding.
*******
It was Men’s Week in Milan as the big designers showed their new collections.
*******
In her rambling, very strange press conference speech the other day, Sarah Palin said that she had decided to resign as governor after "prayerful consideration that sacrificing my title helps Alaska most".
Well actually, no. Had she resigned her title, she would then have had to pack up her beauty queen tiara and send it back. Not that she realized it, but what she was actually resigning was her office. Ah, Sarah, the hits just keep on coming. As one wag put it, if Ms. Palin does decide to seek the presidency in 2012, Tina Fey is going to have SO much work--and SO much material work with.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
From Pam Phillips at Writing Every DayI was working in the garden last weekend when this beautiful insect settled on a rock right next to me. Its iridescent blue-green body glowed and set off the velvety black wings. I thought it was a dragon fly of a variety I’d never seen before, but Doug Taron set me straight (so to speak) that it was a damsel fly.
This is my current project, a stone-paved culvert to take water draining past the house and direct it harmlessly to prevent wash-outs as it heads downhill. The frame is the underpinning of a short bridge from the paved driveway to the foot of the walk leading to the house.
Virtually all the plants are now set in the garden in front of the house. A few stragglers will come as they become available at local wholesale nurseries. Each of these perennials will expand with time to fill the garden solidly with flowers and ornamental foliage. Down front and center is what I call the “heelstone”, a small boulder with a hollow in its upper surface.
In the hollow, Fritz planted a miniature garden of hens and chickens and other succulents, now in delightful blossom.
*******
This story is almost too cute—it comes off like something from a 1940s movie starring Mickey and Judy and all the kids.
Those local theater companies that have so far managed to survive in the current economy are looking to produce less arcane and much more popular family material. The Gloucester Stage Company recently announced “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and went into rehearsal for a late June opening. Everything was going just fine until the opening day of the production with matinee and evening performances scheduled. That’s when Gloucester’s Charlie Brown, Stephen Gagliastro, informed the producer that he was ill and had no voice.
With cancellation of the opening staring them in the face, one of the company’s staff remembered that the High School in neighboring Rockport had presented Charlie Brown in the spring. A quick call to the Principal led to Brian Audano who had played the part. The 17 year old Audano had a ticket for the matinee opener and had put on his yellow shirt with Charlie Brown’s characteristic zig-zag horizontal black line that morning. The call came in at 1pm and Brian was offered the role. He left for the theater immediately as word spread rapidly through Rockport High’s student body. "It was pretty amazing, a little nerve-racking,” Audano said, “but I was lucky because all of the cast were so kind. I had about an hour and a half to go over new stage directions.”
David Sharrocks, who played the role of Snoopy, said they appreciated Audano stepping into the part, "I was thoroughly impressed that he never opened the binder with the script. He was surprisingly relaxed the whole time and he seemed very comfortable with the experience."
The stage manager came on stage at curtain time to announce the cast change and stumbled over the pronunciation of Audano’s name—at which point the audience, now packed with Rockport students and teachers, roared out the correct pronunciation. The performance proceeded flawlessly.
Audano, who will enter Wheelock College in Boston (where they do quite a bit of theater) this fall, will enter with a really nice professional credit and a fist full of good press notices.
With quotes from The Gloucester Times
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The area south of Denver's State Capital building is rich in various historic and cultural institutions. We arrived in the morning, half an hour or so before opening time of the Denver Art Museum and strolled around to get the lay of the land and decide exactly what we wanted to do and when.
We found a little cafe opposite the Museum's new wing, which has been very highly praised for its architecture and exhibit spaces.
Looking back north from the cafe the view to the right is the main building of the Denver Public Library, actually a cluster of buildings or wings in differing materials, including a delightful little neo-Baroque pavilion sheathed entirely in copper.
Looking north and to the left was the original building of the Museum, dating to 1971 and rather obviously still owing a great deal to the 1960s "brutalist" school of architecture.
Right in front of us was the dazzling new wing, attached to the original Museum building by a bridge at second story level. Our first thought was that this was another Frank Gehry project--the huge shapes jumbled into each other, the severe angles, the titanium plates making up the exterior skin, all seemed to point to another Gehry extravaganza.
