Discoveries: Arts and Culture

The gate to the courtyard of Anna Akhmatova's apartment  The courtyard of AA's apartment  A relative of Anna Akhmatova A portrait among the art objects celebrating Anna Akhmatova at her museum in St. Petersburg. I was representing the Anna Akhmatova foundation in Philadelphia, as I was its consultant.   Its president:  the translator of AA's poetry and author of a biography about her husband, or Frances Laird.  A relative of Anna Akhmatova(on the right) beneath and near her portraits.  I will visit them at home for tea and see the room in which AA lived.   Janet Roberts in the Joseph Brodsky Memorial room in the Anna Akhmatova museum, St. Petersburg, Russia These photos just surfaced.... and their timing could not be better after more than 3 months spent focused on Russia in the news, with the Winter Olympics and Ukraine...The Russians will persist.  Here I am, in one of my Russian shawls... 

Evan lived the same years in China, as I, or 2008--2013.  2005-8 Peter Hessler was the New Yorker Correspondent. I began my first days in China reading Peter's book when I came home and felt that he was exactly accurate in his encounters and observations.     I met both Peter and Evan at International Lit Festival and liked and respected each of them  very much.   I am reading Evan's s new book, Age of Ambition:  Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China, where he concentrates on personal profiles, among them Ai We Wei and Liu Xiabao, an artist and writer, each of whom are widely known in the West.    As a journalist,  Evan  interviewed people I knew from CNN and from China Daily reading while living in China, but would not have heard of, here in the USA.  So for a fine journalists' account of what was taking place in China and what to make of it, you could not have a better read...

To De Young.   For O Keefe lecture.    Woman appeared who had inherited from costume designer a belt like the one Georgia O Keefe wore.   Her mother was Austrian Aristocrat.   She had five brothers and sisters.   She is admired for her strength and determination and her authenticity.   Her father was an Irish immigrant and her mother an Austrian aristocrat.   Mother wore a bustle...as we are concentrating on dress.   She went to Chatham HS in Virginia...   played on the tennis team in 1890 Unusual for women.    Sewed her own clothes.    Studied with the NY Art Students League in 1907   Was influenced by the Japanese in the Arts and Crafts Movement.   Studied at the Art Institute in Chicago in 1918...in 1906 she had Typhoid fever.   She rented a room in a boarding house.   The lecturer points out that Fortuny was worn by Stieglitz sister, and that O Keefe wore this “bust “ dress, but not by F...

A Beautiful Space: Writer’s Retreat   My orchid dropping blossoms my beautiful yellow Bianchi bike awaiting its outings – like a stabled horse   I light candles   each night kilims covering the floors   Violins or cellos, Strings play night and day.   Palms outside my window, an apple tree in the courtyard a bamboo curtaining the garden path.   My yoga teacher’s words echo, “ Make a beautiful space ”. --Janet Roberts copyright 2013

See Fig. 4 Saint Ren and Hindu ascetics (Renunciation, Penance) Hatha yoga: control of breath and mind.  Nath guru in patchwork robe. Fig 3  (Text in reverse order of figures)  Gesture of reverence in dialogue between yogis Fig 2 In Punjab at temple and pool dedicated to Shiva, intense dialogue with one Natha yogi Fig 1     ) Fig 1 Temple and pools dedicated to Shiva with Nanth yogis  Fig 2.  Gesture of Reverence. Yogi  in Dialogues  Natha Guru in patchwork coat in dialogue.  Hatha Yoga  Fig 3.  Fig 4 Sant Ren and Ascetics(in penance renunciation)  

WISH   I am transformed into a clam.   I will be very, very still. so natural be, and never “me” alone so far from home a stone would end it all but for this tall enduring tree, the sea, the sky and I. Robert Creeley     The Nomad Flute… You that sang to me once sing to me now Let me hear your long lifted note Survive with me The star is fading I can think farther  than that but I forget Do you hear me   Do you still hear me Does your air remember you O breath of morning Night song morning song I have with me All the rest I do not know I have lost none of it But I know better now Than to ask you Where you learned that music Where any of it came from Once there were lions in China I will listen until the flute stops And the light is old again        

 The blooms here at this time of year are gorgeous!  A myriad of diverse pathways winding through the garden As WCW would say, "So much depends on a wheel barrow!" Lovely poppies in full bloom It is a little bit of heaven to walk here.  Even after visiting the Botanical Gardens in SF, I prefer this space which is far more intimate and varied, though the gardens in SF afford a good experience.  This is the home of the President of the University, but is unoccupied for more than a decade, though it is the horticultural garden of the university.   

