Thursday, April 30, 2009

Sunday, April 26, 2009

earth day 4-24-09 Grand Central Terminal





people I know on the street and theater

At Waiting to Godot, another teacher from Adelphi was sitting behind me. In the restroom line at intermission, I ran into my neighbor's daughter and someone else who lived in my building.

Today, I ran into an IC and someone else that I work with .

Partly Private a documentary

World Documentary Feature Competition
[PARTL] | 2009 | 84 min | Feature Documentary
Directed by: Danae Elon

www.partlyprivate-thefilm.com


Cast & Credits
Primary Cast: Philip Touitou, Dr. Howard Shaw, Danae Elon, Dr. Martin Bergmann, Amos Elon, Kamal Ozkan
Director: Danae Elon
Producer: Paul Cadieux
Executive Producers: Maryse Rouillard, Ina Fichman, Arik Bernsterin
Director of Photography: Andrew T. Dunn
Editor: Miki Wanatabe Milmore
Line Producer: Nancy Guerin
Program Notes
No decision made about a newborn son is as consequential and irreversible as one made by parents around the world, often without a second thought: What to do about that pesky foreskin? To filmmaker Danae Elon, who grew up in Israel but is a secular Jew, the entire ritual of circumcision is ridiculous. But her partner, Phillip, comes from a traditional French/Algerian Jewish family and believes wholeheartedly in the tradition of the bris. So what else does a documentary filmmaker do but explore the issue on the big screen?

Intimately opening her own personal experience to the world, Elon (Another Road Home, TFF '04,) takes a witty approach to a complicated and serious subject, turning Partly Private into a fun and entertaining movie that is as much about family as the subject of circumcision. Traveling around the world during her pregnancy, she examines how people from other cultures in other countries feel about what she considers an absurd and outdated ritual, and yet Elon never allows the film to become overly preachy for one side of the debate or the other. Partly Private is an ironic and clever look at a topic to which most new parents may never give enough thought.
--Aaron Dobbs


Note: Director Danae Elon was just named a 2009 recipient (in the Film category) of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship to Assist Research and Artistic Creation. Congratulations to her!

waiting for Godot

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

dream

I had a dream that I was scheduled to fly to Phoenix but then had to change it to Denver. In the dream, i knew I had never been to Denver and was told how beautiful the Colorado mountains were..

I changed my plane arrangements




Capricorn Horoscope for week of April 23, 2009

Capricorn Horoscope for week of April 23, 2009

From an astrological point of view, the coming weeks will be an excellent time to start a band and record an album. Your creativity is waxing, your attunement with the right side of your brain is especially sweet, and you will benefit immensely from anything you do to become less of a spectator and more of a participant. To jumpstart the process, go to Wikipedia and click on "random article." That's the name of your band. Then go to en.wikiquote.org and click on "random page." The last few words of the last quote on that page will be your album's title. Finally, go to flickr.com, click on "the last 7 days," and choose a photo from the new page to be your CD cover. Or, if you don't like what's there, click on the link for "Get more interesting photos for the last 7 days." (My band is Widemouth Blindcat, our album is "More Time for Dreaming," and our cover art is a spiral staircase from here.)

celebrity spotting

Walking down Park Ave around 24th street, I saw Tailor Made and It from the I love NY show come around the corner and I followed them down Park to the TD bank at around 20th street.

They sound as stupid as on TV....

I also saw Eliot Wagner's wife and kid in the 14th street station.

earth day



How the First Earth Day Came About
By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

"Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Capricorn Horoscope for week of April 16, 2009

At the risk of endangering her own safety, a Capricorn woman I know intervened to protect a 14-year-old neighbor girl who was being beaten on the porch by her father. Another one of my Capricorn acquaintances informed her boss that she was offended by a certain unethical practice she'd discovered the company engaged in. You may not summon such extreme courage in the coming week, but I bet you'll get close to it. It's the Season of Fierce Integrity for you -- a time to dig deeper as you demonstrate your intensely practical commitment to your core values.

Ringling Brothers Circus 3/09

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CIRCUS REVIEW
Where’s That Elephant? It Was Here a Second Ago
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By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Published: March 26, 2009
Forget Punxsutawney Phil. Forget Staten Island Chuck. They are so February.


For a true indicator of the advent of spring, nothing beats the arrival of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. And this year’s edition, titled “Zing Zang Zoom,” is an artful eyeful, liberally spiced with mystifying magic.

