Opinion
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Letting Go: Stillness
By: - Aug 07th, 2023The Law Of The Heart, an ancient scroll, speaks of the Three Treasures: The Way, The Teacher, and The Scripture. Each plays an important role along the spiritual path we walk.
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Sorrow, Fear and Stillness
By: - Aug 01st, 2023Each of us, each of us all, have lost someone or something. Each of us has faced fear – fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of death. In the moments of experiencing those fears, and of the sorrow that can accompany them, they were real. In some instances, they were debilitating.
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Jan Lewis Nelson's Book on Deborah Sampson
Disguised as a Man She Fought in the American Revolution
By: - Jul 06th, 2023To make money Deborah Sampson told her story to Hermann Mann who published The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson: The Female Soldier in the War of Revolution. To boost sales he played loose with the facts. Jan Lewis Nelson expresses Sampson’s anguish over fabrications. She saw action but did not fight in the Battle of Yorktown as Mann falsely claimed.
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Simplicity and Stillness
By: - Jun 21st, 2023Cultivating stillness requires hard work and perseverance. Stillness is far more than merely thinking simple thoughts, and it is much more than a weekly yoga session, a massage to calm yourself, or alcohol to settle yourself. It is a state of being.
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A Sex-Positive Xerxes
Komische Oper's Ecstatic Production
By: - Jun 19th, 2023Handel’s Xerxes is a sex-positive party in this ecstatic production presented by Komische Oper. The theater itself is a beautiful little jewel box seating about 1200 people, an intimate setting appropriate to a production that would highlight intimacy.
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The Memoir of a Female Soldier
Steve Nelson Discusses Book by Jan Lewis Nelson
By: - Jun 10th, 2023In The Memoir of a Female Soldier, a novel by Jan Lewis Nelson, Deborah takes quill pen in hand to tell her story. A wife and mother disabled by her war wound, her petition for a veteran’s pension ignored by Congress, and the victim of media misinformation, she became the first American woman to do a lecture tour. She won respect as the man she wasn’t, but sought respect for the woman she was.
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Be Bamboo
By: - Jun 08th, 2023A freak June storm, an ever-more-common aberration in these times of climate change-induced storms, befell the northern Berkshires last week. It offered five inches of rain, and an hour’s worth of half-inch hail that left the ground looking as though it had snowed. The results were devastating to the meditation garden I have been building for 4 years.
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Pablo Picasso Died FiftyYears Ago
Global Exhibitions and Critical Evaluations
By: - Jun 06th, 2023Pablo Picasso was the most famous and influential artist of the 20th Century. The marking of fifty years from his death has created numerous global exhibitions. Critics have waded in with evaluations that acknowledge the work but deplore the man. Simply put it begs the question. Was Pablo Picasso and asshole?
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A Renewed Boston Skyline
A Love of Geometry
By: - Mar 10th, 2023There are three examples of a new look to Boston’s skyline: Boston University’s Center for Computing and Data Sciences or “Jenga Building” near Kenmore Square; Harvard’s John A. Paulson Science and Applied Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) Building in Allston; and the One Congress Street Building at the Bulfinch Triangle next to Government Center.
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Whitney Museum Workers
Negotiate First Union Contract
By: - Mar 06th, 2023After more than a year of bargaining, the Whitney Museum Union of Local 2110 UAW have reached a tentative agreement with the Museum on a first union contract. Union members are in the process of voting on the contract.
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The Literary Life
Winter Is for Writing Books
By: - Feb 28th, 2023In 2015 I wrote a book of poetry, Shards of a Life, which was launched with a reading and dialogue with director, Susan Wissler, at Edith Wharton's The Mount. It was an auspicious beginning. Each winter other books of poetry and oral history followed. There was a disruption in 2021 entailing recovery from spinal surgery. The eighth book, Annisquam: Pip and Me Coming of Age, is on track for a Spring/ Summer release.
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Gloucester 400th Plus
Video Access to 2022 Lectures
By: - Jan 12th, 2023Gloucester 400th Plus is an occasion for research and reflection on all aspects of the history and culture of Cape Ann. in 2022 the Cape Ann Museum hosted a range of panel discussions and lectures. Here is the full program with links to their videos. It is significant that the museum has preserved and made available such a valuable resource.
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National Endowment for the Arts
Grants for 2023
By: - Jan 10th, 2023The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is pleased to announce the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2023, with more than $34 million in funding to support the arts nationwide. This is the first of the NEA’s two major grant announcements each fiscal year and includes grants to organizations through the NEA’s Grants for Arts Projects, Challenge America, and Research Awards categories.
