Another Nutcracker

The Nutcracker, in New York City (NYC), has been the province of many companies but not the American Ballet Theater (ABT) in recent years.  They have just done a brilliant new production which they are hoping will become the backbone of every season, for the Nutcracker pulls many a company out of financial disaster each year.  It is without doubt the most popular ballet in America.

ABT is a stellar company and Alexei Ratmansky, the Russian-trained choreagrapher, and his team have done a marvelous interpretation from the opening scene with the party preparations in the kitchen taken over by the rats to the wonderful set pieces.  This ballet is remarkable for its use of child dancers, for its Biedermeier inspired sets and costumes, for its humor, for its very clever staging of the dances.  The evening flies by.  I am a twitchy audience member and usually checking my watch, but this eveining, when the intermission came, I thought, "Already?"

At some level, Nutcracker seems to be a metaphor for puberty as the child dancers become adults, as the children's friendship becomes "love'--in this version the male dancer gives his partner a ring, as the dream of childhood becomes the morning after of awakening with the toy nutcracker.

This is a fresh and different production which also holds closely to tradition.

God Bless Us, Every One at the Da Capo Opera, NYC

Have you ever wondered what happened to Tim Cratchit and the gang after the end of A Christmas Carol?  Well, neither have I actually, but other people have, and so we have God Bless Us, Every One by Thomas Pasateri (composer) and Bill Van Horn and Michael Capasso (librettists).  It tells the further story of some of the Cratchits. It has love, adventure, war, degradation and redemption not to mention a whole lot of forgiveness.  After twenty years, Scrooge dies at his desk, greatly beloved and successful.  He leaves all of his money to the poor which leaves his business partner in a bind.  Tim Cratchit, the partner and formerly Tiny Tim, sails to America to make his fortune.  There he lands in the Civil War.  Many scenes later he is re-united with his true love.  Meanwhile his ward falls in love with a southerner.

The piece to my way of thinking was too much like a pageant (it is only one act) with people popping in and out of the story to make the various plot points .  The music was better than serviceable but songs about "Christmas day, hurray hurray" don't quite do it.  The staging was unusually good for Da Capo, a small opera company in a large expensive city.  The fact that this was a co-production with the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre undoubtedly helped.  Audience applause was polite.

But the New York Times really liked it. (NYT, Dec. 19, 2010, page C1, "'A Christmas Carol', the (Operatic) Sequel."  And I suspect it has a future especially for community productions which want something seasonal and for which a large caste and conventional sentiments are a draw.
Sort of recommended.

American Grace

Some time ago, I was managing the programing for a convention and someone suggested Robert Putnam for a speaker because of his seminal book on social connections, Bowling Alone.  At the time his office assured me he was probably already booked and charged $10,000 for a one hour speech based on his research (that is, his book).  Well, our group did book reviews all the time for free, and I found a member willing to do a break-out session.

However, when I heard that he was appearing in NYC with no ticket charge, I was ready to go.  He has a new book which was published in October, and it should be as important as Bowling Alone, and since it deals with religion, it could even be much more prominent.  American Grace discusses the most comprehensive survey ever done of Americans and their religious lives.  He and his co-author, David Campbell, make a number of startling discoveries.

American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us involved a survey of three thousand Americans in 2006 and a repeat survey of the same people in 2007 plus stays of one to two months with about a dozen congregations of all kinds spread around the US.  He found (as have others) that we are an exceptionally religious people.  We are also exceptionally diverse.  In most countries those conditions lead to civil war.  But it seems, we are also exceptionally tolerant especially in our personal lives.  Although religious piety is predictive of political division to an unprecedented degree, in our personal lives we are deeply connected.  Eighty per cent of us see some good in all religions.  More than half of us marry outside of our religious group, and a large number change affiliation over their lifetime.  And on the whole religious people are just nicer than the non-religious.  There is, of course, much more.

One can agree or disagree, but he has almost 700 pages of data, charts, argument and citations to back up his points.  If you can't get Putnam to explain it all to you, I suggest the book, for I believe we will be talking about this for a long time.  There is a lot of text, but Putnam is a fairly easy read in that you can get a lot from the graphs and headings.  It is solid but clear.

