Kumquat

 A Sweet Pea Chef

Hungry Native

Quote of the Day

“There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.”
― Nikki Giovanni

Art of the Day

Katsushika Hokusai 

The Great Wave at Kanagawa (1832)

Photograph of the Day

Truman Capote Rescuing the kitty.

Pure Vegetarian

Fashioneestar

Literary Quote

“The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.”

 — James Branch Cabell From The Silver Stallion

Literary Pick (**)

Nausea

-Jean Paul Sartre

Not nearly as good as his plays in No Exit. Sartre claimed Nausea to be his magnum opus. Existentialism is a philosophy I deeply believe is the doctrine of life. So I was surprised and disappointed that Sartre, being the forefather of existentialism, offered this, his crowning achievement, with little to no theory. Nausea reminded me much of Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, in the sense that it presented a profoundly disturbed individual attempting to cope with the meaningless of everyday life, but lacking purposeful argument.

Quote of the Day

When I am anxious it is because I am living in the future. When I am depressed it is because I am living in the past. 
~Author Unknown

Literary Pick (***)

Easy French Reader

-R. de Roussy de Sales

Finally finished this, my second French workbook. The only drawback about this practice textbook is that there were no English side-by-side translations. I had to often refer to a French dictionary and Google translate throughout the entire book.

Quote of the Day

“If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.”

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Literary Pick (**)

Breaking the Surface

-Greg Louganis

I owned this book for quite some time, but for some reason or other continued to put off reading it. Not sure why I've always admired Greg Louganis.. I'm not a big Olympic follower, and I'm not into swimming as a sport either. Perhaps my admiration for him began after he hit his head on the springboard during the 1988 Olympics in Seoul Korea, and much later hearing the news of his HIV status, which I could've sworn he came forth with immediately after his diving accident, but it turns out he actually came out in 1994. In this bio Greg Louganis comes off as whiny and self-pitying. I was initially taken back by it. He has never appeared like that in his televised appearances... I thought it would have an affect on how I felt about Louganis, but after finishing I've decided I still think he's a remarkable athlete who's been through a lot. I feel sad that he hasn't been able to find a meaningful relationship, which seems to be something important to him. I hope he continues to do well in life and in health.

Suicide Note

(Virginia Woolf's suicide note to her husband Leonard)

TO: LEONARD WOOLF

'Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.

V.'

Literary Pick (**)

A Room with a View

-E.M. Forster

It's hard for me to believe this is considered a romance novel. It seemed like most of the time there were at least half a dozen people guarding Lucy's virtue. I don't understand how an author can take a character from one extreme to the next. Up until the last chapter it was about Lucy Honeychurch asserting her independence as a young lady. She didn't seem at all interested in finding romance. She just wanted independence from her family. Lucy's character was flaky. She becomes engaged to Cecil, but then realizes he's extremely pompous and is only interested in showing off his knowledge for the arts. Then we have George's father, who insists Lucy marry his son because all women should be married, and all this anti-feminist mumbo-jumbo. I think she finally marries George's son to escape her less than sane relatives. This novel was anything but romantic. In fact, it's one of the worst romance novels I've ever read. The back cover is very misleading. When you read the synopsis for the book you feel like you're about to embark on another amazing novel like Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights, but it's far from it on every aspect imaginable. I was tempted to give it only one star, but the prose was decent enough.

Literary Pick (***)

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
-Maya Angelou
 




















"Preach it, I say preach it!" I will always say that with a heart-felt chuckle.
I've always had a deep admiration and respect for Maya Angelou, so when I first learned about this autobiographical novel I was thrilled to add it to my to-reads list for later reading. The title alone, "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings", says so much about the story, and seems to be filled with such hope in the face of adversity.
The story chronicles the life of Marguerite (Maya), along with her brother Bailey, in the care of their devout grandmother in Stamps Arkansas, and years later moving in with her mother (Vivian) to San Francisco, ending with the touching bond between Maya and her newborn son. As a novel, it wasn't as interesting as I would have liked it to be, so I had to keep reminding myself that it was the story of Maya Angelou's life. It would've been nice to clearly hear the voice of wisdom we all know and love, but I felt it didn't come through so much for me, then again, it was young Angelou. This is a book I would definitely recommend you read first if you're just beginning to have an interest in Angelou's works.

Poetry

Annabel Lee

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

Edgar Allan Poe

Literary Quote

“Success, after all, loves a witness, but failure can't exist without one.”