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Sardinia 2022
Tracking Brill Family History
By: - Jan 03rd, 2023Around Six years ago, I signed up for the National Geographic Family History DNA Test. For around $125, I received a Cheek Swab Kit and some paperwork. I was instructed to reveal nothing more than my Name and Age. A few weeks later, I received a box which included a Printed Brill Family History based solely on the DNA I presented. The National Geographic Report let me know that I am Jewish and that my Father’s Family started in the Middle East and traveled to Sicily around a thousand years ago.
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Peter Gelb Announces Cut Backs at Met Opera
General Manager Only One Surprised by Ticket Sales
By: - Dec 28th, 2022It comes as a surprise to noone who attends Met Operas that the House is in trouble. Only Peter Gelb, who at first said that people were asleep after Covid, seems to find the Met Opera's failure to sell tickets news. His response is also odd. The operas he proposes to produce to cure are chamber operas unsuited to an opera house too large for our times.
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Daoist Traditional Practices and Stillness
By: - Dec 27th, 2022Zen Buddhist teaching and the use of Koans are for the purpose of disabusing one from thinking, and instead simply acting. Quiet oneself sufficiently, be fully present in the moment, and the correct response to the moment will arise on its own – naturally, instinctively, organically.
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Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023
Four Hundred Plus Years
By: - Dec 24th, 2022With the 2022 publication of Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023, edited by Martin Ray, we have a kick start launch of a year of commemoration in 2023. Originally planned for six writers it was expanded to 36 by editor Martin Ray. It reads like a pot luck supper with savory chapters as well as many not so. But you won't leave it feeling hungry for Gloucester.
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America's Foremost Arts Cities
Pittsfield Makes the List
By: - Dec 15th, 2022The Arts Vibrancy Index report is an indispensable resource for anyone seeking to better understand how the arts and culture sector contributes to a community’s economy and public life. Now in its seventh iteration, the report has helped organizations evaluate where to relocate or focus their operations; provided clarity for funders on how and where to invest; and made it easier than ever for communities to learn how to cultivate arts vibrancy in their area.
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Herman Melville and the Berkshires
60,000,000 Copies of Moby-Dick Have Been Published
By: - Sep 29th, 2022By the 1930s, Herman Melville's novel became an example of Great American Writing and was studied in many University English Programs. The interest in Herman Melville continues such that since his death on this day (September 29) in 1891, more than 60,000,000 copies of MOBY-DICK have been published around the world!
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Theatre in Conneticut
Moving Forward from Shutdowns
By: - Sep 18th, 2022The fall theater scene in Connecticut is starting. It will include everything from hard-hitting comedy/drama such as Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to Tony-winning musicals – 42nd Street, Fun Home and Sunset Blvd and everything in between. In fact, two shows – the Great Gatsby and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? are getting two productions each.
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'62 Center at Williams College
The 2022-2023 Season
By: - Sep 12th, 2022The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance unveiled its live, in-person performances celebrating diverse and challenging theatre, music, and dance programming for the Williams College community and beyond.
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Arnold Printworks of North Adams
Dolls Faithfully Reproduced by Ralph Brill Gallery
By: - Sep 03rd, 2022Celia Smith and her sister-in-law Charity Smith had been sending letters to the Arnold Print Works requesting a meeting for their New Idea – Printed Cloth Dolls. They never received a reply, so with a Sample Doll in hand, they made the trip to North Adams in 1890, but were turned away at the door. Initially the dolls were hand made with cloth scraps. They caught on and sold well. Arnold Print Works agreed to Buy the Partners’ Patented Designs. Royalties were10 Cents per Printed Fabric Yard. In the 1892 Holiday Season, 200,000 Doll Sheets were Sold.
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Manfred Honeck Conducts at Elbphilharmonie
Pittsburgh Symphony Shimmers
By: - Aug 26th, 2022Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony have developed a specialty: revealing the texture of sound. In a concert at Elbphilharmonie, an event in the orchestra’s 75th year of touring, they displayed daring and diverse sounds not often heard. The Maestro and the musicians find buried clues to the balanced mix of rhythms, dynamics in detailed performance directions.
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Slavery Remembrance Day in the US
Dealing with Past Atrocities
By: - Aug 22nd, 2022On July 27, 2022, a bill creating a Slavery Remembrance Day, introduceed by Congressman Al Green of Houston, Texas, passed in Congress. August 20th was the date in 1619 White Lion ship with 20 “and odd” Angolans, kidnapped by the Portuguese, arrived in the British colony Point Comfort in Virginia.
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MASS MoCA Union
Work Stoppage August 19
By: - Aug 15th, 2022Unionized employees of MASS MoCA voted by a 96% vote to engage in a one-day work stoppage on August 19, 2022. Employees will be picketing the Museum all day and asking visitors to express support for a fair contract for staff.
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