Chair of Art Students, Lawrence Rinder, Director and another faculty member, as they give awards for achievement to undergrads. My favorite art work; this installation including the painting sculpture beneath.... Joey Enos is the artist of this and the above installation:  "Bread and Circuses".    Reception for members, artists and teachers and guests   A new museum is being built as this one is not earthquake friendly. The rag rug mandela..which continues to evolve.... AS I listen each Sunday night to KFDC 's broadcast of young musicans across the country, in high schools and college, I also like to see what young people are doing in the arts.  The other entries were installations, one of ephemera and the others, video art, which of course, one can not image.  Art is an important study and will build audiences for art, and support of the arts, in this world which is going to need the arts.  As has every cultural er...

www.bccbooks.org The Book Society has the largest collection outside of the Bancroft Library of UCBerkeley, of the Grabhorn Press Collection.  Henry Snyder eloquently BCC librarian and curator spoke eloquently about their history, when they were regarded as one of the best, if not the best printer/press in the country.   The examples in the cases from books and posters and artworks to ephemera such as party invitations, wedding invitations, and so on, was high quality, with bibliophiles and publishers and book store owners and those who love books, in attendance.    Example of fine printing in "ephemera" Odes of John Keats. Special edition CA Book Club members gathering     Photo by Marjory Farquhar.  The Grabhorn  Brothers: Edwin (l) and Robert (r) 1937  

Woke to a moon before morning, about 4:00 AM, a full face in my window...returned to sleep, and woke again at 5:30 AM.  Read W.S. Merwin's poems to start the day.  Noted the mention of plovers as friend Penguin published author, Kristin Bair O'Keefe has her second novel  taking place where plovers are endangered, on Newburyport and Plum Island, which has  caused a stir among plover lovers in in New England! I note that WS Merwin, who is very eco-concerned about disappearing species, writes about the plover and other birds in his poems in this last volume. April 2014 publication:  The Moon Before Morning.    Homecoming " ... and I looked up to the clear sky/and saw the new moon and at that/moment from behind me a band/of dark birds and then another/after it flying in silence/long curving wings hardly moving ,/ the plovers just in from the sea/and the flight clear from Alaska/half their weight gone to get them home/but home now arriving with...

Asa Parsons describing the landscape where her weaving studio is located 400 miles north  of Stockholm in a former chapel.  She also works in another studio, for her industrial designs 50 miles from Stockholm. She has visited with the weavers in Cambodia, where she worked with Carol Cassidy, and Laos, as well as having done extensive travels in India.    She was hosted by Hiroshiko Wada the president of the International Shibori Network at her home in the NW Berkeley(Kensington) hills about 10 minutes by auto from where I live.  I however walked the canyon to her place, which took about an hour.  I very much enjoyed meeting Asa and experiencing her passion and skill for weaving, which to me, has always been a magical enterprise.    Asa was very interested in my own research on weavers and song and music, related to poetry, in the wider Orient, as well as in India and on Bali, and so on.  White cotton (relief) and Yellow Ramie...

Mark Morris taking a bow This performance will be done in the Mostly Mozart festival in Manhattan in summer 2014.  It was wonderfully imaginative, inventive, innovative and "edgy" which is characteristic of Morris' bending of boundaries, but retains its beauty and lyricism. 

Mary Anne Rogers  Sarah Cahill  Dr. Nicholas Cahill, director of Sardis Dr Patricia Berger, UC Berkeley         Granddaughter Trio Sing "Danny Boy"  y tribute:   Posted on IEAS Site; Memorial Dr. James Cahill. By Janet Roberts Generous of spirit and kind of heart, Dr. James Cahill is missed by all who knew him through the study of Chinese Art.   Dr. Cahill came to Fudan University in Shanghai, in 1987, when I was a foreign expert part of the US China Peoples Friendship Assn Exchange program, teaching future teachers, acting as writer/editor for a textbook on teaching of English models, and lecturing graduate students in the first American poetry survey course. I was attending   lectures about   Chinese art history with Dora Chen, who had graduated Smith College.   I attended Dr. Cahill’s week long seminar, and recall that he invited me to tea, in the faculty guest house, afte...

I talked with Marsha Weidner, whose book I am rereading, Flowering in the Shadows. Women in the History of Chinese and Japanese Painting, along with Elizabeth Wilson who read the most moving letter, which James Cahill had written to her, which introduced her to her husband, the director of the Nelson Atkins Collection.  She now has an art business, Asiatica.  We had sat by one another at the Asia Society when her husband and the former director of the Met Asian department were in dialogue.  I also spent some time talking with Sarah Handler whom I had met when she spoke about the furniture in the paintings at Cahill's exhibition; her essay is in that final exhibition catalogue.  Of course, I was able to pay my respects and have some conversation with Dr Cahill's son, and daughter. Sarah, being a musician, and therefore in the "feeling" arts, was moved to tears during the presentation.  Her brother, Nicholas, charmingly recounted an incident of Jam...