Highly recommended.

Summer and Smoke

A generation ago Lee Hoiby wrote an opera which was criticized as old-fashioned.  He was a student of Menotti, and if you are familiar with Anahl and the Night Visitors, you have the idea.  Fortunately fashions change and Hoiby's Summer and Smoke recently performed at the Manhattan School of Music now receives more favorable reviews.


Summer is based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams and tells the story of dashing doctor Johnny and repressed Alma, next door neighbors fated to be almost lovers.  Williams was not big on conventional happy endings.  The story is affecting, the performances excellent, the sets marvelous with two especially nice Spanish-moss draped trees and lovely lighting.  The music is rich.   I would recommend it, but we saw the last performance.

Holiday Brass

Each year the New York Philharmonic brass players do a Christmas concert.  The last couple of years they have joined with the West Point Band playing seasonal music.  Listening to Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring with brass continuo is a cultural treat that ranks with hearing Va Pensiero in strong waltz mode or Under the Double Eagle with a mandolin orchestra.  Actually the Bach, played by the NYP brass was very pleasurable, but once you get used to the concepts, the others have their peculiar charms too.

Back to the concert--it was loud, it was brassy, it was jazzy, it was corny, and the audience liked it..  For my taste, however, it was too loud and lacked nuance--brass can be played with nuance even though that is not what first comes to mind.

Scipione Africano

The Yale Baroque Opera Project shows what can be done with talented faculty, very bright students and $3 million in a Mellon Foundation grant.  It was very much a college production--Freshmen and Sophomore student singers (and others).  Free tickets.  It made me appreciate what those master classes we have observed at the Metropolitan Opera are about, but it is unfair to hold these students to such standards--the Met scholars are probably ten years of hard study older and most have some professional experience.  Opera performance is a lifelong study.

Most of these students will not sing professionally--several had lovely voices but lacked the power to fill even a small auditorium  They performed well.  The wonder is that such young students are already studying Baroque opera performance.  That is a Yale education, and I envy them.

About the opera--Francesco Cavalli was big name in his day (approximately 1650).  He gave the audience what it wanted: stage spectacle, lots of plot, royalty, noble virtues, comic servants, sword fights with one contestant dragged off stage after expiring and lots of pleasant music.  Great opera?  Not really, but grand and a very pleasant evening if you ignore the traffic between New York and New Haven.

Ghostwritten

One of the better books I have read recently is Ghostwritten by David Mitchell; however, I have doubts about my ability to get one of my book groups to pick it up.  It is a series of linked short stories (apparently a current fad) united by their connection to an explosion in the Tokyo subway system.  Each chapter has a different narrator and locale but each turns out to be linked in some way to the original event.  Some of magical aspects.  It is puzzling, thought-provoking, worthy of argument--or discussion as we call it.  Mitchell notes at one point that each act of memory is an act of ghostwriting.  And there is an actual ghost-writer who may or may not have a happy ending.


And why wouldn't my book groups be eager to take this on?  Well, it's not easy.  It's puzzling at times, definitely not The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.  Multiple times the reader has to get into the story.  Some of the narrators are likable, some are quite repellent, some sympathetic, some not so much.


While it is challenging, it is also rewarding and to my taste well worth the effort.

Paris, the Luminous Years

We went to a preview showing of the first hour of Paris: the Luminous Years the Alliance Francaise last night with a talk by the director beforehand.  She spoke of it as five year project with four years devoted to fundraising, and one to making the two hour program which will be shown at 9:00 p.m. on December 15, 2010.

Even though the time of the post-impressionists is so well known, there is much to learn and enjoy; the film is lovely and there are many little discoveries.  Why did they hang out in cafes?  Their apartments had no heat, and there was a law against meetings without a permit.  Permits were awarded slowly and capriciously.  Bars had booze, heat and toilets, and no one bothered a group sitting around a bar.  Some of the filmed interviews are with people who were there and some with distinguished and well-spoken scholars.  Highly recommneded.

