Sunday, June 15, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Resurrecting an Artist’s Greatest Creation: Herself-the occupant
Resurrecting an Artist’s Greatest Creation: Herself
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: June 6, 2008
Louise Nevelson hasn’t let death go to her head. As reincarnated with disarming casualness and unimpeachable conviction by Mercedes Ruehl in “Edward Albee’s Occupant,” this imposingly flamboyant, Russian-born New York sculptor returns to the land of the living without a wisp of the oracular mysticism you might expect from someone who has spent two decades on the Other Side.
On the contrary, in the two-character play that opened Thursday night at the Peter Norton Space of the Signature Theater Company, Ms. Nevelson seems as down-to-earth as a ghost could possibly be and quite a bit more so than most artists accustomed to being lionized.
“You’re nervous, dear?” she asks the man holding a portfolio filled with biographical questions. “A little,” answers her questioner (Larry Bryggman), who, this being an Albee play, is known merely as the Man. “I’ve never interviewed someone who is dead before.”
Ms. Nevelson says, “Yeah? Well, I haven’t been interviewed since I’m dead.” She adds: “We’re both nervous. We’ll get through it.”
And so begins Mr. Albee’s touchingly modest tribute to one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century and a woman who was for many years his friend. Despite their protestations of nervousness, neither Ms. Nevelson nor her interviewer seems conscious that anything less than natural is going on.
That, after all, would take away from the truly supernatural phenomenon under discussion: the uncanny and ultimately inexplicable self-determination that propelled the slow and unlikely ascent of Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) into the upper (and predominantly male) regions of the New York art world. “Occupant” bows its head in awe and gratitude before the mysterious force of will that allows great artists to be.
The official New York premiere of “Occupant” has been a long-time aborning. It was originally to have starred Anne Bancroft in a Signature production directed by Anthony Page in 2002 but was never opened to critics. (It was canceled after Ms. Bancroft came down with pneumonia.)
Now “Occupant” arrives to coincide with a season filled with productions of works by Mr. Albee, who turned 80 in March. On the surface this is not your typically cryptic and tense Albee play. Instead it’s a rather literal-minded, biographical Q. and A. with an Eminent Person that might take place in a 92nd Street Y of the afterlife.
But the play also touches on themes that echo throughout Mr. Albee’s work: the unreliability of memory, the chimerical nature of language and particularly the alchemical brew of “truth and illusion” (to borrow a much-used pair of words from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) by which people define themselves.
Ms. Nevelson, like many people who demand the focus of the public eye, was a great self-mythologizer. But so, it might be said, are most of Mr. Albee’s characters, people for whom fictional embroidery has greater relevance than the plain cloth of fact. “True, if interesting,” says Ms. Nevelson’s interlocutor on several occasions.
But what most concerns Mr. Albee in bringing his friend back to life is the issue of what allows an artist — unavoidably an outsider — to persevere until she becomes what she always, on some level, intended to be. This necessarily lonely process of self-fulfillment is what gives “Occupant” an emotional heft beyond that of a mere biographical sketch.
For the first few minutes I had my doubts. Would I learn anything I couldn’t learn from Ms. Nevelson’s memoirs and biographies, or for that matter, from the full obituaries that appeared when she died? Most of the questions posed by the Man cover Ms. Nevelson’s life, starting with her birth in a shtetl in the Ukraine and immigration as a child to the United States, according to conventional chronology, with occasional skeptical asides.
But as directed by Pam MacKinnon (who did a nice job with Mr. Albee’s “Peter and Jerry” earlier this season), the production takes on a conversational flow that quickly carries you past fears of being trapped in a lecture hall. And what puts you at ease even more is the seductive humility of Ms. Ruehl’s performance.
I don’t mean that Ms. Ruehl is presenting Ms. Nevelson as a humble person. How could she, when the character she’s playing wears two pairs of sable eyelashes and outfits that might have been borrowed from a production of “Turandot”?
But Ms. Ruehl avoids the great-lady stateliness — that grand luminosity that seems hellbent on planting in our minds the caption, “What becomes a legend most?” — that so often feels caked in the makeup of Dead Celebrity Theater. She wears her furry eyelashes as if they were no more exotic than a pair of rimless spectacles. Her Louise is unflinchingly matter-of-fact even in the midst of fabrications and evasions.