If Sandburg’s fog arrives on little cat feet, this extravaganza has made its way Thursday to Madison Square Garden — after stops in New Jersey and on Long Island — on the paws of testy tigers, the hooves of pirouetting zebras and the oversize feet of capering clowns.

That is not to overlook the feats of assorted acrobats, wirewalkers and other daredevils blasted from a double-barreled cannon, or flying through the air, or trying to maintain their balance atop a spinning wheel high above the arena floor. Or to ignore the pulsating music, fireworks, smoke, dancing girls and lavish costumes that evoke a fever dream of ancient Oriental opulence. And there is plenty more, including the educated elephants whose treatment has been at issue in a suit that is expected to be decided this year. Ringling and its parent company, Feld Entertainment Inc. of Vienna, Va., have denied any misconduct.

While hewing to traditional circus fare, this 139th edition of the entertainment that promotes itself as “The Greatest Show on Earth” puts special emphasis on illusion and magic. In the course of the performance an elephant apparently disappears. The ringmaster enters a box pierced by flaming swords while his hands seem to wave outside. In a moment he’s back, unskewered. And most amazing, a pestiferous character named Mr. Gravity enters a small container. When it is opened, he is gone, and in his place is a tiger.

At a recent performance armloads of small children and their parents looked transfixed by it all.

Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus continues through April 13 at Madison Square Garden; (212) 307-4100 or (800) 755-4000, ringling.com.

Macy Flower Show in Bloom




Tuesday, April 14, 2009

celebrity sighting

I ran into Christine Lavin on Greenwich Street as she was going to her Meet up for American Sign Language and I stopped her to chat about knowing her work. She told me about her books that was a memoir and 40 years of folk music. Her published separated the folk book from her story. Two books and over 600 pages.








Monday, April 13, 2009





mets and red sox at Citifield





kris krisofferson at Concert Hall of Ethical Culture 4/10





Joe Turner has come and gone by August Wilson


LCT's newest production is the first Broadway revival of August Wilson's JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE, by one of the country's most revered playwrights. Nominated for six Tony Awards in the 1988-89 season, JOE TURNER was named Best Play by the New York Drama Critics Circle.

August Wilson's JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE is set in a Pittsburgh boarding house in 1911. Owners Seth and Bertha Holly play host to a makeshift family of people who come to stay, some for days, some longer, during the Great Migration of the 1910s when descendants of former slaves moved in large numbers from the South toward the industrial cities of the North, seeking new jobs, new lives and new beginnings.

Among those on the move are Herald Loomis and his young daughter, Zonia. Haunted by the past, they are headed wherever the road takes them in search of the long gone Martha, Herald's wife and Zonia's mother. Herald arrives at the boarding house unsettled, dark and secretive. Seth Holly is suspicious and wants him out almost as soon as he arrives, but Bertha and the others see him differently, and by action and example, they help set him on the way to recovering his lost spirit and finding a new life.

The story is richly detailed, joyous, sad, and always hopeful. Mr. Wilson's words from the play's introduction best set the scene:

"It is August in Pittsburgh, 1911.... From the deep and the near South the sons and daughters of newly freed African slaves wander into the city. Isolated, cut off from memory.... They arrive carrying Bibles and guitars, their pockets lined with dust and fresh hope, marked men and women seeking to scrape from the narrow, crooked cobbles and the fiery blasts of the coke furnace a way of bludgeoning and shaping the malleable parts of themselves into a new identity as free men of definite and sincere worth."

August Wilson's JOE TURNER'S COME AND GONE will be staged by LCT Resident Director Bartlett Sher (South Pacific, Awake and Sing!, and The Light in the Piazza) in collaboration with Michael Yeargan (sets), Catherine Zuber (costumes) and Brian MacDevitt (lighting). Previews begin March 19 at the Belasco Theatre, while South Pacific continues its extended run at LCT's Beaumont.

Mr. Wilson's widow, Constanza Romero, has graciously given Lincoln Center Theater the rights to produce JOE TURNER which, she notes, "August always said was his favorite of all his plays." It's ours too.

Marsha Stephanie Blake , Chad L. Coleman , Michael Cummings , Aunjanue Ellis , Danai Gurira , Andre Holland , Arliss Howard , Ernie Hudson , LaTanya Richardson Jackson , Amari Rose Leigh , Roger Robinson

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

celebrity sighting

I saw the young kid who plays in West Side Story, who sings Somewhere at the end on 7th ave trying to flag down a cab to get to the theater. He was in WSS gear and with his mom