John Kelly and Eqon Schiele

Pass the Blutwurs, Bitte at the Ellen Stewart Theatre at La Mama portrays  the life of Egon Schiele, the Austrian expressionist artist.  La Mama is the New York City experimental theater which has been doing avant garde performances for nearly fifty years without ever managing to become old garde.  Egon Schiele was a painter who specialized in the erotic, was jailed for pornography and yet highly successful, married for advangage, and died at twenty-eight in the great Spanish flu pandemic of 1918.  All of this is in the performance.  John Kelly is a poly-artist who does a little of everything. In this performance he wrote, choreographed, directed, performed and is having a simultaneous art show a few blocks away.

The show is certainly interesting with sets so minimal as to be virtually non-existent, period costumes and period music.  Think silent movie with all of the dialogue cards at the beginning of the movie--there is no English dialogue and no surtitles.  We aren't supposed to understand any spoken words.  At the opening two men come out carrying signs explaining the action of the six scenes--dramatic discovery is not a factor here.  Everything else is pantomime.  There is movmement, much of it dancelike, and a marvelous bit where Kelly/Schiele "paints" by washing whitewash off a painting and a lovely beer-drinking scene where they actually drink what certainly appears to be beer.  The audience clearly understands what is happening at each moment.

It is easier to say what this is not than what it is, but what it most significantly is not, is moving.  I was never bored, but when it was over, I was ready and most of the applause was warm without being wildly enthusiastic.

book- A Jury of Her Peers

A Jury of Her Peers, named after a famous short story by Susan Glaspell, is a history of the writing of American women from the beginning of the country to very recently.  It is well worth reading as a survey, but since it casts its net so wide, there is only superficial analysis of the many works covered.  An arc of history appears as women writers move from apologizing for their audacity to attempting to write like men to finding a voice that considers women's concerns to be as valid as men's concerns. Covering three hundred fifty years, author Elaine Showalter gives biographical information of each writer, summarizes the prominent works, gives an idea of the contemporary critical reception and some idea of their overall importance, and she covers a lot of women  She doesn't tell you everything you want to know, but she definitely introduces some writers you will want to know better.

pay equity and its lack

The Paycheck Fairness Act was sunk in the senate under a procedural vote eliminating it from consideration and also eliminating the obligation of senators to consider its merits.  I wonder if inept promotion was part of its defeat.  A key provision would have prevented companies from punishing workers for revealing salaries and inquiring about them.  Without this provision not even egregious salary discrimination can be prosecuted.  If you don't know you're being cheated, what can you do about it?  No law is enforceable without access to information.  You would think everyone could approve of that kind of freedom of information.

Now--I went to a meeting last night with an interesting speaker representing Women on the Job, a project of the Long Island Fund for Women and Girls.  I won't attempt to recapitulate the speech--just a couple of nuggets.  The gender differential in pay is about 23% in private market jobs and only 11% in public jobs which normally have published, or at least publicly available, pay scales.  Gender differences in pay have a racial dimension..  Black women  earn 68% and Hispanic women only 60% of what men make while Asian American women earn 92%.  Gender pay equity would eliminate 50% of the nation's poverty problem.  Finally it has been known that in professions that have had a significant influx of women, salaries and pay decreased for all, but it seems that in fields that have had in increase in men workers such as nursing, salaries risen for all.  I will never look at a male nurse the same way again.

John Baldessari at the MMA

The Metropolitan Museum had an event for William Society members recent--a very nice way to see an exhibibt.  The museum is closed, members are given wine and nuts, a curator talks and after everyone descends to the level of the exhibit and views it, able to ask the curator any questions that come to mind. 

Baldessari is a California conceptual artist who has worked and taught for fifty years and is well known to those who study and appreciate such things. He has won numerous awards including a Golden Lion for lifetime achievment at the Venice Biennialle.  Sometimes what appears to be a comment is the title of a picture, and sometimes it is the picture. Or the artist's input  is the  idea of the picture. In one series amateur and weekend artists were asked to select from a group of pictures by Baldessari and then paint them.  In another series his wife threw a series of colored panels from an upper window in his house, and he photographed them.  Such pieces make one consider not only what is art but what is the role of the artist.