It turned out to not be Gehry but Daniel Liebeskind, architect of the lavishly praised Jewish Museum in Berlin. But one thing linked the building to Gehry--the fact that although the wing is only three years old its roofs have already failed (notice the figures of construction workers on the left of the building).
We got our coffee (me), tea (Fritz) and a piece of coffee cake to share and settled down to watch the arial ballet of the construction workers, tethered to the building with safety lines to prevent falls from the almost 45 degree grade of the surface they had to work on.
Watching became mesmerizing. Eventually other Museum-goers waiting for opening joined us, watching intently the dangerous work overhead. This shot suggested to me the stern of a sinking ship--and indeed, the home of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown"--she who took command of a lifeboat during the Titanic disaster--is only two blocks away.
The work was slow and must have been exhausting as they had to constantly stop to readjust the line's length and tension as they moved up and down the steep slant to guide bins of material into position on the little pedestals that had been installed especially for the purpose.
Denver Art looks west, not east, culturally. There are departments of American, West Asian, East Asian and Northwest Indian art as well as a rich collection of art of the U.S.'s Westward expansion--but no big collection of European art from any era, (although the African collection, while small is filled with very good pieces, above). It makes sense, and would make even more if there were a collection of the arts of New Spain in the 17th Century before the English ever set foot on the east coast.
The new wing is devoted to modern works almost exclusively. A high percentage is in the form of sculpture or installations.
The outer elements seem as if hanging in a cloud around the figure but in fact, everything is welded to everything else and the piece can be interpreted as the figure coming together out of a swirl of elements, or of the figure radiating energy in all directions.
Spaces are invitingly irregular in the new wing with useful nooks and crannies liberally provided by the architect in all directions. This installation obviously presents riotous behavior by an invasion of foxes, as the piece wraps around and under a staircase.
We especially liked three pieces from the First Peoples of the Northwest. The first two present a modern-style reinterpretation of classic motifs. Above: a combination of human, walrus and elk, stressing the interdependence of these species.
In this piece, the artist created a figure and a narrative out of found natural objects, allowing what was found to suggest the subject matter of the final piece.
Slightly over three feet tall, this highly sculptural ceremonial dance mask occupies a corner in dramatic fashion and is supported by a video of various dance ceremonies to suggest how it appeared in motion and in the context of other dancers and other masks.
We found a little cafe opposite the Museum's new wing, which has been very highly praised for its architecture and exhibit spaces.
Looking back north from the cafe the view to the right is the main building of the Denver Public Library, actually a cluster of buildings or wings in differing materials, including a delightful little neo-Baroque pavilion sheathed entirely in copper.
Looking north and to the left was the original building of the Museum, dating to 1971 and rather obviously still owing a great deal to the 1960s "brutalist" school of architecture.
Right in front of us was the dazzling new wing, attached to the original Museum building by a bridge at second story level. Our first thought was that this was another Frank Gehry project--the huge shapes jumbled into each other, the severe angles, the titanium plates making up the exterior skin, all seemed to point to another Gehry extravaganza.
It turned out to not be Gehry but Daniel Liebeskind, architect of the lavishly praised Jewish Museum in Berlin. But one thing linked the building to Gehry--the fact that although the wing is only three years old its roofs have already failed (notice the figures of construction workers on the left of the building).
We got our coffee (me), tea (Fritz) and a piece of coffee cake to share and settled down to watch the arial ballet of the construction workers, tethered to the building with safety lines to prevent falls from the almost 45 degree grade of the surface they had to work on.
Watching became mesmerizing. Eventually other Museum-goers waiting for opening joined us, watching intently the dangerous work overhead. This shot suggested to me the stern of a sinking ship--and indeed, the home of "The Unsinkable Molly Brown"--she who took command of a lifeboat during the Titanic disaster--is only two blocks away.
The work was slow and must have been exhausting as they had to constantly stop to readjust the line's length and tension as they moved up and down the steep slant to guide bins of material into position on the little pedestals that had been installed especially for the purpose. 