Junot Díaz

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Literary Pick (**)

The Origin of Species

-Charles Darwin

Literary Pick (**)

Beloved

-Toni Morrison

Honor Spotlight

Maya Angelou

Born April 4, 1928-present

Writer, dancer, African-American activist. Born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. Angelou spent her difficult formative years moving back and forth between her mother's and grandmother's. At age eight, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was subsequently killed by her uncles. The event caused the young girl to go mute for nearly six years, and her teens and early twenties were spent as a dancer, filled with isolation and experimentation.

At 16 she gave birth to a son, Guy, after which she toured Europe and Africa in the musical Porgy and Bess. On returning to New York City in the 1960s, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild and became involved in black activism. She then spent several years in Ghana as editor of African Review, where she began to take her life, her activism and her writing more seriously.

Maya Angelou's five-volume autobiography commenced with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in 1970. The memoirs chronicle different eras of her life and were met with critical and popular success. Later books include All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) and My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me (1994). She has published several volumes of verse, including And Still I Rise (1987) and Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou (1995). Her volume of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'Fore I Die (1971), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1993, Angelou read 'On the Pulse of Morning' at Bill Clinton's Presidential inauguration, a poem written at his request. It was only the second time a poet had been asked to read at an inauguration, the first being Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. In 2006, Angelou agreed to host a weekly radio show on XM Satellite Radio's Oprah & Friends channel. She also teaches at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, where she has a lifetime position as the Reynolds professor of American studies.

Drawing from her own life experiences, Angelou published Letter to My Daughter in 2008. She wrote the work for the daughter she never had, sharing anecdotes and offering advice. Well received, the book earned several honors, including a NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work-Non-Fiction.

 -Biography.com

Literary Pick (***)

Amulet

-Roberto Bolaño

I finally understand why I continue reading Bolano's works although I have not loved all of his novels. The reason being is that he is the only writer up to date, whom I've had the pleasure of reading who is so diverse in his ideas. Sure, there's an underlying "style" to his work, but it's so subtle and humble. There are many authors I have enjoyed reading, yet, I'm almost always hesitant to read all of their works because I know I will have similar experiences, read the same ideas with slightly different twists. Sure, Bolano has this theme about writers and poets and the underground of Latin America, but he gives you new material all the time, even if it's not 100% gratifying, you can walk away appreciative for his work and what you've experienced. Bolano was someone who was very thoughtful and profound. You can tell by reading a few of his books, like Savage Detectives, 2666, and Last Evenings on Earth. There's something about his mind that is the real deal. When you read his books, you know you're reading a writers writer. 
Amulet is the story of a woman, Auxilio Lacouture, (the mother of Mexican poetry) who for 12 days hides in the restroom of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma in Mexico City (UNAM) during the army's 1968 invasion. During her ordeal she recounts stories of the underground world of poets in seedy bars and neighborhoods. Not much is offered in terms of details of the actual invasion itself. It's really about Auxilio depending on her memory of these events to survive. I liked when she encountered (hallucinated) her guardian angel, and offered a list of prophecies. I also liked the reference to the Chilean Rugby team survivors of the Andes, since I have been so deeply inspired by their story of survival for so many years. Although I only give this book 3 stars, I still look forward to reading more Bolano. He has a knack and style I am deeply attracted to.

Photograph of the Day

Jackson Pollock with his dogs with Gyp and Ahab.

Quote of the Day

The meaning of life is that it ends.

-Franz Kafka

Literary Pick (****)

The Little Prince 

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

A sweet and gentle children's story even adults can enjoy.

Literary Pick (**)

Herzog

-Saul Bellow

In this book we read about an intellectual who is dealing with marital issues and friendship betrayal, a man, Herzog, who although seems oblivious to the trivialities of an average persons day to day life, is quite neurotic about his own, and tends to over-think of the wrongs and trespasses that have been committed against him. So much so, that he writes unsent letters to all the people who he hasn't had the pleasure of giving a piece of his mind.

I often wondered if Herzog's cerebral endowment is what negatively affected all of his personal relationships in life, or if the people surrounding him are insecure of their own place in the world of the intellectual elite.. or perhaps he's simply delusional? I mean, in this book, everyone, according to Herzog, had brain envy. When he finally decides to mentally move on from beautiful, captivating, breath-taking, almost equally as intelligent but psychotic wife Madeleine, who apparently was having an affair with his close friend, Gerbach, he declares, "Enjoy her- rejoice in her, you will not reach me through her, however. I know you sought me in her flesh, but I am no longer there". Sure, let it be said that we're all aware of Herzog's mensa-like mind, but that is an incredible amount of self-pomp, if you ask me.