Much of Ms. Nevelson’s dialogue would appear to have been culled from things she actually said, to Mr. Albee and to others. So don’t expect post-mortem revelations. This Louise remains determinedly ambiguous about her fabled love affairs (including one with Louis-Ferdinand Céline) and the miseries of her early unhappy marriage to a New York businessman
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: June 6, 2008
Louise Nevelson hasn’t let death go to her head. As reincarnated with disarming casualness and unimpeachable conviction by Mercedes Ruehl in “Edward Albee’s Occupant,” this imposingly flamboyant, Russian-born New York sculptor returns to the land of the living without a wisp of the oracular mysticism you might expect from someone who has spent two decades on the Other Side.
On the contrary, in the two-character play that opened Thursday night at the Peter Norton Space of the Signature Theater Company, Ms. Nevelson seems as down-to-earth as a ghost could possibly be and quite a bit more so than most artists accustomed to being lionized.
“You’re nervous, dear?” she asks the man holding a portfolio filled with biographical questions. “A little,” answers her questioner (Larry Bryggman), who, this being an Albee play, is known merely as the Man. “I’ve never interviewed someone who is dead before.”
Ms. Nevelson says, “Yeah? Well, I haven’t been interviewed since I’m dead.” She adds: “We’re both nervous. We’ll get through it.”
And so begins Mr. Albee’s touchingly modest tribute to one of the most important American sculptors of the 20th century and a woman who was for many years his friend. Despite their protestations of nervousness, neither Ms. Nevelson nor her interviewer seems conscious that anything less than natural is going on.
That, after all, would take away from the truly supernatural phenomenon under discussion: the uncanny and ultimately inexplicable self-determination that propelled the slow and unlikely ascent of Louise Nevelson (1899-1988) into the upper (and predominantly male) regions of the New York art world. “Occupant” bows its head in awe and gratitude before the mysterious force of will that allows great artists to be.
The official New York premiere of “Occupant” has been a long-time aborning. It was originally to have starred Anne Bancroft in a Signature production directed by Anthony Page in 2002 but was never opened to critics. (It was canceled after Ms. Bancroft came down with pneumonia.)
Now “Occupant” arrives to coincide with a season filled with productions of works by Mr. Albee, who turned 80 in March. On the surface this is not your typically cryptic and tense Albee play. Instead it’s a rather literal-minded, biographical Q. and A. with an Eminent Person that might take place in a 92nd Street Y of the afterlife.
But the play also touches on themes that echo throughout Mr. Albee’s work: the unreliability of memory, the chimerical nature of language and particularly the alchemical brew of “truth and illusion” (to borrow a much-used pair of words from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”) by which people define themselves.
Ms. Nevelson, like many people who demand the focus of the public eye, was a great self-mythologizer. But so, it might be said, are most of Mr. Albee’s characters, people for whom fictional embroidery has greater relevance than the plain cloth of fact. “True, if interesting,” says Ms. Nevelson’s interlocutor on several occasions.
But what most concerns Mr. Albee in bringing his friend back to life is the issue of what allows an artist — unavoidably an outsider — to persevere until she becomes what she always, on some level, intended to be. This necessarily lonely process of self-fulfillment is what gives “Occupant” an emotional heft beyond that of a mere biographical sketch.
For the first few minutes I had my doubts. Would I learn anything I couldn’t learn from Ms. Nevelson’s memoirs and biographies, or for that matter, from the full obituaries that appeared when she died? Most of the questions posed by the Man cover Ms. Nevelson’s life, starting with her birth in a shtetl in the Ukraine and immigration as a child to the United States, according to conventional chronology, with occasional skeptical asides.
But as directed by Pam MacKinnon (who did a nice job with Mr. Albee’s “Peter and Jerry” earlier this season), the production takes on a conversational flow that quickly carries you past fears of being trapped in a lecture hall. And what puts you at ease even more is the seductive humility of Ms. Ruehl’s performance.
I don’t mean that Ms. Ruehl is presenting Ms. Nevelson as a humble person. How could she, when the character she’s playing wears two pairs of sable eyelashes and outfits that might have been borrowed from a production of “Turandot”?
But Ms. Ruehl avoids the great-lady stateliness — that grand luminosity that seems hellbent on planting in our minds the caption, “What becomes a legend most?” — that so often feels caked in the makeup of Dead Celebrity Theater. She wears her furry eyelashes as if they were no more exotic than a pair of rimless spectacles. Her Louise is unflinchingly matter-of-fact even in the midst of fabrications and evasions.