Denver Art looks west, not east, culturally. There are departments of American, West Asian, East Asian and Northwest Indian art as well as a rich collection of art of the U.S.'s Westward expansion--but no big collection of European art from any era, (although the African collection, while small is filled with very good pieces, above). It makes sense, and would make even more if there were a collection of the arts of New Spain in the 17th Century before the English ever set foot on the east coast.
The new wing is devoted to modern works almost exclusively. A high percentage is in the form of sculpture or installations.
The outer elements seem as if hanging in a cloud around the figure but in fact, everything is welded to everything else and the piece can be interpreted as the figure coming together out of a swirl of elements, or of the figure radiating energy in all directions.
Spaces are invitingly irregular in the new wing with useful nooks and crannies liberally provided by the architect in all directions. This installation obviously presents riotous behavior by an invasion of foxes, as the piece wraps around and under a staircase.
We especially liked three pieces from the First Peoples of the Northwest. The first two present a modern-style reinterpretation of classic motifs. Above: a combination of human, walrus and elk, stressing the interdependence of these species.
In this piece, the artist created a figure and a narrative out of found natural objects, allowing what was found to suggest the subject matter of the final piece.
Slightly over three feet tall, this highly sculptural ceremonial dance mask occupies a corner in dramatic fashion and is supported by a video of various dance ceremonies to suggest how it appeared in motion and in the context of other dancers and other masks.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Quite a bit of interest was stirred up by the announcement this week that Haus Wahnfried, the home built in Bayreuth, Germany by Richard Wagner, will be renovated and restored. A major tourist stop for opera lovers attending the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth, the house has been a museum for many years. It's a new exhibit that will be opened within the renovated museum that’s causing the stir.
Winifred Wagner and Hitler. Photograph: Corbis via Guardian.co.uk The composer’s 29 year old great granddaughter Katherina Wagner, recently named co-director of the Bayreuth Festival along with her half sister Eva, will present an exhibit on the intimate relationship of the Festival and the family with Adolph Hitler. In particular Winifred Wagner, the composer’s widowed daughter-in-law who ran the Festival during the 1930s and the war years, was “in bed” at least metaphorically (some think literally) with Hitler and the Nazi regime, which used the Festival and the composer’s operas as major propaganda tools. The regime subsidized the Festival by purchasing huge blocks of tickets and sending troops from the army of the Reich to Bayreuth for R&R.
Katharina Wagner. Photograph: Enrico Nawrath/EPAThat much is pretty well known but as Katharina has also announced that the Festival archives will be made available for unrestricted scholarly research, the door is finally being opened to a full and honest revelation of the most difficult and disreputable period in the family-run Festival’s past.
While Wagner’s grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang (Eva and Katherina’s father) were placed in charge of reopening a presumably “deNazified” Festival in 1951 with the approval of American occupation authorities, the extent of their association with Hitler and approval of his policies has never been fully examined. The fact that a family member who is in control of things is making this move is of enormous importance.
“When I was growing up,” [Katherina] said, ” I was repeatedly confronted with this topic. Was my grandmother Hitler’s lover? To what extent was my father embroiled with Hitler? No one in the family ever spoke about it. If my sister [Eva Wagner-Pasquier] and I don’t ask the questions, who then will?” Katharina is currently seeking financial and organizational backing for the investigation, which she hopes will be completed in time for the 200th anniversary of Wagner’s birth in 2013.
There are also plans to host a show next year on the expulsion of Jews from Germany’s opera houses and to set up a permanent exhibition some point in the future at Wahnfried, the composer’s former villa, that focuses on the relationship between the Nazis and Bayreuth.
From an internet news source
*******
This interesting item was a birthday gift from Fritz's office manager who also does AIDS education in southern New Hampshire funded by a Federal grant. Any guesses as to what this might be? The answer is at the end of this post.*******
All the perennials for the garden were supposed to be delivered Wednesday of this week, after we had returned from Denver. Instead, through mixed signals, they arrived the previous Wednesday, probably during our flight out of Manchester, NH. Nicely grown in generously sized pots, what you see above is about half of the total, which is just above 100. We found them Sunday, the morning after we got back.There was a design drawing of the location of each plant in the big garden plot in front of the house. I had made up markers--popsicle sticks with the name of each plant written in permanent marker--so we could do the layout and adjust things before putting the plants in.