As a read, the book is pretty much clear and straightforward. I could see how many readers might enjoy it more than I did. One thing I did find refreshing about the story is how Herzog, in the end, seems to find his way and comes to terms with accepting what has happened to him. Very Eat, Pray, Love. To be honest, I thought he was going to shoot his brains out in the Berkshire house. That would've been a very interesting ending.

Photograph of the Day

Kurt Cobain

RIP

Dorothea Tanning

The artist Dorothea Tanning has died in New York aged 101. She was the last living member of the surrealist movement, whose circle she joined in 1940s Paris. In 1946, she married Max Ernst in a double wedding with the photographic artist Man Ray and Juliet Browner. Their marriage lasted until Ernst's death in 1976.

From her first picture, aged 15, of a nude woman with leaves for hair, Tanning's paintings, sculptures and drawings almost always depicted the female human form, usually in strange, dreamlike scenarios. By the 50s she had abandoned surrealism in favour of more abstract "prism paintings".

In 2002 she told Salon: "I guess I'll be called a surrealist forever, like a tattoo: D. Loves S. But please don't say I'm carrying the surrealist banner. The movement ended in the 50s and my own work had moved on so far by the 60s that being a called a surrealist today makes me feel like a fossil!"

Her work is in the collections of many galleries around the world including the Tate and MoMA in New York, and influenced artists including Yayoi Kusama and Louise Bourgeois.

Tanning found further acclaim late in life through her writing. Her first novel was published when she was 94, while her poetry featured in such eminent publications as the New Republic and the Paris Review. In 2001 she published a memoir of her long and action-packed life.

Tanning was born in 1910 in Galesburg, Illinois, moving to New York in 1936, where she saw the MoMA show Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, which persuaded her that there was a place for her work. She went to Paris in 1940, where she met Ernst two years later. She said proudly that he never called her "wife", adding "I'm very much against the arrangement of procreation, at least for humans. If I could have designed it, it would be a toss-up who gets pregnant, the man or woman."

As well as painting and sculpture, she designed sets for the legendary choreographer George Balanchine, and a house in the south of France for her and Ernst. Their circle of friends included Henri Cartier-Bresson, Marcel Duchamp, Truman Capote and Dylan Thomas.

Though she concentrated on her writing in later years, her work continued to be shown in galleries, and is currently featured in an exhibition at Los Angeles County Museum of Art called In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States.

Tanning would not have enjoyed the title, once describing the term "woman artist" as "disgusting". She also said: "Art has always been the raft on to which we climb to save our sanity. I don't see a different purpose for it now."

A statement from MoMA said: "We are saddened by the loss of two great artists today: Dorothea Tanning and Mike Kelley."


-The Guardian UK

RIP

Wislawa Szymborska, Nobel-Winning Polish Poet, Dies at 88

Wislawa Szymborska, a gentle and reclusive Polish poet who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature, died on Wednesday in Krakow, Poland. She was 88.

Enlarge This Image

Soren Andersson/Associated Press

Wislawa Szymborska with her Nobel Prize medal in 1996.

The cause was lung cancer, said David A. Goldfarb, the curator of literature and humanities at the Polish Cultural Institute in New York, a diplomatic mission of the Polish Embassy.

Ms. Szymborska (pronounced VEES-mah-vah shim-BOR-ska) had a relatively small body of work when she received the Nobel, the fifth Polish or Polish-born writer to have done so since the prize was created in 1901. Only about 200 of her poems had been published in periodicals and thin volumes over a half-century, and her lifetime total was something less than 400.

The Nobel announcement surprised Ms. Szymborska, who had lived an intensely private life. “She was kind of paralyzed by it,” said Clare Cavanagh, who, with Stanislaw Baranczak, translated much of Ms. Szymborska’s work into English.

“Her friends called it the ‘Nobel tragedy,’ ” Dr. Cavanagh, a professor of literature at Northwestern University, said in an interview on Wednesday. “It was a few years before she wrote another poem.”

Ms. Szymborska lived most of her life in modest conditions in the old university city of Krakow, working for the magazine Zycie Literackie (Literary Life). She published a thin volume of her verse every few years.

She was popular in Poland, which tends to make romantic heroes of poets, but she was little known abroad. Her poems were clear in topic and language, but her playfulness and tendency to invent words made her work hard to translate.

Much of her verse was contemplative, but she also addressed death, torture, war and, strikingly, Hitler, whose attack on Poland in 1939 started World War II in Europe. She depicted him as an innocent — “this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe” — being photographed on his first birthday.