I can't resist also wondering, if I lived with this and walked by it every day for month, would I see any more in it the thirtieth time than the first? We all have our personal definitions of "great" art.  One of mine is that it holds my interest beyond the first viewing.  I do not have to like it, but I do want it pull at me. 

Theater-Metamorhosis

Metamorphosis, currently having its premiere, November 20-December 4, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in the Harvey Theater is naturally based on the story by Franz Kafka about a man who wakes up one morning to find he has become a cockroach and whose only worry (at that point) is how he can get to work  The story progresses then to what happens to the family and to Gregor.  It's a metaphor and one can spend years discussing what it means.  It is also fascinating even though the story is so well known.

  The company is composed of Icelandic and British actors and other members and something called the Knee High Theater.  The set is of two levels, a conventional first floor for a conventional family and a second floor hallway with a bedroom turned on its side so that we are looking into the room through the ceiling.  Gisli Orn Gardason is Gregor Samsa in a marvelously physical performance as he moves around the room in his cockroach state.   

This is a wonderful evening of theater.  Highly recommended.

The Scarlet Letter, Opera

The Scarlet Letter is an opera based on Hawthorne's novel with both music and libretto by Margaret Garwood with its world premiere November 19-21, 2010 in Philadelphia at the Academy of Vocal Arts.  It opens with Hester on her deathbed and reverts to the time of her affair with the Reverend Dimmesdale, a clergyman, her trial, the well-named Chillingworth, villainous and supposedly dead husband who reappears and becomes the engine of revenge.  There is her obnoxious child, Pearl, who manages to make things worse until the end when Dimmesdale dies in Hester's arms at last confessing his paternity of Pearl.

According to the composer's note Hawthorne himself thought it could be an opera.  Certainly the themes are big enough.  Works with themes concerning the victimization of women are apparently a continuing interest for the composer and certainly there is victimization in abundance.  The horror of sexual transgression would make it so; if the woman was in anyway guilty, she would not, at that time, been a character one could sympathize with.

The production was effective; the music while a product of this time was rich and interesting.  One can hope it will be done again.

The Red Shoes and DUMBO

Ah, The Red Shoes with the Kneehigh Theater at St. Ann's Warehouse. 

I couldn't resist reading the original story by Hans Christian Anderson last night after seeing this production and, of course, the old movie with Moira Shearer.  The movie rather fudged a few things, and I was surprised in tonight's performance by the character of the butcher in the play among other things, but it's all there in the original story.  There is a girl who is orphaned, an old woman who takes her in, a preacher and a preacher's wife, shoes that stick, endless dancing and, what I had not remembered, a butcher who cuts off her feet and a final reformation and penance with a trip directly to heaven.  It's the good girl part and the direct trip to heaven that many of us have trouble with today.

For it's hard not to read the story as a cautionary tale for uppity women, girls who dare to go after excitement and fun and are punished severely for their temerity.

And The Red Shoes at Saint Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn was superb, one of those marvelously theatrical evenings full of cleverness and theater magaic by the Kneehigh Theatre company from Cornwall (England).  With a cast of five playing nine roles and two musicians probably playing more than nine instruments--I didn't count, but there was a lot of musical equipment sitting around them, clever scenery and business, it is a highly recommeded evening.  A small example of the magic: the play opens with four of the performers entering dressed in men's underwear and with nearly shaved heads.  One of them is a woman.  Not only a woman but a seemingly plain one with great charm-- it takes time to work that out.

DUMBO for those who may not know, stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.  It is also pretty much under the Brooklyn bridge.  The streets roar above you when a train passes, and they twist around enormous bridge supports.  The neighborhood is partly industrial, partly artsy with lots of galleries and restaurants, the Bargmusic barge and River Cafe which is a destination restaurant--not for seven o'clock curtains but a favorite for occasions with lovely views of Manhattan and superb food.  It also has Grimaldi's Pizza which always seems to have people lined up trying to get in.

We ate at 66 Water Street--small menu, good food, two televisions tuned to the same game, but one television got everything three or four seconds after the other.  Interesting effect.  We have also eaten at Pete's Downtoen which is functional and has good food, Five Front, the best of the current lot and Miso around the corner from St. Ann's and serving Asian food and also good.

