Discoveries: Arts and Culture

A wonderful book, which I have been leisurely reading for about a month, and finished today... it is a comforting book about the oldest tree on earth, the Gingko. Inspired by the historic gingko in London's Kew Gardens, since the 1760s (18th c) it is the story of saving a species from extinction.  In part we are dedicated to the employment of gingkos in the gardens of temples in Japan and China.  I recall that the other attraction other than the temple was always the "ancient" majestic tree, oftentimes a Gingko in the yard of the temple in China.   I met some of the greatest and oldest trees in the world in China. Botanist Peter Crane, former Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, is now a Dean and Professor in the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University, who published this collection....he explores  the 250 million year history of the ginkgo from its mysterious origin through its proliferation, drastic decline and ultimate resurgence....

City Hall, SF  for the 70th anniversary of the UN  Governor Brown, H.E. Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General, UN, and Leader  Nancy Pelosi,  Nancy Pelosi, again, on the 27th in Grace Cathedral, lending support to Bishop Swing's URI initiative  UN Under Secretary of Public Information, from Barcelona, Cristina Gallach.  An inspiring event in which to participate after serving on the steering committee for three months!  Finally a culmination of all our efforts.  Flag Procession to Ode of Joy, and then these speakers along with the permanent ambassador to the UN from India, who spoke about the future of the UN, and commemorated Dag Hammarskjold's contribution. I was fortunate to have breakfast at the Fairmont with Christina and her Chief Officer, Sherri Aldis (Canada) from Paris, at my table...and while waiting for the breakfast doors to open with Sherri,  who should pass, but Secretary Ban Ki Moon, so I was able to shake his...

Truly brilliant and a pleasure to read.  I am afraid I cannot quote him.  You just must read him for youself!  I could hardly wait to pick it up, each time I had to set it down...but it's nice to digest each small section on its own, due to the richness of the writing and observation.  Toibin, as always, is self referential, as well as loyal to his Irish poets, especially Gunn, and starts by showing how much he admired these poets before he became a writer.  He also travels to each location in which Bishop lived and traces her poems and life path, to add dimension to his observations.    Toibin deals with the poetic textual scansion of Elizabeth Bishop's poems, and her particular rhyme schemes and word choices, as well, as the impact of her life lived in many geographical climes.  He finally interprets and analyzes the reciprocal influence of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop upon one another's poetry as they exchanged and critiqued poems all th...

Carol Sherrill, hostess for this AIR event, with playwright,  Hermann  The Eugene O'Neill Foundation has created an Artist in Residence Program,named for the late Travis Boagard, proessor emeritus of the Dramatic Arts Department at Berkeley, and the O'Neill Foundation's first artistic director, and which  has secured funding for a 3 year pilot program in cooperation with NPS.  The first two awarded residents(AIR) arrived this May-June. The first, David Palmer, Professor of Philosophy, looked at the concept of Tragedy and Narcissism, in explaining O'Neill's obsession with his brother Jim, a "character" in his plays. (not pictured) With my election, to the Board, I  was invited to meet the second Fellow, a playwright(and professor of playwrighting at the Univ of Kentucky)created a play about Eugene O'Neill in draft, during this residency in the working in the Trunk Room studio, and library and archives on site, and accomodation for room and boa...

Hyungjung Choi, Artistic Director, conducted "Gloria", Antonio Vivaldi, in a stirring performance at the Peace Lutheran Church, Danville California, Saturday, June 13, 7:00 pm. The annual concert of the Pacific Choir was a benefit for the UNA/SF Charter Committee for the UN 70th Anniversary event.   The concert itself was sponsored by Korea Times San Francisco. Other donors included Texas Instruments, LAM Research, SAP Software Solutions, and Chevron.  The choir and Coelis Vocal Ensemble(singing "What a Wonderful World") will perform, along with the Kloster Vocalis (Choir from Sweden)  in Grace Cathedral Saturday June 27, 2015.   Hyungjung is impressive and has just won an award for a Master class for her students with the master pianist, Lang Lang.  The program began with the children's choir  UNA CEO for UNA-USA-SF celebration of the 70th. ,