Much of Ms. Nevelson’s dialogue would appear to have been culled from things she actually said, to Mr. Albee and to others. So don’t expect post-mortem revelations. This Louise remains determinedly ambiguous about her fabled love affairs (including one with Louis-Ferdinand Céline) and the miseries of her early unhappy marriage to a New York businessman
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of June 12, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of June 12, 2008
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
Pumice, which is created by volcanic eruptions, is filled with holes, which means that it's sometimes light enough to glide on the surface of a body of water. I urge you to use this floatable rock as a metaphor. Think of the heaviest burden you're carrying -- an apparently insoluble problem, a thankless responsibility, a task that seems impossible -- and imagine over the next few days that it is changing into a hunk of pumice. When the transformation is complete, visualize yourself throwing it into a fast-flowing river, and then watch as it gets carried away, ultimately turning into a tiny, bobbing speck that disappears over the horizon.
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
Pumice, which is created by volcanic eruptions, is filled with holes, which means that it's sometimes light enough to glide on the surface of a body of water. I urge you to use this floatable rock as a metaphor. Think of the heaviest burden you're carrying -- an apparently insoluble problem, a thankless responsibility, a task that seems impossible -- and imagine over the next few days that it is changing into a hunk of pumice. When the transformation is complete, visualize yourself throwing it into a fast-flowing river, and then watch as it gets carried away, ultimately turning into a tiny, bobbing speck that disappears over the horizon.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of June 5, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of June 5, 2008
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
What Martin Luther King Jr. said about epic struggles in the political arena is also apt for you in your private life, especially now: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." I recommend that you translate his advice into the intimate details of your relationships. If you really do that with the irresistible force of your burning conviction, you will prove another one of King's excellent thoughts: "Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
What Martin Luther King Jr. said about epic struggles in the political arena is also apt for you in your private life, especially now: "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." I recommend that you translate his advice into the intimate details of your relationships. If you really do that with the irresistible force of your burning conviction, you will prove another one of King's excellent thoughts: "Unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality."
Thursday, June 05, 2008
What Was the 19th Amendment?
The Nineteenth Amendment was specifically intended to extend suffrage to women. It was proposed on June 4, 1919 and ratified on August 18, 1920.
The Nineteenth Amendment was the culmination of the work of many activists in favor of women's suffrage. One such group called the Silent Sentinels protested in front of the White House for 18 months starting in 1917 to raise awareness of the issue.
On January 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the amendment. The next day, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment but the Senate refused to even debate it until October. When the Senate voted on the amendment in October, it failed by three votes.[1]
In response, the National Woman's Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage senators up for election in the fall of 1918. After the 1918 election, most members of Congress were pro-suffrage. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89, and 2 weeks later on June 4, the Senate finally followed, where the amendment passed by a vote of 56 to 25.[2]
It was ratified on August 18, 1920, upon its ratification by Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state to do so. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920.
On February 27, 1922, a challenge to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922).
The Congress proposed the Nineteenth Amendment on June 4, 1919.[3] The following states ratified the amendment:
1. Illinois (June 10, 1919, reaffirmed on June 17, 1919)
2. Michigan (June 10, 1919)
3. Wisconsin (June 10, 1919)
4. Kansas (June 16, 1919)
5. New York (June 16, 1919)
6. Ohio (June 16, 1919)
7. Pennsylvania (June 24, 1919)
8. Massachusetts (June 25, 1919)
9. Texas (June 28, 1919)
10. Iowa (July 2, 1919)[4]
11. Missouri (July 3, 1919)
12. Arkansas (July 28, 1919)
13. Montana (August 2, 1919)[4]
14. Nebraska (August 2, 1919)
15. Minnesota (September 8, 1919)
16. New Hampshire (September 10, 1919)[4]
17. Utah (October 2, 1919)
18. California (November 1, 1919)
19. Maine (November 5, 1919)
20. North Dakota (December 1, 1919)
21. South Dakota (December 4, 1919)
22. Colorado (December 15, 1919)[4]
23. Kentucky (January 6, 1920)
24. Rhode Island (January 6, 1920)
25. Oregon (January 13, 1920)
26. Indiana (January 16, 1920)
27. Wyoming (January 27, 1920)
28. Nevada (February 7, 1920)
29. New Jersey (February 9, 1920)
30. Idaho (February 11, 1920)
31. Arizona (February 12, 1920)
32. New Mexico (February 21, 1920)
33. Oklahoma (February 28, 1920)
34. West Virginia (March 10, 1920, confirmed on September 21, 1920)
35. Washington (March 22, 1920)
36. Tennessee (August 18, 1920)
Ratification was completed on August 18, 1920. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:
1. Connecticut (September 14, 1920, reaffirmed on September 21, 1920)
2. Vermont (February 8, 1921)
3. Delaware (March 6, 1923, after being rejected on June 2, 1920)
4. Maryland (March 29, 1941 after being rejected on February 24, 1920; not certified until February 25, 1958)
5. Virginia (February 21, 1952, after being rejected on February 12, 1920)
6. Alabama (September 8, 1953, after being rejected on September 22, 1919)
7. Florida (May 13, 1969)[5]
8. South Carolina (July 1, 1969, after being rejected on January 28, 1920; not certified until August 22, 1973)
9. Georgia (February 20, 1970, after being rejected on July 24, 1919)
10. Louisiana (June 11, 1970, after being rejected on July 1, 1920)
11. North Carolina (May 6, 1971)
12. Mississippi (March 22, 1984, after being rejected on March 29, 1920)
The 19th Amendment - Voting Equality For Women
What Was the 19th Amendment?