Once the markers were in the ground, we placed each plant by its marker in readiness for the arrival Wednesday afternoon of the landscape designer of the landscaping scheme who was going to make adjustments in the layout as needed. This is what it looked like just before she came.In consultation with us, she made quite a few adjustments. We think she was surprised at how organized we were because she mentioned that she was used to doing all the layout work herself. Having all the preliminary work done by the client allowed all the consultation and changes to be done in just an hour and a half. Yesterday morning we began planting and most of the work was finished yesterday afternoon; only six rose bushes remain to have their holes dug and be placed in the earth. Pictures of the completed planting in the next entry.
*******
More on the trip. I had booked the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel through Travelocity for what I later discovered was about half the going rate for our room. It turned out the hotel was undergoing a $70 million renovation and lots of services weren't available. We were upgraded at the front desk to a suite, which was OK, but we discovered that even if the hotel weren't under renovation, niceties like WiFi in the rooms wasn't free but available for $10 a day plus tax. There were also a couple of very strange pieces of furniture and, for a suite that could sleep four, the single tiniest bathroom I think I've ever encountered in a hotel or motel anywhere in this country. There was a great view from our 17th floor windows, however:
All things considered, it wasn't so bad as we don't tend to hang out at the hotel a lot when there's a city to explore. We found this dear little house, now a lawyer's office, that got landmarked and survived the razing of the entire block on which it stands. Everything else is parking lot.
We'd be very interested to see how the block will eventually be developed around this house with its little garden behind that has to remain untouched because of its historical status.*******
Answer: it's for the garden, a house for mason bees. Not a hive, but a house for the eggs of a variety of bees that usually lay their eggs in holes bored in trees by beetles or pecked by woodpeckers. The bamboo tubes mimic the bored holes. The females retreat to the furthest depth of the tubes, lay eggs and then seal the opening of the tube with a plaster made of mud--the reason they're called mason bees. The young develop over the winter and break their way out when spring warmth wakes them. The bee house can then be cleaned out and prepared for a new breeding cycle the following fall.
Monday, June 22, 2009
I found out yesterday that just before we left for Denver last week, the Grim Reaper had come for The North Shore Music Theater.
This local institution drew audiences from northern Massachusetts—and even Boston—as well as from southern New Hampshire. Its closing cannot be blamed completely on the current financial crisis, but the crisis did create conditions that prevented the theater from pulling itself out of its terminal financial situation.
North Shore did quality productions. It grew out of a 1950s summer stock tent into a strongly patronized regional theater that attracted first-rate talent from New York and occasionally some of the best of Boston’s actors and singers. In recent years, Fritz and I saw a fine Carousel there starring Aaron Lazar (male romantic lead in the Broadway hit “Light in the Piazza”), and an excellent production of Steven Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.
But in 2005 a late night electrical fire devastated the building. Insurance didn’t cover the full cost of the damages, and the general manager’s gamble on renting expensive theater space in Boston to mount two productions while it was being rebuilt didn’t pay off. Debt grew when the new space’s reduced seating and other losses worsened the bottom line. When a new Artistic Director with no theater management experience took over, there was a staff revolt, crippling management resignations, and a deficit that rose to $5 million. With the debt greater than the assessed value of the 22 acre property, and with little hope of raising money from investors, North Shore announced it was closing for good. Subscribers who had paid for 2009-10 season tickets were informed that there was no way of refunding their money.
Speculation is that the property in desirable Beverly, MA will be purchased by a developer. Yet another mall, condo colony, whatever. One more valuable performance venue/cultural resource is gone.
*******
Alex Ross (of the great music blog The Rest is Noise, classical music critic for The New Yorker magazine, and multiple prize-winning author) on the accelerating elimination of arts criticism and comment from our newspapers:
“A digression on the sufferings of the newspaper business. I think the firing of critics and of various other thoughtful journalists will be seen as one of the industry's major blunders. The greatest mistake has been the panicky preoccupation with all things Internet — the decision to give away "content" for free, the attempt to sound "bloggy," the urge to make writing interactive, the narrow-minded focus on counting hits.