Ms. Szymborska began writing in the Socialist Realist style. The first collection of what some have called her Stalinist period, “That’s What We Live For,” appeared in 1952, followed two years later by another ideological collection, “Questions Put to Myself.”

Years later she told the poet and critic Edward Hirsch: “When I was young I had a moment of believing in the Communist doctrine. I wanted to save the world through Communism. Quite soon I understood that it doesn’t work, but I’ve never pretended it didn’t happen to me.

“At the very beginning of my creative life I loved humanity. I wanted to do something good for mankind. Soon I understood that it isn’t possible to save mankind.”

By 1957, she had renounced both Communism and her early poetry. Decades later, she was active in the Solidarity movement’s struggle against Poland’s Communist government. During a period of martial law, imposed in 1981, she published poems under a pseudonym in the underground press.

She insisted that her poetry was personal rather than political. “Of course, life crosses politics,” she said in an interview with The New York Times after winning the Nobel in 1996. “But my poems are strictly not political. They are more about people and life.”

Ms. Szymborska “looks at things from an angle you would never think of looking at for yourself in a million years,” Dr. Cavanagh said on the day of the Nobel announcement. She pointed to “one stunning poem that’s a eulogy.”

“It’s about the death of someone close to her that’s done from the point of view of the person’s cat,” she said.

That poem, “Cat in an Empty Apartment,” as translated by Dr. Cavanagh and Mr. Baranczak, opens:

Die — You can’t do that to a cat.

Since what can a cat do

in an empty apartment?

Climb the walls?

Rub up against the furniture?

Nothing seems different here,

but nothing is the same.

Nothing has been moved,

but there’s more space.

And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,

but they’re new ones.

The hand that puts fish on the saucer

has changed, too.

Something doesn’t start

at its usual time.

Something doesn’t happen

as it should. Someone was always, always here,

then suddenly disappeared

and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Wislawa Szymborska was born on July 2, 1923, near Poznan, in western Poland. When she was 8, her family moved to Krakow. During the Nazi occupation, she went to a clandestine school, risking German punishment, and later studied literature and sociology at the prestigious Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

Her marriage to the poet Adam Wlodek ended in divorce. Her companion, the writer Kornel Filipowicz, died in 1990. She had no children, and no immediate family members survive.

Czeslaw Milosz, the Polish exile who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1980, said of Ms. Szymborska’s Nobel selection: “She’s a shy and modest person, and for her it will be a terrible burden, this prize. She is very reticent in her poetry also. This is not a poetry where she reveals her personal life.”

Her work did, however, reveal sympathy for others — even the biblical figure who looked back at Sodom and turned into a pillar of salt. Ms. Szymborska speculated in the opening lines of “Lot’s Wife” on why she looked back:

They say I looked back out of curiosity,

but I could have had other reasons.

I looked back mourning my silver bowl.

Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.

So I wouldn’t have to keep staring at the righteous nape

Of my husband Lot’s neck.

From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead

He wouldn’t so much as hesitate.

From the disobedience of the meek.

Checking for pursuers.

Struck by the silence, hoping God had changed his mind.

Her last book to be translated, “Here,” was published in the United States last year. Reviewing it for The New York Review of Books, the poet Charles Simic noted that Ms. Szymborska “often writes as if on an assigned subject,” examining it in depth. He added: “If this sounds like poetry’s equivalent of expository writing, it is. More than any poet I can think of, Szymborska not only wants to create a poetic state in her readers, but also to tell them things they didn’t know before or never got around to thinking about.”

In her Nobel lecture, Ms. Szymborska joked about the life of poets. Great films can be made of the lives of scientists and artists, she said, but poets offer far less promising material.

“Their work is hopelessly unphotogenic,” she said. “Someone sits at a table or lies on a sofa while staring motionless at a wall or ceiling. Once in a while this person writes down seven lines, only to cross out one of them 15 minutes later, and then another hour passes, during which nothing happens. Who could stand to watch this kind of thing?”

Paul Vitello contributed reporting.
NYT

Quote of the Day

"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." 

— Simone de Beauvoir

Literary Pick (***)

Candide 

-Voltaire

Poor Candide! poor dumb, benevolent Candide!
I was quite shocked to read some of the outrageous things that took place in this little satirical novel, especially a work that was written c1759. Women being raped, sodomized, their butt cheeks cut off to feed starving Russians, slavery, male castration, women having sex with monkeys.. Voltaire really knew how to take wtf to psycho-like levels. I can see why it created such scandal back in it's day, but it doesn't read strained or contrived, it's all presented in a matter-of-fact style which is what made it so disturbing. Makes you wonder what kind of world Voltaire lived in, and what kind of things he experienced..or maybe he was just equipped with a sensational imagination. Comical and sometimes pathetic, I enjoyed this little novella. It was my first experience with Voltaire so I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of his works and philosophy. I also found out he was a deist. A doctrine I  have believed in for quite some time but was too fearful to openly admit, until recently.

Literary Pick (*)

The Aeneid

-Virgil

I'm so glad to finally be over with this book. It seems that any book I look passionately forward to reading turns out to be a dud. I was really looking to recapture the emotions I felt reading  Homer's The Odyssey, but instead I was left feeling the opposite..very much the way I felt reading Homer's The Iliad, which was absolutely torturous for me.

It started off interesting enough.. Aeneas wakes up to see his city being ravaged by the Greeks. Aeneas tries to flee with his family, but realizes his wife, Creusa, is not with him, so he returns for her and instead encounters her ghost..she's been killed. I thought that was wonderful start to the story, however, after he leaves Troy, it goes downhill from there. Aside from the part where he takes up with Dido, It felt like I was reading the Iliad all over again with it's never-ending war theme. Almost the entire rest of the story was about his battle with Turnus. Every single page was pure labor. I hate when I don't enjoy a beautiful classic like this. It makes me feel inadequate.

Quote of the Day

“May God have mercy for my enemies because I won't.”

-George S. Patton Jr.

RIP

Helen Frankenthaler

December 12th, 1928- December 26th 2011

Abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler dies at 83
Synopsis
Helen Frankenthaler is an American-born painter, printmaker, and sculptor who, along with fellow artists Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, spearheaded the practice of Color Field painting, a component of Abstract Expressionism. Her innovative technique, along with her use of landscape to inform her abstract work, changed the way artists conceived of and used color in their own work and made her the most prominent female member of the Abstract Expressionist and Color Field Painting movements.


Key Ideas / Information


•Frankenthaler echoed Jackson Pollock in both the large scale of her canvases and her decision to paint on the floor rather than on an easel. Unlike Pollock, however, her paintings conveyed a tranquil experience of the natural world rather than an intermittently ominous sense of the sublime.


•Frankenthaler emphasized the role of her "wrist" as her own personal artistic signature and in this way aligned herself with the Abstract Expressionists and the importance they placed on the visibility of "the artist's hand" in a painting.


•Frankenthaler's use of light hearkens back to landscape painters of earlier centuries who used light from the natural world to define focal points and illuminate their works, but absent in her work is the religious sentiment they sought to inspire.


TheArtstory.org

Literary Pick (**)

She's Come Undone
-Wally Lamb

Quote of the Day

Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realise we cannot eat money


-Cree Indian Proverb

Literary Pick (*)

Por Estas Calles Bravas
-Piri Tomas

Quote of the Day

“To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Photograph of the Moment

Ernest Hemingway

Literary Pick (****)

E-Z French -Barrons

I finally finished my French workbook after 9 months of studying. When I began studying French I didn't even know what the word "Je" meant. Now I have about a 40-50 % level of comprehension. Although I still struggle with the spoken language, I highly recommend this textbook if you're interested in either honing your French language skills, or if like me, you want to learn the language from scratch. This was a great textbook for learning French. I'm amazed.

Quote of the Day

Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”   
-William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

Literary Pick (****)

Lullabies for Little Criminals
-Heather O'Neil

Literary Pick (****)

Maria Callas: Sacred Monster
-Stelios Galatopoulos

Lyrics

Vissi d’arte
Vissi d’arte, vissi d’amore,
non feci mai male ad anima viva!
Con man furtiva
quante miserie conobbi aiutai.
Sempre con fè sincera
la mia preghiera
ai santi tabernacoli salì.
Sempre con fè sincera
diedi fiori agl’altar.
Nell’ora del dolore
perchè, perchè, Signore,
perchè me ne rimuneri così?
Diedi gioielli della Madonna al manto,
e diedi il canto agli astri, al ciel,
che ne ridean più belli.
Nell’ora del dolor
perchè, perchè, Signor,
ah, perchè me ne rimuneri così?


-Tosca's Aria from Puccini's Tosca

Literary Pick (****)

No Fear Shakespeare

-Sparknotes

I can't believe it's taken me this long to read my first Shakespeare play. I enjoyed the story of King Lear so much! more than I ever thought I would. I didn't expect parts to be so comical. I was under the impression King Lear was a totally solemn story, but instead was rather dramatically amusing. I do have to admit I opted  for the "plain English" version of this edition because I feel that since it's my first time reading Shakespeare, it's much more important to first understand what the play is about before reading the work in it's original text.