The 19th Amendment is a simply worded Article to the U.S. Constitution. As Article XIX it reads that voting rights of citizens of the United States shall not be denied on the basis of sex. The House of Representatives passed the 19th amendment in 1919 by a vote of 304 to 90. The Senate passed the amendment 56 to 25. The required thirty-six states finally ratified the article on August 18, 1920.Women had lobbied for their voting rights, or suffrage, for many years before this amendment came into being. Many historians place the beginning of the women's suffrage movement in July of 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. It was there that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first convention regarding women's rights and the woman's right to vote. Many of the backers of suffrage movement were also abolitionist sympathizers. Many abolitionists promoted universal voting rights for blacks and whites. Abolitionists saw success as the 15th amendment of 1870 granted voting rights to black men was passed. It was a natural connection then, for anti-slavery persons to be involved in women's voting rights. Frederick Douglass, the great black abolitionist leader, attended the Seneca Falls convention. In an editorial in the North Star, Douglass wrote that he saw absolutely "no reason" to withhold the right to vote from women. Later, in 1877, Douglass also signed a petition to the U.S. Congress in regards to women's suffrage.
In 1869, well-known suffragists, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, or NWSA. In 1871, a petition signed by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cody and many other suffragists was sent to Congress asking that voting rights be given to women. The petition also asked that women be given the right to speak in Congress. It was obviously not granted at that time.
Following the Civil War, the suffragist movement was divided due to differences in ideology. Two separate organizations pursued voting rights for women. The NWSA was more aggressive in their attempts to win suffrage. Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Thomas Wentworth Higginson did not agree with this more militant attitude. They formed a separate organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, or AWSA in November 1869. These two groups pursued the woman's right to vote separately until 1890, when the two groups joined together and formed the NAWSA or National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Stanton was the new organization's president. In 1919, this group later changed and became the still existing League of Women Voters.
Opposition to women's suffrage came from women, as well. Some women believed the political process was demeaning to their roles as wives and mothers. In the state of New York, for example, there was a Women Voters Anti-Suffrage Party that circulated a petition against women's suffrage in 1918.
At the same time, pro-suffragists were pushing that President Woodrow Wilson support the proposed amendment. The suffragists held vigils outside the White House. They carried banners attacking Woodrow Wilson and compared him to the leader of World War I Germany, Kaiser Wilhem II. These vitriolic demonstrations often ended in arrests and public violence. Some women would suffer arrest in promoting the suffragist cause. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony registered and voted in Rochester, New York. She was arrested, convicted and fined $100. Susan B. Anthony never paid the fine and in 1874 petitioned the United States Congress to release from the fine. She argued that the conviction was unjust.
Several states promoted suffrage for women. New York state passed a women's voting law in 1917. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson began to support the need for a constitutional amendment to which he had previously been opposed. When ratification by the states was begun on June 4, 1919 it only took six days for Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin to all ratify the amendment. Kansas, New York and Ohio followed on June 16, 1919. The last required 36th state to ratify was Tennessee, who barely ratified the amendment on August 18, 1920. The Tennessee vote to ratify hinged on one vote, the vote of a 24-year-old state legislator by the name of Harry Burn. He had originally voted against ratification. He changed his vote after his mother urged him to do so. Even after his vote, anti-suffrage rallies were held and anti-suffrage state legislators left the state so that a legislative quorum could not achieved. The Tennessee ratification was achieved and the required 36 states met the constitutional requirement.
