On reading, on GRE prep, on holiday cheer.....
I am reading Freidman's newest - great as usual. Enjoy his Colbert appearance:
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Catching up
Friday, November 14, 2008
Tom Duffy visits our band
okay, so those of you that know me know of this HUGE project. Tom Duffy visited with our band on Wednesday. A great time had by all. On a personal note (since this is my blog) this was a huge undertaking that I never thought would get off the ground. To see the kids interact with him, to see them so excited was terrific, and worth all the hassles.
Lesson learned? If the project has good purpose and intent, it'll all work out the way it needs to. I'm more relaxed about the second phase - rehearsing his music written for us.
Letting go and watching all this happen has been hard. But the learning is in those spaces where we allow it to happen.
"Let your life speak" had great resonance for me this week. I am intrigued by further results.
Stay tuned!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Must-see film
The Visitor
The Visitor stars Richard Jenkins (Six Feet Under) in a perfect performance (Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY) as Walter, a disaffected college professor who has been drifting aimlessly through his life. When, in a chance encounter on a trip into New York, Walter discovers a couple has taken up residence in his apartment in the city, he develops an unexpected and profound connection to them that will change his life forever. As challenges arise for his tenants, Walter finds himself compelled to help his new friends, and rediscovers a passion he thought he had lost long ago. The year's first genuine must-see film" (Ann Hornaday, THE WASHINGTON POST) about rediscovering life's rhythms in the most unexpected places
Terrific film, slow moving, but I was hooked from the start.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Almost completely proud of America.....
Well, yes, there's still one issue heavy on my heart - the California repeal of gay marriage. A HUGE step backwards on a day of so much forward motion. I will not pontificate, I think Hafiz sums it up for me:
How Does It Feel to Be a Heart? (Hafiz)
Once a young woman asked me,
"How does it feel to be a man?"And I replied,
"My dear,I am not so sure."
Then she said,"Well, aren't you a man?"
And this time I replied,
"I view gender
As a beautiful animal
That people often take for a walk on a leash
And might enter in some odd contest
To try to win strange prizes.
My dear,
A better question for Hafiz
Would have been,
'How does it feel to be a heart?'
For all I know is Love,
And I find my heart Infinite
And Everywhere!"
Brains Are Back! - by Michael Hirsch
After eight years of proud incuriosity and anti-intellectualism, we now have a leader who values nuance and careful thought.
What Obama's election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one's enemies and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back. Yahooism and jingoism and junk science about global warming and shabby legal reasoning about torture are out. The national culture of flag-pin shallowness that guided our foreign policy is gone with the wind. And for this reason as much as any, perhaps I can renew my pride in being an American.
HOORAY! read the whole article in Newsweek!
The Obama election has made me feel smart - and this is a terrific article that sums up why. We can all be smart! Use your brains! Fix the WORLD!
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
by Anne Lamott
Another great book from a writer with great imagery. Lamott is someone not trusting of the human side of faith, I think - the religiuos creation of men? And yet, she sees examples of faithful practice in her life and those of others often. All presented in wonderful prose - from which at times I am led to laugh out loud.
Monet Refuses The Operation
by Lisel Mueller
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don't see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is builtof parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolves
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don't know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and change our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands to claim this world, blue vapor without end.
Thursday, November 06, 2008
RIP Michael Crichton
Unexpected and sad. =(
In Memoriam
Michael Crichton
1942 - 2008
Best-selling author Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, November 4, 2008 after a courageous and private battle against cancer.
Monday, November 03, 2008
The Economist Book of Obituaries
by Keith Colquhoun and Ann Wroe
The Economist Book of Obituaries is a marvelous collection of 200 lives, from the prominent (Hunter S. Thompson, doctor of gonzo journalism: "Explosions were his specialty. Indeed, writing and shooting were much the same." Or George Harrison: "This may prove to be a long goodbye."), to the relatively obscure (Marie Smith, the last speaker of the Eyak language, for whom "the death of Eyak meant the not-to-be-imagined disappearance of the world." Or Yasser Talal al-Zahrani, a prisoner in Guantánamo: "He had sheets and clothes from which, thread by thread, he could make a rope."). (from shelf awareness)
My favorite entry?
Robert Rich, inventor of frozen non-dairy topping, died on February 15, 2006, aged 92:
To top it all, in wartime, heavy whipping cream was a banned substance . . . To dream of an éclair or a cream puff, even of a modest dollop nestling a cherry or topping off a sundae, was close to a traitorous act . . . Mr Rich, however, dreamed often of whipped cream . . . thick, indulgent, faintly golden and utterly unwarlike.
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