Discoveries: Arts and Culture

Magic happens!  I met Leonard Bernstein, at Tanglewood, the summer music school for musicans, and the site of the Tanglewood summer concerts.  He held a talk with interested people before the concert in the tent.  I also heard him speak in a pre concert event at the symphony in New York City.  I used to own the beautiful photo book of his life, but sold it when I had a rare book business for a short period of time. Leonard Bernstein legitimated American music, such as Gershwin, and "West Side Story"  Hershey Felder gave a charmning performance, based on Bernstein's full life, emphasizing his personal development and passion for music and the necessity to find the right teachers..the best story is where "God told the teacher to choose him".  There are issues played out of being Jewish and playing at Carnegie, but it all disappears, in light of Bernstein's magnetism and talent. 

Musican tuning up prior to concert Musicians all...and Board members Alex and a Phd as our caterer.  Jodie's archival family wall and our buffet  Berkeley Chamber Guest "Friction Quartet" plays Philip Glass

Foster Goldstrom at home Art Collector, Foster Goldstrom held a barbecue, on the eve of the Summer Solstice, to welcome Feng Jin for a week's visit from Beijing.  Feng Jin showed me the photos of his exhibitions including The New Museum in Beijing and the plaza installations.   He described the position of his storages and studios.  He is looking well, and it seems that his return after 20 years of living in the USA is integrative, though "the new China" is, he says, "new" to him.   It was an economic decision to move, as many artists move out of San Francisco, to Oakland, commonly, and to other areas, such as El Cerrito and Feng Jin, back to Beijing, now an art capital. Foster's son. Michael, was home, and is a musician and writer in Los Angeles, working on free lance project basis with productions.  A nice young man in his early 40s he plays piano but we were not favored with a piece. He is pictured with the Mollie H...

Not a Toy Walking through Central Park,   A little girl bounces on her father’s head; He makes her legs move like a scissors.  She pleads:   “Stop it!   I am not your toy. “ ---Copyright      My father as a young man before he went to WWII, where he fought in the third Armoured Division, was declared a MIA, and reported as "dead", in a newspaper article my grandmother showed me as a child.  He was a "Disabled veteran" due to damage to his one hand, which I never noticed as a child.  He fought in the European Theater, Normandy beach, and his division cleared concentration camps.  His best friend was a LIFE photographer, who was killed in action; Dad had the photos of the camps this photographer had taken, in a box, which I found as a child...but he would never talk about the war to us, ever.  He married my mother, having first dated her teacher, when he returned from the war.   At the lakesi...

Today I read an essay , from Marsha Weidner's  "Flowering in the Shadows "  Women In the history of Chinese and Japanese Painting.    (Dr Weidner seemed so disconsolate at Dr. Cahill's Memorial reception and  did not contribute a speech; she might have felt better if she had...the book she edited is one I read over 20 years ago, and it has been a pleasure refreshing my memory, especially after the lecture course on Japanese art this Spring at the Asian Art Museum. Like in Western Art, for the most part women writers and painters  are the wives of artists or the daughters of artists, before they are permitted to nurture their talent. " The Three Women of Gion" by Stephen Addiss, read a while ago,  and " The Life and Arts of Cho Koran " by Patricia Fister, which I read today, are my favorite.  Fister has another essay, more generalized, in which she looks at Japanese women in several paintings and makes referen...

      Belgian Vox Luminis played Schutz and the Bach family in the Berkeley Festival of early music last evening.  This included: a variety of arrangements from Johann, Johann Michael, and   Christoph, Ludwig and Sebastian   Bach. (1604-1750 collectively) The great great grandfather of Bach was also a composer and musician. Accompaniment was on the viola da gamba.  The main text is from Genesis, about God not abandoning Mankind.   The hope is for consolation and redemption.    The last two lines conclude:  "I am a clod of earth; I do not trust earthly things."   The Musicalische Exequien ,   received Gramophone's Recording of the Year Award, the Baroque Vocal Gramophone Award and the International Classical Music Award.   I purchased this precious recording, of this mass  commissioned from Schutz by the Prince Heinrich von Reuss, under whose jur...

The Cottage with "Blushing Rose".  (Now Interior is meeting room, gift shop) Workshop    Luther Burbank 1849-1926  Burbank travelled by bike from Santa Rosa, and would sleep overnight here and work on his breeding of plants.  The workshop has been reconstructed, having been lost in fire, and he rebuilt the cottage, himself, the original having been destroyed by an earthquake.  The garden reflects trees from his period of time as well as an effort to show the plants he cultivated....    This area of interest stems in part from the study I did of Linnaeus in Sweden, and his correspondence with John Bartram, in Philadelphia.  On a NEH grant in Florida, I tracked the lost camellia  which WS Merwin memorializes in one of his poems.  I composed a lecture for the Swedish Heritage Society's Annual Lecture in Philadelphia and presented another for the Bartram Association celebration of Bartram. ...

A SAA visit to studio and gallery of Tibetan artist, from E. Tibet, where I had travelled in Sichuan, the past two summers. Tashi  Dhargyal  is working on this masterwork, a traditional tangka See:  www.PreserveTibetanArt.org   and to donate on line to support his project, www.solofoundation.org/donate   or mail checks to:  The Solo Foundation, 230 W. 38th St, 9th Fl, NY NY  10018.  Find him working on this five year project at: 6770 McKinley St #130, Sebastopol, CA  95472   Tibetan Gallery & Studio @The Barlow   He and his wife run the studio/gallery.   Email:  studio@ TashiDhargyal.com       A charming lyrical detail of the sacred deer, the peaches, in the Tangka, which give you a sense of the lyricism of his style, achieved through study with one of the Great Masters of Painting in Tibet.  He paints using naturally ground gem stones with rabbit glue,...

As Virginia Woolf wrote, " One cannot think well, love well or sleep well, if one has not dined well.  The lamp in the spine does not light well on beef and prunes"... though she has probably been proved wrong, by some "starving garrett writers"!  I tend to agree with her.   Life is too short to view meals as "fuel" instead of as a time to dine and enjoy.  Bon Appetit!  Solo dinner on my terrace...Asparagus risotto, and wild rock shrimps...and a glass of French sauvignon blanc. Bon Appetit!   Another solo meal, spontaneously photographed:   Lunch:  Smoked Trout and Mango with Fresh Baby Greens Virginia Woolf once said, that if you have not dined well, you cannot write well!   .