Discoveries: Arts and Culture

Originally staged at the Dublin Theater Festival in 20111- and retitled for Broadway in 2013 as "The Testament of Mary" -- Testament is " a lyrical and deeply human work ".  I most liked "The Master"(based on Henry James'life), Mothers and Sons, Brooklyn, and his reflections on Barcelona.  Toibin as a writer  has an uncanny ability to enter the character of his "mothers", especially  His father died when he was very young, and his mother raised him and his brother.   Testament recounts" i n riveting detail a defiant mother's story of her son, who has been taken from her by men she regards as fanatics ."  Having read the book, one keeps turning the pages, as the imagining of her thoughts and feelings are revealed, as the whole narrative of the Crucifixion unfolds. One can hardly put the book down; it is best read in one sitting. "The Assumption of the Virgin" (1518.  Titian.   High Altar of the Basilica de Sa...

MCConnell (who is a kind of celebrity due to his tv show on Nature for many years) introducing John Muir speaker  Harold W. Wood, Jr. Chair Sierra Club  John Muir Education Team.  Webmaster, Sierra Club John Muir Exhibition  on the web: www. johnmuir.info  Biography of John Muir  Harold Wood took us to Dunbar, Scotland , where John Muir is regarded as a "native son", and one of their most famous citizens, with the exception of Robert Burns, who was a favorite poet of John Muir. They have created a John Muir history hiking and cycling trail in Scotland, as well as a John Muir Way, in Dunbar, and have preserved his birthplace as a house museum, and have added an extensive education museum which since 2012 has had 100,000 visitors,  along with creation of curricula in the schools to educate children to see him as a model who preserves the environment.  This includes a graphic novel used in the high schools, and teachers research avail...

Diane Di Prima and Michael McClure in Exchange of readings  Susan and Clark Coolidge behind sunflowers while Clark eats lunch from Burmese restaurant where Celia, his daughter, and Susan, his wife and I had lunch at Burma Superstar on Telegraph and 48th.   Clark Coolidge,Poet and Drummer,  and Michael McClure, Poet ,  teaming in reading followed by Clark Coolidge solo concert on drums  Diane Di Prima celebrated her 80th birthday, with new publication by City Lights  which she signed for buyers after her reading  Clark Coolidge and musicians open celebration  of bookstore and cafe, "Commune'  with concert and poets reading  4779 Shattuck, Oakland, Opening of  "Commune" bookshop on November 16 2014

The play begins and ends with the hooded monks entering and exiting  on the stone "river" Noh Theater combines with the mystery play in this production by Benjamin Britten, a follow up to his adaptation of the Indonesian gamelan music, after visting Bali, heard in performance by the SF Symphony, conducted by MTT.  This opera "Curlew River" is incredibly moving.  An introductory note:  " Clear as a sky without a cloud/may be a mother's mind,/But darker than a starless night/With not one gleam, not one gleam, not one, /No gleam to show the way ." -- William Plomer, Curlew River (after Jruo Motomasa) This "visionary" production directed by Netia Jones, UK, stars tenor Ian Bostridge, and won acclaim in its world premiere at London's Barbican last fall.   Jones says, " Curlew River is an extraordinary and unique thing...."Benjamin Britten, returning from travels in the Far East..reimagined a noh theater production he had seen...

This show is in Lower Manhattan in a gallery for the week!  Look at Liza Dalby's website for details.  What a marvelous event!  Liza Darby, who lives in East Bay, is best known as a novelist, (go to Liza Dalby.com and the author of the wonderful book on Kimono), has a Phd from Stanford; she introduced us to Yoko Nishina the calligrapher with whom she collaborates.  She creates the scrolls and Yoko, the artwork.  They work with another artist, who lives in Kyoto, and did the painting backdrop to some of the calligraphy. A marvel!  Reminded me of how much I learned about calligraphy in Hangzhou as the calligraphy institute was located there in the Song dynasty along with some of the great calligraphers.  We are reminded that great calligraphers and poets materialized, because they were out of the government and developed these pursuits and became a "school" and significant in China's history. I remember my own calligraphy lessons and how when I went...

World Affairs Council.  Northern California.  November 6, Thursday.Eric Posner Kirkland and Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago "Over the years, countries have ratified countless international treaties meant to promote and protect human rights.  Yet human rights violations continue with alarming regularity around the world, from human trafficking in SE Asia to violence against protestors  in So Africa and Brazil to child labor in Bolivia and the US(!) .  Legal scholar and law professor, Eric Posner, University of Chicago, arguess that the world's failure to address human rights violations arises from two main problems:  vaguely defined human rights and the difficulty of enforcement.  He suggest seeking concrete measures of success, like poverty reduction, in order to truly address the issue.  Posner discusses recent human rights related controversies and the major developments in international human rights law."...

