An intriguing poem about stones at the recent Squaw Valley Poetry Workshop reminded me of this wonderful monologue from Molly. Cliff DeYoung performed this monologue at Cal State LA as part of a tribute to Beckett on his 100th’s birthday. I don’t think it could be done better! Continue reading “Cliff DeYoung and Beckett”
Category: Events
Jweekly
Jweekly is the newspaper of the Bay Area Jewish Community. I get their weekly email version, and will have a poem in it for the High Holy Days this year. This week, they had an article about a project to animate Psalms. My favorite was by RachelLopez Rosenberg, an interpretation of Psalm 90. Worth a look!
Recology
I know it’s poetry Monday, but as I’ve been camping all week, no poem today. Instead, a little preview of the current exhibit at Terminal 3 at SFO. What a great idea to have art in the long corridor that leads from airport security to the gates. As we all have time to spare at the airport these days, it’s a pleasure to be able to wander through a corridor of art or artifacts. Continue reading “Recology”
More next week…
Museums In DC
I had a spare day in Washington, and went a few museums. I had read about the beeswax room, an installation by in the Phillips Collection by Wolfgang Laib and wanted to see what it would feel like to be in a small closet coated with beeswax. It was interesting, but not transformative. I thought if you were going to go to all that trouble, you might want to make it hexagonal. Continue reading “Museums In DC”
Walk as One at 1
Having been part of One Billion Rising, I’m up for global demonstrations that tap into positive energy. Here’s the next one I’m planning to participate in, on Saturday, May 4.
World Labyrinth Day, an initiative of The Labyrinth Society, is a day designated to bring people from all over the world together to walk labyrinths for the good of all. What could be wrong with that? It is celebrated every year on the first Saturday in May.
According to the announcement, “People are encouraged to have the main labyrinth walk of the day at 1 pm in every time zone to create a wave of labyrinth walking around the planet as it turns in space. There can be great power for good manifested in this effort of unity.”
If, unlike me, you don’t have a labyrinth just outside your front door but want to join in, you can use the handy labyrinth locator to find a labyrinth near you. Or just lay a few pebbles down, and walk in a spiral.
You know you’re in Venice…
when you step off the Big Blue Bus and meet Jane, the hat designer, who has a live dove in her hat.
The #3 bus runs along Lincoln from LAX (or perhaps further south) to Santa Monica. It’s the best deal in town: $1.50 (or 50 cents if you’re 62 or older), and takes only slightly longer than a cab.
Jane was just a bonus.
Museums: small, large, and outdoors
One of the pleasures of a small museum, like the Rubin Museum in New York, is that you can wander through the entire museum in an hour or so and spend time on everything. It’s contained and focused. It doesn’t overwhelm. You can settle into the art without wondering where you need to go next.
Last week I went to see an intriguing exhibit of Lisa Ross photos of Muslim shrines called mazars in a huge Western desert region of China, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. I love the sense of vast places and minimal resources, and the significance that sense lends to the work of constructing even a fence post, a stick, a scrap of cloth. Continue reading “Museums: small, large, and outdoors”
One Billion Rising, NY
Yesterday I danced with my granddaughter in the “Break the Chain” flash mob in Washington Park as part of the One Billion Rising event that I mentioned before. If you look at the New York video, you can see Lila dancing on the left.
She also held a sign at the beginning of the dance.
It was interesting to compare the flash mob dances between Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco on January 26 and the Washington Square Park event. Continue reading “One Billion Rising, NY”
Two events and a footnote
Until February 3, you have a chance to see the Jay DeFeo retrospective at SF MOMA. She is best know for her gargantuan work, The Rose, a composition layered together over years. This image shows her working on it. But the last paintings, very small and heartbreakingly beautiful were my favorite. She was a painter very interested in space and edges, and though abstract art generally doesn’t move me, hers does. Continue reading “Two events and a footnote”
Sorting through boxes
Does everyone have boxes of children’s art, old letters, and other paper memorabilia they’ve saved over the years? I have at least half a dozen of them that I haven’t looked at in decades, and this week I tackled the first one, labeled “Calendars.” From 1976 through 1980 friends and I put together and sold “The Whole Woman Calendar,” a wall calendar with quotes and art by women. It also had little drawings in ink in the margins by my children. The first two years, Simone (a frequent commenter in these pages) did intricate line drawings in black ink.
The next two years were black and white photographs (mostly by my friend Maureen), and for the final year, the calendar was picked up by a NY publisher, and had full color photographs by a variety of women. The box contained make-ready from various years, ideas, calligraphy, and some original photos. This snow woman is one of my favorites, and I think it went with this poem by David Montfort (we didn’t discriminate against men…don’t they hold up half the sky?). Continue reading “Sorting through boxes”
Not an ordinary day
My son, an excellent bridge player, convinced me to compete with him in the Nationals bridge tournament, being held in San Francisco this week. We spent Sunday playing 48 hands of competitive bridge (at the lowest level), and for the last half, we competed as a team with a father and son we met and played against that morning. We won our section, which was terrific, all the more so because the son on the other team was 11 years old! To give you a sense of how intimidating this event was, here is one of two ballrooms full of competitors: