The healthcare reform measures getting most of the attention have been misrepresented in the media and misunderstood, obviously, by a lot of people who would benefit from them but have been frightened and confused by rightwing propagandists who only care about defeating Obama and the Democratic Party not about the health of their fellow citizens.
But today's Huffington Post has a pretty well articulated take on the issues at stake and the politics. Check it out here.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
NEW FAVORITE QUOTE
"Keep aiming
for simplicity of thought
unless, of course
you like over-abundance"
—Joanne Kyger from the poem "Sorting"
[the lines are indented in four different
ways in the original and in my typing,
but for some reason it reverts to flush
left when it's "published"—sorry Joanne]
for simplicity of thought
unless, of course
you like over-abundance"
—Joanne Kyger from the poem "Sorting"
[the lines are indented in four different
ways in the original and in my typing,
but for some reason it reverts to flush
left when it's "published"—sorry Joanne]
Saturday, September 5, 2009
CLUB HELSINKI R.I.P.
Helsinki was one of my favorite places in the Berkshires. It consisted of an L shaped restaurant with mismatched chairs and tables and other boho touches that made it feel homey and my kind of place.
And in an entirely other area, another L shaped space, bigger than the restaurant, this one being the club. I heard a lot of great music there, did some dancing to it too. Sometimes I brought my little guy and his nephew and they let us (much like CBGB's).
Most of the music was great jazz, but they featured all kinds of sounds, like my friend the songwriter and great guitar player and singer Peter Case a few years ago unfortunately on a weekend I wasn't in Great Barrington where the club was located.
One time when I was digging some young jazz musicians I hadn't heard before and started shouting my approval, before I got my shouts out somebody beat me to the punch. My experience is that in recent decades audiences don't voice their opinions as much or as loudly as they used to, so I like to uphold the tradition. Something I appreciated when I was playing in clubs.
The bandstand at the Helsinki is situated at the elbow of the L shape and I was sitting with my kids and others on one end of the L and the shouting was coming from the other end. So I stood up to see if I could see who was my compatriot of enthusiasm. I spotted another old guy with glasses, and then realized it was poet and friend (and gallery owner) Geoff Young, another jazz aficionado (read his poems and you'll find some of the smartest and most original takes on various jazz music experiences ever written).
Like CBGB's and many other clubs around the country that I've encountered in my lifetime, and even performed in some of them (read my poetry at CBGB's and other legendary clubs, as well as many years before played music in some), it's sad to see them go. (I think Helsinki is actually relocating to the more populous Hudson, New York, where I hear it has a larger space so they can get bigger crowds and afford to pay the musicians etc. (the original club in Great Barrington was often sold out if you tried to just drop by to dig the sounds any given night, especially on weekends).)
But the good news, or some good news in the demise of the GB club, is that my older son, Miles, was asked to back a local and popular singer/songwriter (Miles plays bass mostly) for the last show [one of] of the last day [actually weekend, see comments] of the club's existence. Miles has played with a lot of different groups over the years in a lot of legendary clubs himself (CBGB's included). But to play the last notes heard in such a classic music club is pretty cool. Wish I had been there.
And in an entirely other area, another L shaped space, bigger than the restaurant, this one being the club. I heard a lot of great music there, did some dancing to it too. Sometimes I brought my little guy and his nephew and they let us (much like CBGB's).
Most of the music was great jazz, but they featured all kinds of sounds, like my friend the songwriter and great guitar player and singer Peter Case a few years ago unfortunately on a weekend I wasn't in Great Barrington where the club was located.
One time when I was digging some young jazz musicians I hadn't heard before and started shouting my approval, before I got my shouts out somebody beat me to the punch. My experience is that in recent decades audiences don't voice their opinions as much or as loudly as they used to, so I like to uphold the tradition. Something I appreciated when I was playing in clubs.
The bandstand at the Helsinki is situated at the elbow of the L shape and I was sitting with my kids and others on one end of the L and the shouting was coming from the other end. So I stood up to see if I could see who was my compatriot of enthusiasm. I spotted another old guy with glasses, and then realized it was poet and friend (and gallery owner) Geoff Young, another jazz aficionado (read his poems and you'll find some of the smartest and most original takes on various jazz music experiences ever written).
Like CBGB's and many other clubs around the country that I've encountered in my lifetime, and even performed in some of them (read my poetry at CBGB's and other legendary clubs, as well as many years before played music in some), it's sad to see them go. (I think Helsinki is actually relocating to the more populous Hudson, New York, where I hear it has a larger space so they can get bigger crowds and afford to pay the musicians etc. (the original club in Great Barrington was often sold out if you tried to just drop by to dig the sounds any given night, especially on weekends).)
But the good news, or some good news in the demise of the GB club, is that my older son, Miles, was asked to back a local and popular singer/songwriter (Miles plays bass mostly) for the last show [one of] of the last day [actually weekend, see comments] of the club's existence. Miles has played with a lot of different groups over the years in a lot of legendary clubs himself (CBGB's included). But to play the last notes heard in such a classic music club is pretty cool. Wish I had been there.
Friday, September 4, 2009
QUOTES FOR THESE TIMES
"A study reported in The American Journal of Medicine this month found that 62 percent of American bankruptcies are linked to medical bills. These medical bankruptcies had increased nearly 50 percent in just six years. Astonishingly, 78 percent of these poeple actually had health insurance, but the gaps and inadequacies left them unprotected when they were hit by devastating bills."
"A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That's one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour."
—Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times, Sunday Aug. 30, 2009
[Kristof has always been a reasoned columnist, focusing more on realities than opinions. Click here to read a more recent and totally lucid and convincing column on the healthcare debate.]
"A 2004 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, found that lack of health insurance causes 18,000 unnecessary deaths a year. That's one person slipping through the cracks and dying every half an hour."
—Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times, Sunday Aug. 30, 2009
[Kristof has always been a reasoned columnist, focusing more on realities than opinions. Click here to read a more recent and totally lucid and convincing column on the healthcare debate.]
Thursday, September 3, 2009
BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL
Went into the city with my almost-twelve-year-old yesterday to catch a matinee performance of BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL. What a treat.
I already loved the movie. Any story about a working-class kid who has a desire to be some sort of artist against the wishes of his family, especially his father, always gets to me.
My father was a seventh-grade drop out, the son of Irish peasant immigrants. His mother worked as a maid and his father at various menial jobs until he became the first cop in our Jersey town.
My old man was a self made man, he worked for others from childhood to adulthood and then began a series of his own businesses, mostly hardware stores, ending up when I was a kid with a little home repair business I grew up working in.
In one of his most famous lines to me when he discovered some poems I had sent out for publication when I was a teenager still living at home (he thought he had the right to open my mail, because I was underage and it was his house, so he opened a rejection letter with some poems of mine that had been sent back and when I got home berated me for thinking I knew anything the world would be interested in reading about, saying I was still a boy and hadn't done anything yet, hadn't experienced enough, which I set out to remedy and thought I already was ahead of that game), he said "You can write all the poetry you want to. When you're a millionaire."
That summarized his feelings about art, which pretty much were everyone's I grew up around. It was great to play music for house parties or the extra buck, but having any pretentious about being some kind of "artist" was seen as not only getting above yourself, but almost as a betrayal to who we all were, to them essentially.
So the story of Billy Elliot hit a chord with me and moved me deeply. But what amazes me is that this story is so universal. Of course it's the basic story of transformation and fulfilment. But still, in this case, it's pretty specific. The young son of a British miner in Margaret Thatcher's England when she was determined to break whatever power the unionized miners had and privatize the coal industry there which would lead to the end of a way of life for generations of men and their families.
The boy can't help dancing, and when he discovers ballet, can't resist. His teacher sees his potential and encourages him to audition for the Royal ballet school. Oh, and his best friend in their working-class community is a boy who likes to dress up in his sister's clothes. That would seem to be a story with very limited appeal.
But the movie was a surprise hit, and the play not only has been a major success in England, but on Broadway, where it won the Tony for best musical for 2009. The place was packed, tickets are hard to get (I got mine off the internet through a broker and worried until we were in our seats that it was a scam because they were actually cheaper than what you'd pay at the box office!). There were more women than men, but still, there were a lot of men.
