Author Archives: jsl915@aol.com

So now Bloomberg wants to be president. What is it about the insatiable power-hunger of plutocrats? What’s he going to run on? Rising poverty and homelessness rates in NYC under his tenure? Closing St. Vincent’s? Big tax abatements to his … Continue reading →

Are we surprised? Now we start returning more troops to Iraq, as Obama presides over what looks like a full re-jiggering of GW Bush’s catastrophic foreign policy. The fact that so-called Defense Secretary Carter can even mention phrases such as … Continue reading →

She is the illogical but inevitable culmination of the mostly-GOP right-wing’s war on literacy and culture. So if you don’t think that the defunding, defamation, and neglect of the arts in this country has ominous and wide-ranging implications, think again.

in the case of Hillary’s foreign policy. As Adam Johnson writes at Alternet, “there hasn’t been a major foreign policy decision in the Middle East she pushed for that didn’t end up being a disaster both at home and the … Continue reading →

So you belly  over to the counter to order your mocha-choca-laca with extra-skim only-slightly frothed soy milk, and the barista tells you there’s only enough for a demi-tasse worth. You see, as National Geographic reported in the September 2015 issue, … Continue reading →

I have a problem with men on ballet’s artistic staffs telling women dancers to lose weight. Whether the man is gay or straight, it rankles me because it takes the objectification and abstraction of the female form just a bit … Continue reading →

For History News Network.org, I write  “I Spent Years Interviewing a Soviet Ballerina For a Biography. . . What I learned is especially important to remember at a time of crisis in Russian-American relations.”

We’re now seeing the Republicans rev up two of their biggest and most successful hustles: a) the hysteria and fear-mongering that kept Bush in office, kept Democrats even more quiescent than usual, and made people forget that the Bush-league team … Continue reading →

particularly in ballet.  And I like overlap, too. Alla Osipenko and the late Evgeni Scherbakov: two fascinating dancers and people. Together they perform a minute from Grigorovich’s Legend of Love, act 3 in a compilation put together by zonSatzu2 on … Continue reading →

“You have to speak with that all technique,” says an ex-dancer. “Even if it’s an internal dialogue.”