The remaining twelve states of the Union took over sixty years to add their ratifications of the 19th amendment. Ten of these states originally had rejected ratifying the amendment. Mississippi was the last state of the 48 states to ratify the amendment when it did so on March 22, 1984.
The Nineteenth Amendment was the culmination of the work of many activists in favor of women's suffrage. One such group called the Silent Sentinels protested in front of the White House for 18 months starting in 1917 to raise awareness of the issue.
On January 9, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson announced his support of the amendment. The next day, the House of Representatives narrowly passed the amendment but the Senate refused to even debate it until October. When the Senate voted on the amendment in October, it failed by three votes.[1]
In response, the National Woman's Party urged citizens to vote against anti-suffrage senators up for election in the fall of 1918. After the 1918 election, most members of Congress were pro-suffrage. On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment by a vote of 304 to 89, and 2 weeks later on June 4, the Senate finally followed, where the amendment passed by a vote of 56 to 25.[2]
It was ratified on August 18, 1920, upon its ratification by Tennessee, the thirty-sixth state to do so. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby certified the ratification on August 26, 1920.
On February 27, 1922, a challenge to the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment was rebuffed by the Supreme Court of the United States in Leser v. Garnett, 258 U.S. 130 (1922).
The Congress proposed the Nineteenth Amendment on June 4, 1919.[3] The following states ratified the amendment:
1. Illinois (June 10, 1919, reaffirmed on June 17, 1919)
2. Michigan (June 10, 1919)
3. Wisconsin (June 10, 1919)
4. Kansas (June 16, 1919)
5. New York (June 16, 1919)
6. Ohio (June 16, 1919)
7. Pennsylvania (June 24, 1919)
8. Massachusetts (June 25, 1919)
9. Texas (June 28, 1919)
10. Iowa (July 2, 1919)[4]
11. Missouri (July 3, 1919)
12. Arkansas (July 28, 1919)
13. Montana (August 2, 1919)[4]
14. Nebraska (August 2, 1919)
15. Minnesota (September 8, 1919)
16. New Hampshire (September 10, 1919)[4]
17. Utah (October 2, 1919)
18. California (November 1, 1919)
19. Maine (November 5, 1919)
20. North Dakota (December 1, 1919)
21. South Dakota (December 4, 1919)
22. Colorado (December 15, 1919)[4]
23. Kentucky (January 6, 1920)
24. Rhode Island (January 6, 1920)
25. Oregon (January 13, 1920)
26. Indiana (January 16, 1920)
27. Wyoming (January 27, 1920)
28. Nevada (February 7, 1920)
29. New Jersey (February 9, 1920)
30. Idaho (February 11, 1920)
31. Arizona (February 12, 1920)
32. New Mexico (February 21, 1920)
33. Oklahoma (February 28, 1920)
34. West Virginia (March 10, 1920, confirmed on September 21, 1920)
35. Washington (March 22, 1920)
36. Tennessee (August 18, 1920)
Ratification was completed on August 18, 1920. The amendment was subsequently ratified by the following states:
1. Connecticut (September 14, 1920, reaffirmed on September 21, 1920)
2. Vermont (February 8, 1921)
3. Delaware (March 6, 1923, after being rejected on June 2, 1920)
4. Maryland (March 29, 1941 after being rejected on February 24, 1920; not certified until February 25, 1958)
5. Virginia (February 21, 1952, after being rejected on February 12, 1920)
6. Alabama (September 8, 1953, after being rejected on September 22, 1919)
7. Florida (May 13, 1969)[5]
8. South Carolina (July 1, 1969, after being rejected on January 28, 1920; not certified until August 22, 1973)
9. Georgia (February 20, 1970, after being rejected on July 24, 1919)
10. Louisiana (June 11, 1970, after being rejected on July 1, 1920)
11. North Carolina (May 6, 1971)
12. Mississippi (March 22, 1984, after being rejected on March 29, 1920)
The 19th Amendment - Voting Equality For Women
What Was the 19th Amendment?