There was a lot of age variation too and race and style. It seems to have broad appeal. And the audience seemed to think they got their money's worth. There's four boys who play the lead role because it's so demanding physically, especially for a kid (they're mostly around 13 years old). The show we saw starred David Alvarez as Billy. Alvarez's parents are Cuban, but he grew up in Montreal, and has only been living in the states, Manhattan to be exact, for the past couple of years, mainly to work as a dancer/actor.
Most of the cast are American, though they all have perfected the appropriate working-class British accents, but to have the lead be a boy who looks Latin, playing Brit, was even more of a stretch for the audience to accept. But man did they. They gave him an extended standing ovation, one of the longest I've experienced at a Broadway play.
And maybe that's all it is, the exuberance of seeing a fellow human, especially a young one (he seemed to have some trouble with a few bits, especially the main free style tap dance in the show, so that when his obvious talent with the ballet moves occurred afterwards it was all the more unexpected and impressive) extend what we normally expect from us mere mortals.
I remember the first time I went to the ballet (and one of the only times) and opera (ditto). I was already in my thirties and was no expert on either form, but you didn't need expertise to be impressed by a fellow human hitting a note so high and so perfectly that it seemed superhuman, or balancing on the toes of one foot and spinning with such grace and geometric perfection that you wondered if it was an illusion (or in the case of Baryshnikov, leaping so high and so seemingly effortlessly you wondered if he was part deer).
That was the feeling several times yesterday at BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL. The music is by Elton John, but I think if I heard it out of context I wouldn't be as impressed as I was watching the play unfold and hearing the songs as part of the story, especially the one sung by the actor who plays Billy's father, Gregory Jbara, who had so many little bits of business that were so much fun to watch and react to, the audience fell in love with his every gesture after a while. He played the perfectly befuddled middle age man who has worked hard all his life at the only thing he knows and is bewildered and frustrated and overwhelmed by the changes occurring not only at the workplace, but in his own home and family.
Another treat was Carole Shelley as the Grandma. Delightful to watch as she played perfectly to type but embellished it with so many little flourishes of individual personality it was hard not to watch her whenever she was on stage. And the same for Thommie Retter, a big man with a big belly who halfway through a musical he's done very little musical in, he pulls off a tour de force dance number in which he displays the agility of a skinny little kid and knocks the audience out.
Ah, it was a delightful way to spend a day in the theater, and worth every penny. I laughed, I cried (I have to remember to bring one of those pocket packages of kleenex to these things) and I thought deeply about my long gone parents and grandparents and my own youthful rebellion against getting a secure job in the Post Office or on the force, or taking over the home maintenance business, to become some sort of "artist"—a poet of all things.
I've lived the life I wanted, and still do. As the audience for the musical assumes Billy will (and the movie shows him doing), and remain amazed that so many others who seem so different than me and the friends I've made over a lifetime in the arts not only understand that, but appreciate it and even honor it by, in this case, having made and continuing to make BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL a Broadway hit.
I already loved the movie. Any story about a working-class kid who has a desire to be some sort of artist against the wishes of his family, especially his father, always gets to me.
My father was a seventh-grade drop out, the son of Irish peasant immigrants. His mother worked as a maid and his father at various menial jobs until he became the first cop in our Jersey town.
My old man was a self made man, he worked for others from childhood to adulthood and then began a series of his own businesses, mostly hardware stores, ending up when I was a kid with a little home repair business I grew up working in.
In one of his most famous lines to me when he discovered some poems I had sent out for publication when I was a teenager still living at home (he thought he had the right to open my mail, because I was underage and it was his house, so he opened a rejection letter with some poems of mine that had been sent back and when I got home berated me for thinking I knew anything the world would be interested in reading about, saying I was still a boy and hadn't done anything yet, hadn't experienced enough, which I set out to remedy and thought I already was ahead of that game), he said "You can write all the poetry you want to. When you're a millionaire."
That summarized his feelings about art, which pretty much were everyone's I grew up around. It was great to play music for house parties or the extra buck, but having any pretentious about being some kind of "artist" was seen as not only getting above yourself, but almost as a betrayal to who we all were, to them essentially.