Quote of the Day

“On a day of burial there is no perspective--for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself complete, as he was--to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.”

-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Literary Pick (***)

Siddhartha

-Herman Hesse

The novel by Hermann Hesse is basically about a young man (Siddhartha) who abandons his noble family home to lead an ascetic life, but he then meets the Buddha, and goes after a life of materialism, realizing 20 years later he is repulsed by his new lifestyle of lust (in which he conceives a son with a courtesan by the name of Kamala) and over-indulgence, he  once again abandons everything and goes in search of himself. He then meets with a ferryman Vesudeva, who guides and teaches him to listen to the river, which is meant to symbolize "the great song of a thousand voices consisting of one word:  OM-perfection." Only then does Siddhartha achieve true enlightenment. I give this book three stars for it's category, which is spirituality. I normally wouldn't read a book on this subject, but It's a classic and a short read so I decided to give it a try. I enjoyed how it was written and I learned a few things about Hindu religions and monks.

Design Traveller

Literary Pick (****)

The Book Thief
-Markus Zusak

This is one of the sweetest books I've ever read. It's like the Author took The Diary of a Young Girl and a Tree Grows in Brooklyn and meshed them together to create The Book Thief.
The Conceptual purity of expression in giving colors feelings was something I could immediately connect with. One of my favorite quotes in the world by August Macke is..."My entire joy in life comes almost entirely from pure colour". I've always believed colors play a much more essential role than just the superficial aesthetic value they initially present. There are times when I can clearly see a certain day and it's atmospheric greenish tint, and it astounds me when no one else around me sees it. I believe assigning colors to emotions and events is the primary quality of this novel. It's what pulled the reader into the history of the events and what gives it true affection and compassion. There is also the story of Liesel, a little Jewish girl who is adopted by German (non-Jewish) parents Hans and Rosa Hubberman, in the fictional town of Molching in Munich, Germany... I won't give much away because I don't want to ruin it for the people who haven't read it yet, (*ahem*..my husband) but it's a story about hope, not giving up, standing up for what is right, even if that means possible persecution.
The authors ability to add tenderness to a history which is so obviously tragic, and from a German perspective, in any manner, is praisable to say the least. What's even more amazing is that the author is so young. Only 36 years old. I'm pretty hard to impress when it comes to modern literature, but I must say, this book is one that will have it's place among the classics years down the road.

The cover (Domino cover edition) seems inappropriate for the theme of the book. I could think of several other ideas which would be much more suitable for the story. Like an accordion...or maybe an illustratrion of a little boy and girl.

Cultural News

Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing

By Bob Harris

Like all professions book reviewing has a lingo. Out of laziness, haste or a misguided effort to sound “literary,” reviewers use some words with startling predictability. Each of these seven entries is a perfectly good word (well, maybe not eschew), but they crop up in book reviews with wearying regularity. To little avail, admonitions abound. “The best critics,” Follett writes, “are those who use the plainest words and who make their taste rational by describing actions rather than by reporting or imputing feelings.” Now, the list:
poignant: Something you read may affect you, or move you. That doesn’t mean it’s poignant. Something is poignant when it’s keenly, even painfully, affecting. When Bambi’s mom dies an adult may think it poignant. A child probably finds it terrifying.
compelling: Many things in life, and in books, are compelling. The problem is that too often in book reviews far too many things are found to be such. A book may be a page turner, but that doesn’t necessarily make it compelling. Overuse has weakened a word that implies an overwhelming force.
Reviewers often combine these first two words. Like Chekhov’s gun. If there is a poignant in a review’s third paragraph, a compelling will most likely follow. Frequently reviewers forestall the suspense and link the words right away, as in “this poignant and compelling novel…”
intriguing: It doesn’t mean merely interesting or fascinating although it’s almost always used in place of one of those words. When it is, the sense of something illicit and mysterious is lost.
eschew: No one actually says this word in real life. It appears almost exclusively in writing when the perp is stretching for a flashy synonym for avoid or reject or shun.
craft (used as a verb): In “The Careful Writer,” Theodore M. Bernstein reminds us that “the advertising fraternity has decided craft is a verb.” Undeterred, reviewers use it when they are needlessly afraid of using plain old write. They also try to make pen a verb, as in “he penned a tome.”
muse (used as a verb): Few things in this world are mused. They are much more often simply written, thought or said. “War is hell,” he mused. Not much dreamy rumination there.
Stretching for the fanciful — writing “he crafts or pens” instead of “he writes”; writing “he muses” instead of “he says or thinks” — is a sure tip-off of weak writing.
lyrical: Reviewers use this adjective when they want to say something is well written. But using the word loosely misses the sense of expressing emotion in an imaginative and beautiful way. Save lyrical for your next review of Wordsworth.
It’s possible to (mis)use all seven words in a one-sentence book report: “Mario Puzo’s intriguing novel eschews the lyrical as the author instead crafts a poignant tale of family life and muses on the compelling doings of the Mob.”
Of course, these seven words aren’t the only ones overworked by book reviewers. After all, I haven’t even mentioned limn. Perhaps, readers, you’d like to add your favorites?

