Frank Bruni in the Times decries the immediate exploitation of the Paris massacre by war-mongering right-wing human noise machines.
It’s all too reminiscent of George W. Bush, insisting that the “evildoer” could be vanquished by more tax cuts for the rich–days after 9/11.
Robert Parry at Consortium News wonders if Obama is brave enough to stand up to the neocons and chart a new foreign policy that will actually combat rather than abet terrorism and violence.
So quipped a sharp guy at the Integral Yoga health food store near me. I’d ranked on him for being on the check-out line himself rather than staffing it. In other words, he was buying some items.
And yes, we as humans are, and it might as well be fun. But not the be-all and end-all. Not what it’s become to populations that look to it to satisfy and sublimate other human needs, desires, aspirations. And, really, the cost-benefit analysis to our planet should weigh on our consuming decisions.
It’s early November in New York City, and the only way to feel cold (assuming you’re dressed) is to be in one of the many air-conditioned interiors. . .
Even when Kirsten Flagstad spoke it was like tectonic plates shifting.
Listen to her on youtube advising young singers to wait before trying Wagner.
His pet billionaires fund his campaigns, and in return, he spews toxic sludge denouncing citizens and taxpayers who want more than a globe-busting military budget for their buck. They’re after free stuff, you see. And then there’s the art historians.
Next to Fiorina, Rubio may be the most ugly-spirited of all the GOP’s presidential bench. Yeah, even more than Trump.
Heather Digby Parton at Salon examines Rubio’s dance card.
Steve Willis of Bennett College was scholar-in-residence at New York University in 2006 researching Sands. Since then he’s written a play about her which has been performed at a number of venues around the U.S.
Her tragically curtailed but brilliantly accomplished life and acting career was a matter of breaking down one barrier after another. We all know I’m dubious about saying someone was the “first,” but Sands played Shaw, Shakespeare–virtually unheard of for an African-American woman up to that point. She was a Broadway star, and starred in movies, and in regional theater, and on TV in I Spy, Julia, Medical Center, The Fugitive, et. al.
I said to Steve, why don’t you write a biography, and he said why don’t we collaborate and I said Sure. So we’re going to.
Usually when I walk into Trader Joe’s and the line snakes all the way back nearly to the front door, I turn around and walk out. Today I had to tell myself that I was trapped. I’d walked cross town just to go there and I really needed some olive oil. Turning around meant facing up to an exercise in futility.
It’s a real watching-paint-dry experience inching along. I admired the woman on line who was reading a real live book, not peering into her phone, but I don’t like reading while I”m standing up. I also experienced a grudging admiration for the woman directly in front of me who got on line with one item, then asked me to watch her cart at least twice while she went shopping for more things. Now that’s making good use of your time. And she was good enough to ask me each time if I needed anything in whichever sector she was wading into.
As I got to the checkout line, I wondered how many of the “crew” in front of the digital cash registers had a Phd. Given how overbooked the humanities programs are, how high the unemployment rate is over all, and how many adjunct professors are paid a pittance. . .
The deputy director of the Fashion Institute of Technology is a serious balletomane.
Serious as in being curious and taking the art form seriously. She told me that after reading Dancing on Water she’d gone to youtube to look up people like Alla Shelest she had discovered in the book.
I’ve been reading Dance & Fashion, published by Yale in connection with the FIT exhibit of a year ago. The exhibit is closed but the book’s words and pictures make it an important resource and reference.
In it Patricia’s written, “From Sylph to Swan: The Tutu and Fashion. ”
The collection of essays is edited by FIT director Valerie Steele, who’s also written the keynote piece. She was my editor on the Scribner’s Encyclopedia of Fashion. It’s always good to know where she’s coming from.
Last summer I shared with Patricia an idea I had for another dance/ballet-related exhibit and she’s got a lot of ideas percolating. . . much is happening at 27th Street.
about Wilde. I quote her in the Introduction:
“She was a force of nature. A beautiful tempest that was not dangerous to anyone, that was beyond the ordinary clouds.”