So the story of Billy Elliot hit a chord with me and moved me deeply. But what amazes me is that this story is so universal. Of course it's the basic story of transformation and fulfilment. But still, in this case, it's pretty specific. The young son of a British miner in Margaret Thatcher's England when she was determined to break whatever power the unionized miners had and privatize the coal industry there which would lead to the end of a way of life for generations of men and their families.
The boy can't help dancing, and when he discovers ballet, can't resist. His teacher sees his potential and encourages him to audition for the Royal ballet school. Oh, and his best friend in their working-class community is a boy who likes to dress up in his sister's clothes. That would seem to be a story with very limited appeal.
But the movie was a surprise hit, and the play not only has been a major success in England, but on Broadway, where it won the Tony for best musical for 2009. The place was packed, tickets are hard to get (I got mine off the internet through a broker and worried until we were in our seats that it was a scam because they were actually cheaper than what you'd pay at the box office!). There were more women than men, but still, there were a lot of men.
There was a lot of age variation too and race and style. It seems to have broad appeal. And the audience seemed to think they got their money's worth. There's four boys who play the lead role because it's so demanding physically, especially for a kid (they're mostly around 13 years old). The show we saw starred David Alvarez as Billy. Alvarez's parents are Cuban, but he grew up in Montreal, and has only been living in the states, Manhattan to be exact, for the past couple of years, mainly to work as a dancer/actor.
Most of the cast are American, though they all have perfected the appropriate working-class British accents, but to have the lead be a boy who looks Latin, playing Brit, was even more of a stretch for the audience to accept. But man did they. They gave him an extended standing ovation, one of the longest I've experienced at a Broadway play.
And maybe that's all it is, the exuberance of seeing a fellow human, especially a young one (he seemed to have some trouble with a few bits, especially the main free style tap dance in the show, so that when his obvious talent with the ballet moves occurred afterwards it was all the more unexpected and impressive) extend what we normally expect from us mere mortals.
I remember the first time I went to the ballet (and one of the only times) and opera (ditto). I was already in my thirties and was no expert on either form, but you didn't need expertise to be impressed by a fellow human hitting a note so high and so perfectly that it seemed superhuman, or balancing on the toes of one foot and spinning with such grace and geometric perfection that you wondered if it was an illusion (or in the case of Baryshnikov, leaping so high and so seemingly effortlessly you wondered if he was part deer).
That was the feeling several times yesterday at BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL. The music is by Elton John, but I think if I heard it out of context I wouldn't be as impressed as I was watching the play unfold and hearing the songs as part of the story, especially the one sung by the actor who plays Billy's father, Gregory Jbara, who had so many little bits of business that were so much fun to watch and react to, the audience fell in love with his every gesture after a while. He played the perfectly befuddled middle age man who has worked hard all his life at the only thing he knows and is bewildered and frustrated and overwhelmed by the changes occurring not only at the workplace, but in his own home and family.
Another treat was Carole Shelley as the Grandma. Delightful to watch as she played perfectly to type but embellished it with so many little flourishes of individual personality it was hard not to watch her whenever she was on stage. And the same for Thommie Retter, a big man with a big belly who halfway through a musical he's done very little musical in, he pulls off a tour de force dance number in which he displays the agility of a skinny little kid and knocks the audience out.
Ah, it was a delightful way to spend a day in the theater, and worth every penny. I laughed, I cried (I have to remember to bring one of those pocket packages of kleenex to these things) and I thought deeply about my long gone parents and grandparents and my own youthful rebellion against getting a secure job in the Post Office or on the force, or taking over the home maintenance business, to become some sort of "artist"—a poet of all things.
I've lived the life I wanted, and still do. As the audience for the musical assumes Billy will (and the movie shows him doing), and remain amazed that so many others who seem so different than me and the friends I've made over a lifetime in the arts not only understand that, but appreciate it and even honor it by, in this case, having made and continuing to make BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL a Broadway hit.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
FAVORITE MOVIES BY THREE FAVORITE DIRECTORS
Got to thinking about what some took as an attack on Quentin Tarantino in a recent post, so for a more positive movie director post, my falling-asleep list last night was some favorite movies by three of my favorite directors—Woody Allen, John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock (went with my favorite trinity template for these directors who more than fulfilled their early promise, making great movies pretty much right up until the end of their lives, Woody’s still doing it):
ANNIE HALL and ALICE
THE BIRDS; BULLETS OVER BROADWAY
CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK; DIAL M FOR MURDER
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU
FORT APACHE
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY; HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
THE INFORMER; I CONFESS
J?