-NYT

Kinfolk

Cultural News (Archives)

Cheap Seats
It’s Not Over Till Your Arches Fall By Ben Sisario
Published: December 22, 2006

BY the end of the third act I was a mess — twitching, scratching, struggling to pay attention to Mimì’s tender farewell aria instead of the growing ache in my heels. How in the world was that little old lady in front of me staying so perfectly still?

It was “La Bohème” at the Met, and not just any “Bohème.” Anna Netrebko, the Julia Roberts of opera, was singing her one and only Mimì of the season, and tickets had been sold out for months. But I had scored a seat. Or at least a spot: I was in standing room, the Met’s time-honored concession to fanatics and penny pinchers, absorbing that most expensive of music at the lowest price possible.
Everything about the Metropolitan Opera conveys elegance and sophistication, from the gasp-inducing Zeffirelli sets and gawkworthy gowns (onstage and off) to the rows of Champagne flutes on the bar at intermission. It can all be intimidating, to say nothing of ticket prices as high as $375. And indeed the regular audience at the Met — the average subscriber is a 62-year-old making $120,000 a year — has been dwindling steadily over the last decade.
But things have never been better for budget-conscious opera fans in New York, in part because of the Met’s efforts to combat that decline. This season its new general manager, Peter Gelb, has introduced an array of ticket policies to attract new audiences and, as Mr. Gelb said in a recent interview, “lift the veil of formality that has shrouded the Met in recent decades.” These include lower prices for seats in the uppermost ring, an easier system for buying standing room tickets and a rush program that makes many orchestra seats available at a fraction of their regular cost.
The first stop for any bargain hunter at the opera — or the ballet, or Broadway — is standing room, the corridor along the back of the house where patrons, well, stand. On Broadway these tickets, usually around $20, normally go on sale each day for that evening’s show. For decades the Met has had a more peculiar, arduous system, in which spots were sold on Saturday for all the productions in the next week, but this season it scrapped the Saturday lineup and began offering same-day spots when the box office opens each morning.
I tried my luck a few Tuesdays ago with “La Bohème,” and I was amazed at the ease of the process. Clutching a cup of coffee and a newspaper, I speed-walked across the Lincoln Center plaza at 8:15, worried that I was too late to get one of the 175 standing places. To my surprise I was only the 25th person in the most congenial ticket line I had ever seen, with regulars and newcomers chatting in multiple languages, comparing singers and restaurant recommendations.
The operation was also remarkably efficient. Guards guided us swiftly through the snakes of velvet rope to the box office, where the clerks asked one question: “Upstairs or down?” I chose down — upstairs spaces are $5 less, but are way, way up in the fifth balcony — handed over my $20, and by 10:02 I was out the door.
Staying on one’s feet for three hours — or four, or five — can be a challenge, but the advantage of standing room is that it is available even when a show is hopelessly sold out. I breezed confidently past dozens of people looking for “extra” tickets that night.
Standees have assigned locations, each with its own little MetTitles screen. I was in No. 62, stage right and in the middle of three close rows separated by a cushioned rail. There is room, barely, to squeeze past one’s fellow standees and get in position, but the preferred method of movement seems to be ducking under the rails, sometimes blindly: while I waited at my space, the head of a gray-haired, wide-eyed man suddenly popped up next to me like a Whac-a-Mole. “I’m in 59!” he announced.
Shortly after the lights went down I realized my mistake: I had not borrowed opera glasses (and didn’t have $20 for the deposit on a rental pair), so in addition to all my itching and knee-bouncing, I was doomed to an evening of squinting as well. I couldn’t see Ms. Netrebko’s face very well as she sang “Mi chiamano Mimì,” but she sure sounded gorgeous.
Two days later I had an even easier time buying standing tickets at the New York State Theater, where the City Ballet was doing its annual “Nutcracker.” I was the only person in the entire foyer when I strolled in at lunchtime and bought a $12 spot in the somewhat vertiginous rear fourth ring.
I had never seen “The Nutcracker” before, and right away I became a mushy convert. It was as much a delight to follow the perky dancers — at this distance they really did look like toys and candies — as it was to see the little girl in front of me sit up and clap with excitement when the boy prince gallantly offered the Mouse King’s crown to his young love at the end of the first act.
It was also right around then that I thought how nice it would be to sit down. At intermission I found myself scoping out potential vacant spaces in vain, and thinking that any performance long enough to have an intermission would be better if one were seated.
Back at the Met, sitting is the new standing.
For generations standing room has been the default discount ticket. But this season impecunious opera lovers (like me) have two new alternatives. From Monday through Thursday, a seat in the back of the fifth-ring Family Circle can be guaranteed for $15, the same price as a standing space in that section. “Some standees may not like that,” Mr. Gelb said. “But I would rather have the audience sitting. It’s better for their legs.”
Or a $100 orchestra seat can be had for $20. Thanks to a $2 million grant from one of its board members, Agnes Varis, and her husband, Karl Leichtman, the Met is selling 200 prime seats for many shows for less than the cost of Chinese delivery for two.
These tickets go on sale two hours before curtain and, not surprisingly, have proved very popular: the Met has exhausted its supply every night they have been offered. For a performance of the hit “Don Carlo” production last week, the line began in the concourse downstairs from the box office and extended around the corner to the back entrance of the house.
At the front of the line was Masayo Yamada, a soft-spoken 29-year-old on an extended vacation from her human resources job in Japan. She has seen every production at the Met this season, she said, all on rush tickets; this was her third “Don Carlo,” and she had been waiting on line since 11:45 that morning. Dressed in a black coat with a light-blue scarf, she held a bag from a local bagel purveyor. “Sometimes I wear a kimono,” she said. “But today was too long to wear a kimono.”
The rush tickets do not buy the best seats in the orchestra. They tend to be on the extreme left and right of the hall, or in the back, but as I found at a weekday performance of “Idomeneo,” quick moves can greatly improve one’s station. I was in seat P33, far stage right, and just beginning to sink into my chair when the lights started to go down.
All at once people around me darted out of their seats like horses at Saratoga, heading for unoccupied spaces closer to the center aisle. Caught off guard, I was only able to move two seats in. But with each intermission I moved a few more, until I was most definitely in one of the best seats in the house, and I enjoyed the opera tremendously.
I could see the same sense of joy and satisfaction in Ms. Yamada. About 20 minutes before the rush tickets for “Don Carlo” went on sale, the line was moved upstairs to the side of the box office, and Ms. Yamada waited expectantly for the guards to lead her to a window. When she got her ticket, she walked out holding it and smiling widely.
“E26,” she beamed. “Isn’t that great?”