The 19th Amendment is a simply worded Article to the U.S. Constitution. As Article XIX it reads that voting rights of citizens of the United States shall not be denied on the basis of sex. The House of Representatives passed the 19th amendment in 1919 by a vote of 304 to 90. The Senate passed the amendment 56 to 25. The required thirty-six states finally ratified the article on August 18, 1920.Women had lobbied for their voting rights, or suffrage, for many years before this amendment came into being. Many historians place the beginning of the women's suffrage movement in July of 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. It was there that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott organized the first convention regarding women's rights and the woman's right to vote. Many of the backers of suffrage movement were also abolitionist sympathizers. Many abolitionists promoted universal voting rights for blacks and whites. Abolitionists saw success as the 15th amendment of 1870 granted voting rights to black men was passed. It was a natural connection then, for anti-slavery persons to be involved in women's voting rights. Frederick Douglass, the great black abolitionist leader, attended the Seneca Falls convention. In an editorial in the North Star, Douglass wrote that he saw absolutely "no reason" to withhold the right to vote from women. Later, in 1877, Douglass also signed a petition to the U.S. Congress in regards to women's suffrage.
In 1869, well-known suffragists, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association, or NWSA. In 1871, a petition signed by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cody and many other suffragists was sent to Congress asking that voting rights be given to women. The petition also asked that women be given the right to speak in Congress. It was obviously not granted at that time.
Following the Civil War, the suffragist movement was divided due to differences in ideology. Two separate organizations pursued voting rights for women. The NWSA was more aggressive in their attempts to win suffrage. Lucy Stone, Julia Ward Howe and Thomas Wentworth Higginson did not agree with this more militant attitude. They formed a separate organization, the American Woman Suffrage Association, or AWSA in November 1869. These two groups pursued the woman's right to vote separately until 1890, when the two groups joined together and formed the NAWSA or National American Woman Suffrage Association. Elizabeth Stanton was the new organization's president. In 1919, this group later changed and became the still existing League of Women Voters.
Opposition to women's suffrage came from women, as well. Some women believed the political process was demeaning to their roles as wives and mothers. In the state of New York, for example, there was a Women Voters Anti-Suffrage Party that circulated a petition against women's suffrage in 1918.
At the same time, pro-suffragists were pushing that President Woodrow Wilson support the proposed amendment. The suffragists held vigils outside the White House. They carried banners attacking Woodrow Wilson and compared him to the leader of World War I Germany, Kaiser Wilhem II. These vitriolic demonstrations often ended in arrests and public violence. Some women would suffer arrest in promoting the suffragist cause. In 1872, Susan B. Anthony registered and voted in Rochester, New York. She was arrested, convicted and fined $100. Susan B. Anthony never paid the fine and in 1874 petitioned the United States Congress to release from the fine. She argued that the conviction was unjust.
Several states promoted suffrage for women. New York state passed a women's voting law in 1917. In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson began to support the need for a constitutional amendment to which he had previously been opposed. When ratification by the states was begun on June 4, 1919 it only took six days for Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin to all ratify the amendment. Kansas, New York and Ohio followed on June 16, 1919. The last required 36th state to ratify was Tennessee, who barely ratified the amendment on August 18, 1920. The Tennessee vote to ratify hinged on one vote, the vote of a 24-year-old state legislator by the name of Harry Burn. He had originally voted against ratification. He changed his vote after his mother urged him to do so. Even after his vote, anti-suffrage rallies were held and anti-suffrage state legislators left the state so that a legislative quorum could not achieved. The Tennessee ratification was achieved and the required 36 states met the constitutional requirement.
The remaining twelve states of the Union took over sixty years to add their ratifications of the 19th amendment. Ten of these states originally had rejected ratifying the amendment. Mississippi was the last state of the 48 states to ratify the amendment when it did so on March 22, 1984.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Natalie Merchant
Natalie Merchant
With the Boston Pops
At: Symphony Hall, Tuesday night
From the moment Natalie Merchant uttered the sweet opening stanza of "Autumn Lullaby," a traditional British text set to Merchant's own melody and sure-handed orchestration, it was glowingly, elegantly, poetically clear that the Boston Pops EdgeFest has finally found a match.
More to the point, Merchant has found her medium. Yes, the singer-songwriter scored platinum sales with her pop band 10,000 Maniacs, and she forged a commendably searching solo career in the group's wake. But Merchant's woody quaver has never sounded quite so right as it did framed by flutes, a weaving clarinet, and a gentle harp. Keith Lockhart's orchestra - prone to frustratingly slight flourishes during the lion's share of previous EdgeFest outings - was a full partner in the rich, handsome music.