K?
THE LADY VANISHES
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE and MISTER ROBERTS; THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH; MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY and MATCH POINT
NOTORIOUS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST
O?
PSYCHO; PLAY IT AGAIN SAM and THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO
THE QUIET MAN
REBECCA, ROPE and REAR WINDOW; RADIO DAYS
SUSPICION, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, SPELLBOUND and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN; STAGECOACH, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON and THE SEARCHERS; SLEEPER, STARDUST MEMORIES and SEPTEMBER
THE 39 STEPS and TO CATCH A THIEF; THREE GODFATHERS
U?
VERTIGO; VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA
THE WRONG MAN; WHATEVER WORKS
X?
YOUNG MISTER LINCOLN
ZELIG
ANNIE HALL and ALICE
THE BIRDS; BULLETS OVER BROADWAY
CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS
DRUMS ALONG THE MOHAWK; DIAL M FOR MURDER
EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU
FORT APACHE
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY; HANNAH AND HER SISTERS
THE INFORMER; I CONFESS
J?
K?
THE LADY VANISHES
MY DARLING CLEMENTINE, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE and MISTER ROBERTS; THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO MUCH; MANHATTAN MURDER MYSTERY and MATCH POINT
NOTORIOUS and NORTH BY NORTHWEST
O?
PSYCHO; PLAY IT AGAIN SAM and THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO
THE QUIET MAN
REBECCA, ROPE and REAR WINDOW; RADIO DAYS
SUSPICION, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, SPELLBOUND and STRANGERS ON A TRAIN; STAGECOACH, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON and THE SEARCHERS; SLEEPER, STARDUST MEMORIES and SEPTEMBER
THE 39 STEPS and TO CATCH A THIEF; THREE GODFATHERS
U?
VERTIGO; VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA
THE WRONG MAN; WHATEVER WORKS
X?
YOUNG MISTER LINCOLN
ZELIG
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
THE LANGLEY PROJECT
Or as I call it, the antidote.
Last week, when I was down the Jersey shore, my oldest son, Miles, and I drove back in his car to pick something up from the place where we were staying and on his satellite radio we heard an amazingly moving chorus of young voices singing. While trying to figure out what we were hearing, we ended up listening to a radio documentary and interview about what turned out to be a chorus of elementary school children recorded in the 1970s.
There was something so poignant about the sound of these kids singing David Bowie and Brian Wilson songs it brought tears to my eyes. And we were delightedly surprised to discover these kids were recorded in Canada in some obscure small town called Langley.
When he returned home to the Berkshires, Miles sent me three links to the three parts of another, filmed documentary about this recording and the people who made it. So here they are: one, two three.
Watch the whole thing and I think you'll be equally touched. It's the antidote to the gratuitous violence, gratuitous irony, gratuitous anger etc. I've written about in recent posts. The achievement of these kids and their music teacher makes clear once again that true wealth is not measured by fame or fortune but by ways we touch others we encounter that brings more joy into the world.
Last week, when I was down the Jersey shore, my oldest son, Miles, and I drove back in his car to pick something up from the place where we were staying and on his satellite radio we heard an amazingly moving chorus of young voices singing. While trying to figure out what we were hearing, we ended up listening to a radio documentary and interview about what turned out to be a chorus of elementary school children recorded in the 1970s.
There was something so poignant about the sound of these kids singing David Bowie and Brian Wilson songs it brought tears to my eyes. And we were delightedly surprised to discover these kids were recorded in Canada in some obscure small town called Langley.
When he returned home to the Berkshires, Miles sent me three links to the three parts of another, filmed documentary about this recording and the people who made it. So here they are: one, two three.
Watch the whole thing and I think you'll be equally touched. It's the antidote to the gratuitous violence, gratuitous irony, gratuitous anger etc. I've written about in recent posts. The achievement of these kids and their music teacher makes clear once again that true wealth is not measured by fame or fortune but by ways we touch others we encounter that brings more joy into the world.
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