Benjamin Potter, whose mother is also in the field   have published articles together -- gave, with his colleague a great presentation on the collection housed in the Hearst Museum of Anthropology at UC Berkeley, --which has been closed since my arrival last year, as after my commitment to the University of Pennsylvania Archaeology Museum, including being one of its sponsored NEH lecturerers on art and culture in Mongolia, China and Tibet...I am happy to hear the galleries will reopen in 2016.  In the interim, the research team is reviewing the 3500 items of the collection of Peter Cornwall, whose family was from Ross, California(where my godson and his wife live).  His father Pierre Cornwell, was one of the first trustees of the University of California, Berkeley, and was a prime mover in the building of Sacramento.  PC the son was deaf.  But he was educated at Andover, then University of Toronto and Oxford University, and finally a Phd at Harvard University...

THEATER de la VILLE  Six Characters in Search of an Author.  Luigi Pirandello, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, director.  " Innovative artistry, balancing a passionate creative spirit with reverence for the original. "  This  (what was absurdist , but probably has become the norm!) psychological drama “ hits the stage with rare mastery”, “captivating and disturbing”.  I did not find it disturbing.  Characters telling the director how to tell their story, what their story is, talking back to "the author" as they have been "disowned" or "abandoned" certainly makes sense, if they "want a life on the stage"...the director telling them that the play will make their characters better than life, and extract the essential qualities of a situation opposes the character's argument for realism, faithfulness to fact....again on the stage the interlacing of non fictive elements with fictive interpretation.  Performed in french with French acto...

A whole week of activities celebrating the new authoratative biography of Walter Benjamin by Howard Eiland, MIT Literature, and Michael Jennings, Prof German, Princeton University, with Lindsay Waters, Ed Humanities, Harvard University Press. Went to conversation  5-7 p,  at UCBerkeley with the authors, editors and Harvard University Press representative.  Biography has been writtten, not as a montage but to elucidate the critical writings and will prove an essential reference and research tool for scholars of Walter Benjamin was the conclusion.   (  Early life, all was rejected and he was tortured by no acclaim and no publisher for his work.  Then, the protean ability of him to change viewpoints, etc through his life. ) ” Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings have given us a portrait of this elusive but paradigmatic thinker that deserves to be ranked among the few truly indispensable intellectual biographies of the modern era.  I am ...

Clark reading in the Holloway Series, UC Berkeley, CA  Celia Coolidge and her cousin, Whitney Hopkins; n background Toni Hopkins(mother of Whitney, sister in Law to Susan ) Clark Coolidge, Poet, read from his FENCE published epic-length poetry collection, A BOOK BEGINNING WHAT AND ENDING AWAY in the Holloway Poetry Series at the University of California, Berkeley, last evening. His brother in law and wife and daughter also attended, as did his daughter and wife and myself.  He read from each section in the book, which reads like a memoir or retrospective of his interests. (.Caves.  Beckett.  The Music.  Creeley.  A Geology.  Dali.  Bernadette   Movies,  ForEigner and Another Life ) Susan Cooidge 

Jonathan Sheehan, History and Dorothy Hale, English  Robert Haas,English, and  Marilynne Robinson The Pulitzer Prize winning Author  T here are two reviews which so far I have read about LILA, Marilynne Robinson's new novel.  Robinson is also speaking in the Arts and Lectures series at Nourse theater tonight, November 4, and the broadcast will be aired in December, 2014. Unfortunately, I missed it.  Harpers . November, 2014. p 77,78,80 " Everyday Grace  Marilynne Robinson's unsaved" By Meghan O'Rourke The Atlantic.  October, 2014.  p 34-36.  " The Power of Grace "  by Leslie Jamison. Marilynne Robinson is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. Author of Gilead , which won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, she has written a sequel concentrating on Lila , the wife, in this new novel, LILA. ...

The topic of Dr, Ira Kasoff's  blog post is " HK demonstrations Taiwan Connection s"  October 2, 2014 World Affairs Council, Northern California, San Francisco   Ira Kasoff  delivers remarks  updating people on the status of the Chinese Government's position vis a vis HK and Taiwan and the USA  . I see him at the WAFC in SF on the evening of October 2, between 4-6:00 PM   Dr,Ira Kasoff , former Assistant Secretary to the  US Secretary of Commerce, State Department  is now a senior counselor and member of APCO"s International  Advisory Council.   His experience in Asia spans more than three decades.  He has had 7 commercial service assignments in addition to private sector and academic experience.  He was principle commercial officer at the US Consulate General in Shanghai, commercial counselor at the American Embassy in Tokyo and senior commercial office at the US Consulate General in HK .  Earlier in his car...

First and only American playwright  to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. 1936 I nstitute and Library, Theater   Here  the annual Playwrights Residency, and O'Neill Festival take place.  This year, was the first production of "The Iceman Cometh" written here at Tao House. .   Gate to Tao House with Tao (The Way) wishes  on gateway .  The O'Neills visited China and his wife Carlotta was inspired to translate the Chinese style into their new home, which they had built for them, with Nobel Prize money .   Living room originally furnished by Gumps (reproduction).  Katherine Hepburn wrote the decisive letter, which   caused Gumps to cooperate and retrieve a Chinese style flat bed originally purchased and owned by Eugene O 'Neill which one sees in his bedroom adjacent to Carlotta's.   Chinese Screens commissioned for living room  Eugene O Neill's study with original desk   Here he wrote his last a...