“Several years ago I wrote in passing: ‘I never took economics, but it seems to me that a company that gives away its product for free is committing suicide.’ I received a flurry of e-mails saying that if I had taken economics I would have understood that in the brave new world before us paid circulation didn't matter and newspapers would recoup any losses with online advertising. As in other areas of postmodern finance, my lack of training in economics didn't necessarily hinder my understanding of the situation. I'm generally a fan of the wacky world wide web, but I don't believe that it will put traditional journalism out of business, any more than television replaced movies or recording replaced live performance. The false either/or of Internet vs. print should be put to rest. And publications should emphasize their strengths and not their weaknesses.”
*******
So, some pictures of our recent trip to Colorado. The riches of the Denver Museum of Art are such that I’ll be spreading them out over a number of posts. We had two objectives: Fritz to deliver a presentation on “Reaching the Reluctant Learner”—not a title he would have chosen but the subject asked for by the education conference held at the Keystone Resort and Conference Center; and to have some fun in Denver before flying back to New Hampshire. Here’s the start of the trip:
The Loveland Pass at 11,990 feet above sea level, above the snow line, high enough to cause some labored breathing due to thin air.
While Fritz was presenting at the conference, I did some sightseeing on the road between Keystone and Breckenridge (the evening before, we'd found a dynamite Scottish/Irish pub along it). Somewhere in the area there was an antique auto rally. Convoys of cars and trucks passed me going in the other direction.
Wherever there was a rock outcropping on or near the very edge of a cliff, a house seemed to be perched on it.
Part of a huge chipmunk colony in residence at a scenic overlook near Breckenridge. Look closely.
Hotel de Paris, a mid 19th century building converted into a hotel by a French immigrant in 1875, now the museum in Georgetown, CO. In its heyday, Georgetown had no fewer than four fire stations scattered around its relatively small area. With that kind of coverage, the town avoided the devastating fires that regularly leveled most other wooden cities of the time. It stands now as a perfectly preserved Victorian-era town.
This local institution drew audiences from northern Massachusetts—and even Boston—as well as from southern New Hampshire. Its closing cannot be blamed completely on the current financial crisis, but the crisis did create conditions that prevented the theater from pulling itself out of its terminal financial situation.
North Shore did quality productions. It grew out of a 1950s summer stock tent into a strongly patronized regional theater that attracted first-rate talent from New York and occasionally some of the best of Boston’s actors and singers. In recent years, Fritz and I saw a fine Carousel there starring Aaron Lazar (male romantic lead in the Broadway hit “Light in the Piazza”), and an excellent production of Steven Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.
But in 2005 a late night electrical fire devastated the building. Insurance didn’t cover the full cost of the damages, and the general manager’s gamble on renting expensive theater space in Boston to mount two productions while it was being rebuilt didn’t pay off. Debt grew when the new space’s reduced seating and other losses worsened the bottom line. When a new Artistic Director with no theater management experience took over, there was a staff revolt, crippling management resignations, and a deficit that rose to $5 million. With the debt greater than the assessed value of the 22 acre property, and with little hope of raising money from investors, North Shore announced it was closing for good. Subscribers who had paid for 2009-10 season tickets were informed that there was no way of refunding their money.
Speculation is that the property in desirable Beverly, MA will be purchased by a developer. Yet another mall, condo colony, whatever. One more valuable performance venue/cultural resource is gone.
*******
Alex Ross (of the great music blog The Rest is Noise, classical music critic for The New Yorker magazine, and multiple prize-winning author) on the accelerating elimination of arts criticism and comment from our newspapers:“A digression on the sufferings of the newspaper business. I think the firing of critics and of various other thoughtful journalists will be seen as one of the industry's major blunders. The greatest mistake has been the panicky preoccupation with all things Internet — the decision to give away "content" for free, the attempt to sound "bloggy," the urge to make writing interactive, the narrow-minded focus on counting hits.