Thanksgiving

A Thanksgiving thought or two--Sometimes it's hard to feel thankful because you have so much to be thankful for--children and grandchildren, health, the comforts of our daily lives, blue skies, music and theater, friends, that we have each other--how do you say I am Thankful for just one thing or two.  But to be honest I wanted to see if I could upload an image. .

Why I Write as I Do

My hope is to be newsy and interesting. 

When I read a book or movie review, what I really want to know is whether or not the reviewer liked what they heard or saw.  I find the reviews and blogs I read to be not much help.  I want to find someone who reads the way I read or at least, has a point of view that I can relate to and sense whether or not the work would interest me.  I have no claim to critical qualifications, but I will tell you whether I enjoyed, really enjoyed or did not like a work and over time, you can decide what that means for you--assuming anyone reads this.

Complexions Dance Company

One of the nice things about the Joyce theater is that parking is always available and the local restaurants are good.  I am especially fond of Rocking Horse (classy Mexican) and Gascogne (cozy French) but there are lots of other choices available. 

Complexions is a contemporary ballet company so moves were sometime classic and sometimes not.  Music was from very diverse sources--spirituals, chants, Debussy, the Rolling Stones and others.  They were always interesting and sometimes frustrating.  Very often dancers were doing moves that did not seem to relate, they didn't form lines or patterns and were separated so that even when three men were doing something and three women were doing something the men's moves did not seem like the women's and you had to shift your vision to know whether they were doing the same movements or not--and often they weren't.  The rest of the audience, however, was wildly enthusiastic. I was intrigued but not entirely satisfied.

Intermezzo

Richard Wagner's idea of fun is not exactly mine.  Apparently his wife truly was difficult, and he truly did love her.  The opera he wrote shows the demanding wife and the loyal, loving, charming husband--this is his version all the way and supposedly based on an actual incident.  Intermezzo is his opera of domestic confusion and discord--and also, an opera with no arias--good music but not compelling, not soaring,  and I am curious as to whether I would enjoy just listening to the music without the visuals.  New York City Opera (NYCO) has a  very clever production.  The costumes, the set, all the production values were superb, and they are key in work of this type. Production is the difference between diverting and barely tolerable.    Scene changes are handled by the "servants."  The acting is fine.  Most of the voices are fine to my ear, but Mary Dunleavy, who play Christine (the wife), had a voice that was clear, expressive, usually lovely but at times I did not love it.

NYCO, like all opera companies, wants to develop a younger audience.  After the performance your ticket got you into the fourth ring cocktail bar for free drinks and much, -much more popular-music.  We old folks did not go, but they made a lot of noise up there.

Book-The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford tells of a young Chinese boy at the outbreak of WW II.  Lots of ethnic detail, culture clash, thwarted love, reconciliation and prejudice.  He has a domineering father who will not allow him to speak Chinese after the age of twelve although the parents speak only Chinese.  There are a lot of historical bits which apparently are accurate.  There actually were buttons that read, "I am Chinese" and for good reason, of course.  It is an easy read.  My book group seemed to divide between those who found it moving, and those who found it a little too much.  It is the quintessential middle brow novel--makes you feel like a better person for having read it and wraps everything up with a happy ending.  It is more thematic than the typical genre novel without stretching for the hard truths.

RT Our Children

The Every Child Matters Education Fund has published a study of what we as a nation are doing about children called Homeland Insecurity.  They report that funding for children's programs has declined over the last decade.  We now rank #20 out of 21 wealthy countries in child well-being--that not in money spent but in how our children are doing.  In addition wide gaps exist within the states so that children in the poorest states
 "are three time as likely to die before their fourteenth birthday, five time as likely to be without health insurance, eight times as likely to be incarcerated, and thirteen time as likely to die from child abuse" as children in more fortunate states.



Something to think about.

Soul Leaves Her Body

Soul Leaver Her Body, is based on a Chinese legend of a woman whose soul leaves her body after a lover promises to return and doesn't. This production at the Here Theater--a combination of dance, image and acting--takes place in both ancient and contemporary times in the China of the Mongols and in Hong Kong..  Here is one of those black box theaters where you are extremely close to the performers.  The play, or piece--it's debatable that it's a play--is compelling without being terribly clear.  I have nothing profound to say about this--the images remian clear a week after seeing it, but the themes are totally muddy.