Laurence Rindler has just returned from the Whitney in NYC and from visiting the DIA in Detroit.  He makes a plea for 2.5 million$ or we will not see him at the opening of the museum.  He gives us the history of the museum, and shows us a Bierstadt that was given when the first Davis Hall was a museum of art for UCB.   He shows us a drawing by Julia Morgan and Maybeck, and tells us that the only realized part of the drawing is the Hearst gymnasium.  The idea was that the Museum and esplanade in one plan encouraged health.  For a while, the galleries were in the Power building, created by Galen Howard, with murals by Helen Bruten and Flora Swift.  Then in 1970, Mario Ciampi made a "rugged major form" museum, which contributed to the creation of museums across the country,   The building "drove" porgrams, with cross over audiences, especially music and art. The BAMPF started showing films in Wheeler auditorium in 1968, modelling the program after Cine...

Peter Mattheisen is memorable because I met him in a Key West Literary Conference in which I was accepted as a participant.  He was there with Annie Dillard, and I also heard him read in Manhattan, probably at the Y 92.  I had also attended Explorers Club meetings in their club house in Manhattan. He also was a friend of George Plympton, who befriended me. They started the Paris Review together, which hardly anyone remembers! In any event, In Paradise is the last major work before Peter Matthiesen's death.  Known for embracing Buddhism, this last book is a quandry.  He situates it in Auschwitz, with tourists visiting, pursuing each of their own nostalgic journeys.   The most perplexing are the young nuns.  It is distuburbing, provocative, about human nature, rather than the wider Nature, which is the main character in many of Matthiesen's essays and books. This book is about memory and about our relationship to the past as well as to atrocities such ...

I just finished this novella, dedicated to the father of Siri, Paul Auster's wife.  I loved its title, especially as I was taking the course in Medieval palentology at Stanford last term...and was reminded that a Scriptorium was where the Medieval monks did their work, the copying and creation of manuscripts.  The book is a kind of parable.  I was so reminded of the Albanian who captured the Nobel Prize the year the EU invited me to teach a seminar on Ismail Kadare's work in Kosovo.  Then, I was to find that his English translator (from the french) was on the faculty at Princeton University, and I would have an interview with him, when I returned.    I read nearly all of Ismail Kadare's books, and this book has the flavor of a similar imagination... I wonder if Paul Auster had read his books!    This book is tender, lyrical, poetical, about memory, about frailty, about loss, about how tenusous is our hold on reality, and how vulnerable we can ...

Joseph Beuys and Chairman Mao at ease Table with Two legs Ai Wei Wei 2008 Lan Zheng Hui (Pearl Lam Galleries Shanghai) Liberation no 1.  2013 by Liu Wei   Oil on canvas.  (From computer generated image) Yong  who now lives in Paris.  Janet and Zhu Jinshi's boat made of bamboo rods holding 8000 sheets of paper  used for calligraphy and painting.  A symbolic journey to block out the noise of the world, to "infinitely extend every moment"   

" Nights in the Gardens of Spain" (1916)Falla and Ravel  "L'heure espagole" (1907) and "Alborada del gracioso"(1905) SFO  This concert was so lovely introducing me to a new performer, pianist, Javier Perianes, in his SF debut.  He plays beautifully, and I bought his recording which received a Latin Grammy nomination...his hands create a music that flows like water.  Pleasure to hear this young performer, along with Isabel Leonard, a mezzo soprano, on the rise.  She made her SF debut in 2013, as recipient of the 2013 Richard Tucker award.  She plays the flirtatious Concepcion in L'Heuere espagnole, which was hilarious, as two suitors show up, in her husband's absenc"Nights in the Gardens of Spain" (1916)Falla and Ravel  "L'heure espagole" (1907) and "Alborada del gracioso"(1905) SFO e, but nothing comes of it, and the Muleteer comes out ahead...all in the context of a clockmaker's home, with the clocks a...