“Several years ago I wrote in passing: ‘I never took economics, but it seems to me that a company that gives away its product for free is committing suicide.’ I received a flurry of e-mails saying that if I had taken economics I would have understood that in the brave new world before us paid circulation didn't matter and newspapers would recoup any losses with online advertising. As in other areas of postmodern finance, my lack of training in economics didn't necessarily hinder my understanding of the situation. I'm generally a fan of the wacky world wide web, but I don't believe that it will put traditional journalism out of business, any more than television replaced movies or recording replaced live performance. The false either/or of Internet vs. print should be put to rest. And publications should emphasize their strengths and not their weaknesses.”
*******
So, some pictures of our recent trip to Colorado. The riches of the Denver Museum of Art are such that I’ll be spreading them out over a number of posts. We had two objectives: Fritz to deliver a presentation on “Reaching the Reluctant Learner”—not a title he would have chosen but the subject asked for by the education conference held at the Keystone Resort and Conference Center; and to have some fun in Denver before flying back to New Hampshire. Here’s the start of the trip:
The Loveland Pass at 11,990 feet above sea level, above the snow line, high enough to cause some labored breathing due to thin air.
While Fritz was presenting at the conference, I did some sightseeing on the road between Keystone and Breckenridge (the evening before, we'd found a dynamite Scottish/Irish pub along it). Somewhere in the area there was an antique auto rally. Convoys of cars and trucks passed me going in the other direction.
Wherever there was a rock outcropping on or near the very edge of a cliff, a house seemed to be perched on it.
Part of a huge chipmunk colony in residence at a scenic overlook near Breckenridge. Look closely.
Hotel de Paris, a mid 19th century building converted into a hotel by a French immigrant in 1875, now the museum in Georgetown, CO. In its heyday, Georgetown had no fewer than four fire stations scattered around its relatively small area. With that kind of coverage, the town avoided the devastating fires that regularly leveled most other wooden cities of the time. It stands now as a perfectly preserved Victorian-era town.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Happy Father's Day to all my fellow dads, straight and gay!
This will be an interim post until I get back home tomorrow evening. We're having a great time out here. Fritz's presentation went very well Saturday morning (when it was over he sold out all the copies of his two books that he'd brought with him); we took off across the mountains and returned to Denver.
I managed to not bring the cable that connects my camera to my laptop so I cannot post any of my pictures yet but will cull through them and post a lot ASAP. We're taking a mid-day break right now, but we're spending our day at the Denver Museum of Art where I've been able to shoot a lot of extremely interesting pieces and installations.
This one became an instant favorite of mine, "Fatherhood" by Wes Hempel, who took inspiration from Renaissance paintings of the Madonna with Child and attendant little cherubs to create a tribute to masculine nurturing and care.
But the most amazing show isn't inside the Museum but outside, watching a massive repair and refinishing job being done to the Museum's three year old new wing. Designed by uberhot architect Daniel Liebeskind, the roof has failed already and a crew of highly skilled construction workers is working on 45 degree angle surfaces high above ground , hanging from safety lines and moving heavy equipment in a kind of slow-motion ballet that's amazing to watch.
We're headed back to the Museum--more soon!
I managed to not bring the cable that connects my camera to my laptop so I cannot post any of my pictures yet but will cull through them and post a lot ASAP. We're taking a mid-day break right now, but we're spending our day at the Denver Museum of Art where I've been able to shoot a lot of extremely interesting pieces and installations.
This one became an instant favorite of mine, "Fatherhood" by Wes Hempel, who took inspiration from Renaissance paintings of the Madonna with Child and attendant little cherubs to create a tribute to masculine nurturing and care.
But the most amazing show isn't inside the Museum but outside, watching a massive repair and refinishing job being done to the Museum's three year old new wing. Designed by uberhot architect Daniel Liebeskind, the roof has failed already and a crew of highly skilled construction workers is working on 45 degree angle surfaces high above ground , hanging from safety lines and moving heavy equipment in a kind of slow-motion ballet that's amazing to watch.
We're headed back to the Museum--more soon!