A Rainy Day in New York, Met Rehearsal, Master class, A Quiet Place

After a run of gorgeous weather, New York was deluged, traffic was barely moving, and a trip that in the best of times takes forty-five minutes took over two hours.  We were late, but so,we were told, was everyone else.  We slipped into a box to observe the working rehearsal of Cosi fan Tutti at the Metropolitan Opera.  It is undeniably a thrill to sit in an almost empty opera house with all the tables and staff on the main floor and people huddling and correcting and hear glorious voices singing shimmering notes.  Mozart did write magnificent notes.  They spent a lot of time getting the lights set, and scenes would suddenly shift with a sunset going from mauve to puce to fuchsia and the sky from electric blue to sky.  I really liked the electric blue.   William Christie was the conductor--his Met debut--although he is a famous conductor and far past the age for such things.   He worked the orchestra and singers relentlessly going over points--I have never seen a conductor redo this many phrases or go over and over bits like this, and I have never before seen a singer question the conductor.  They are all fine musicians and it will be interesting to see the reviews.

Lunch and rehearsal over we clambered down to List Hall to watch Stephen Wadsworth lead a master class of singers in the Lindemann  Program or at Julliard.  These students have been working with him for some time. He had each make a statement about the situation of the character they were singing about starting with the words, "This is a person who" and then developing it to "I am----"  They identified parts of their body  which tended to tighten up and worked to relax them.  Each was given three or four random actions to perform as they sang in character while maintaining a body released of tension.  Body, mind and heart must maintain character.  Fascinating.

Stephen Wadsworth in addition to mentoring young artists directed this year's production of Boris Godunov.  He also wrote the libretto for A Quiet Place, Leonard Bernstein's opera of his family life which we saw in the evening..  It is Bernstein in dissonant mode.  His childhood was not happy, nor was his parent's marriage. Even in a clangy modern score, he managed to write at least three lovely songs which could stand on their own.  Did I love it?  Well, I liked it a lot, can imagine seeing it again (but not next week) and wonder if I could listen to it on CD.  I don't think so.  But a friend wondered about the music as a symphony.  There is enough there to make it worth another listen, and it is difficult enough to challenge.  Which may explain why it has taken so long see it produced. 

Penelope

Sunday evening we traipsed to Brooklyn to St. Ann's Warehouse, which is not a warehouse but a theater complex, to see the play Penelope in which the title character appears but never speaks or interacts with the other characters.  She is, as so often in plays written by males, a projection of the men's needs and fantasies.  Themes of competition and the importance of love emerge as well as some terrffic acting on the part of the four men acting as her suitors and awaiting the return of Ulysses who, of course, will slay them upon his return. By the way, the whole thing takes place at the bottom of a swimming pool. Great play?  Not really, but great theater and an entertaining evening.

A Fall Saturday in New York

Big Bambu was closing on Sunday, and, determined to see it a second time, we arrived at the Museum at 8:30 to join the line for tickets when the doors opened at 9:30.  Saturday was cold but at least it was fall cold and not winter cold.  The line was friendly, and by ten we had our tickets for eleven-thirty.  Just time enough to warm up with tea before going out on the roof.
Big Bambu is a project of the Starn brothers, twins born in New Jersey and with a studio near Beacon, who wanted to create a sort of living work.  It would start, grow, change constantly and then be removed.  It would represent both chaos and design, spontaneity and structure.The structural elements, bamboo and mountain climbing ropes and knots, would be elements in the design.  It would also legally constitute a building rising forty feet above the top of the museum and having to meet the NYC building codes.  It is by far the most ambitious project the Met has done on its roof space which is annually turned over to a living sculptor to create a temporary exhibition. 

Groups are led on a walk inside the sculpture by docent.  We go up an uneven walkway with handrails to the "living room" where the crew installed their cup-holders, a cooler, and a wind-chime (not planned as part ot the structure).   Unplanned also were the wisteria vines climbing up from the roof and Pale Male, the famous hawk who came to roost while we were there.Then in smaller groups we went to the highest point gaze across the park to the reservoir and over at the "wave" more or less formed by the bamboo.  Waves are a frequent element in the Start brothers oeuvre.