NYT

Pennyweight

Rifle Paper Co.

Photograph of the Moment

Lauren Bacall

Lyrics

All I Ask Of You (The Phantom Of The Opera)
- Andrew Lloyd Webber


No more talk of darkness
Forget these wide-eyed fears
I'm here, nothing can harm you
My words will warm and calm you

Let me be your freedom
Let daylight dry your tears
I'm here, with you, beside you
To guard you and to guide you

(Christine)
Say you'll love me every waking moment
Turn my head with talk of summer time
Say you need me with you now and always
Promise me that all you say is true
That's all I ask of you

[Raoul]
Let me be your shelter
Let me be your light
You're safe, no one will find you
Your fears are far behind you

[Christine]
All I want is freedom
A world with no more night
And you, always beside me
To hold me and to hide me

[Raoul]
Then say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime
Let me lead you from your solitude
Say you need me with you here, beside you
Anywhere you go, let me go too
Christine, that's all I ask of you

[Christine]
Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime
Say the word and I will follow you

[Both]
Share each day with me, each night, each morning

[Christine]
Say you love me

[Raoul]
You know I do

[Both]
Love me, that's all I ask of you.

(They kiss. Raoul lifts Christine off her feet, into his arms and holds her)

[Both]
Anywhere you go, let me go too
Love me, that's all I ask of you

[Phantom]
I gave you my music, made your song take wing.
And now, how you've repaid me, denied me and betrayed me.
He was bound to love you, when he heard you sing.
(sobs)Christine, Christine.

[Both]
Say you'll share with me one love, one lifetime
Say the word and I will follow you
Share each day with me, each night, each morning...

[Phantom]
You will curse the day you did not do all that the Phantom asked of you!