It has some the delight of The Gates, Christos project of a few years ago, and like the Gates, it is now gone at least as an experience.  It will take them two months to actually remove the whole thing.  However, if you can get to Detroit, there is hope to have another project there.

After our climb on the bamboo, we hiked up to the Guggenheim for a lovely lunch at the restaurant (we needed to sit) and for Chaos and Classicism, the current show.  Focused on the period after WW I and before WWI and the art of France, Italy and Germany, it reflects the yearning for permanent values and peace after WW I especially in France which suffered most of the fighting.  Picasso is quoted as saying, "Art does not evolve by itself, the ideas of people change, and with them their mode of expression." It contains work of Leger, Matisse, Picasso, and Otto Dix among a great many others and became at the end of the period, the art of the Nazis who insisted on representational art..  The show is very worthwhile and very crowded.

How about a new political movement?

Maybe it's time to have a new political movement called , "Grow up, America."  This would be dedicated to the idea that taxes should not go below a certain point because if we are going to have safe food, roads, a good public education system, social security, health care, if we are not going to allow people to starve to death, if we are going have jails, and, of course, armies, then we are going to have to pay for these things.Maybe we could even have a research group that estimates the minimal amounts theses things will cost.  Or better the minimum and then quality improvements.  We might even agree that some things are best done by government.

Rand. Thot--just a story

Several weeks ago our intercom went out.  It was fairly new and should not have quit.  Meanwhile I was annoyed because it makes it harder to get hold of John when I want him (always for good purposes, of course).  I could have looked up the paperwork and contacted the dealer, but I had it mind to get him to do that.  Meanwhile the sump pump went began to short out its circuit and desiring to check the circuit, John plugged it into another circuit and blew that.  Definitely not the circuit.  Bad pump--and it was only five years old.  Now the electricity was off in the bathroom.  That got our attention.  He called the plumber and set about resetting circuits but could not find any that were tripped.  "There's a box in the basement," I reminded him so he went to it and now there is electricity in the bathroom.  This morning the intercom came on.  "How did you fix it," I asked.

"Well," he said, "I walked by and saw that the clock was working so I turned it on."

I am so glad I did not get him to "fix" the intercom.

Travel--Tokyo

Here is Tokyo as seen from a park.  No particular importance--just trying it out

Pastiche and fun

We went to an Episcopal church in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, last night to enjoy a genuine pastiche--not a pasta but a performance of an "opera" composed of bits and pieces of songs composed for other occasions, called Amor & Psyche and performed by a group calling themselves opera feroce.  Sung by Beth Anne Hatton (Psyche), Hayden DeWitt (Amor) and Alan Dornak (rather a lot of people).  That is a mezzo, a soprano and a countertenor. Plus a trio playing period instruments with brio.  They were lovely and brilliant and great fun performing seventeenth and eighteenth century music that is rarely heard.  AND there are two more performances Sunday, Nov. 14 at Church of the Good Shepherd on Roosevelt Island (2:30 p.m.) and Thursday, Dec. 16 at St. Stephen and St. Martin's Church in Brooklyn (7:30).

Women and stock ownership

In 1982 women owned 40% of stocks.  Today it is about 60%.  Thus women need to understand stock voting and related issues of stock ownership and management.

A second speaker noted that access to money is access to power.  Women definitely have more trouble accessing money that men.  Women don't like debt, but a business cannot grow without it.  A particular barrier comes when businesses grow beyond $250,000 in annual revenues. At that point an owner has to let go--she has to allow others to be responsible for parts of the business.  Women need to think ahead, to have a five year plan and a sense of what they have to do to get to their goal.

Go, women, go!

women and business

Today I heard two women speak on the challenges of being women business owners.  One pointed out that there are ten million women owning business with at least $250,000 in annual revenue but only three hundred with revenues of two million or more.  Every extra million in revenue adds four jobs to the economy.  These second stage businesses (male or female-owned) are the key to economic improvement.  More later.