The concert wasn't without bumps. Without a rhythm section to anchor the songs, mistakes were freely made and gingerly corrected, prompting Merchant to explain that the single allotted rehearsal is what really accounts for this festival's suggestive title. She's right. Far from edgy, Merchant and the Pops performed six new songs and as many from her back catalog, each as literate and lovely as the next.
"Verdi Cries" was transformed from a 1980s folk-rocker into a densely textured art song (with orchestration by frequent Pops contributor Sean O'Loughlin), and it stood as an unexpected companion to "Sonnet 73," a Merchant-Shakespeare collaboration. Calm and formidable as a Plainswoman, in a long blue dress and dark red shawl, Merchant had the quiet bravura required to make unabashed eye contact while singing the Bard.
By contrast, she was moved to tears during "Life is Sweet." That emotional song from 1998's "Ophelia" was a vocal high point for Merchant, who bit off and savored her lines as if they were a last meal, but a sappy interlude for the orchestra, which can't seem to conceptualize anything beyond cheesy strings and toothless drums when faced with a pop tune.
Merchant has been on extended maternity leave for the past five years, and motherhood has made an indelible mark. She set an anonymous nursery rhyme, "The Man in the Wilderness," and "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, to earthy, graceful melodies; both are slated to appear on the artist's forthcoming Children's Poetry Project album, due out in December.
Thanks to the strength and clarity of her musical personality, her stately new works made surprising sense alongside "This House Is On Fire," reimagined by orchestrator Stephen Barber as a sinewy, restless meditation, and "The Letter," stripped of everything but its beauty.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.
baby Mama
Learning on the Job About Birthing Babies
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: April 25, 2008
In the new comedy “Baby Mama” Tina Fey plays a 37-year-old single career woman who, desperate for a baby, hires a womb of her own in the dizzy, slap-happy form of Amy Poehler. The film never comes fully to term, as it were: the visual style is sitcom functional, and even the zippiest jokes fall flat because of poor timing. But, much like the prickly, talented Ms. Fey, it pulls you in with a provocative and, at least in current American movies, unusual mix of female intelligence, awkwardness and chilled-to-the-bone mean.
Ms. Fey is of course best known for working in television, on “Saturday Night Live” and “30 Rock.” Until now her biggest movie role was the uncomfortable but earnest high school math teacher Ms. Norbury in the comedy “Mean Girls,” which she also wrote. (“You all have got to stop calling each other sluts and whores,” Ms. Norbury warns the mean girls and their female prey. “It just makes it O.K. for guys to call you sluts and whores.”) Like a lot of comedies “Mean Girls” has its devilish cake and eats it too, wagging an unpersuasive finger at the very cruelty it skillfully deploys. Ms. Fey may not want girls to call one another sluts, but she’s all too happy to call them that herself.
There’s often a degree of sadism in this kind of comic one-two punch, and while some performers appear to direct the cruelty inward — think of Jerry Lewis and Ben Stiller wringing squirmy, uneasy laughs out of the humiliations rained down on their characters — that doesn’t seem to be Ms. Fey’s style. Certainly it isn’t what she’s called on to do in “Baby Mama,” in which she plays a snappy, sardonic individualist who, much like Ms. Fey herself, works in a male-dominated industry (here, as an executive in an organic grocery chain similar to Whole Foods) and favors the kind of sexy librarian look (high-heeled shoes, low-cut blouses and dark-frame glasses) that signals there’s a hot body to go along with that feverishly smart brain.
“Baby Mama,” which was written and directed by the newcomer Michael McCullers, yet another “Saturday Night Live” alumnus, opens with Ms. Fey’s character, Kate Holbrook, eyeballing babies like a hungry wolf. Everyone has a pitter-pattering Tater Tot but Kate, who lives alone in her generically appointed Philadelphia apartment (the film was also shot in New York) and has few contacts outside her job, extended family and wisecracking doorman, Oscar (Romany Malco). Basically she’s Rhoda with thinner thighs, which I guess means that she’s Mary Richards. But this being 2008 and not the women’s-liberated 1970s, it isn’t enough for Kate to be a swinging single: she wants a baby and she wants it now. Enter Angie Ostrowiski (Ms. Poehler).
At 36 Ms. Poehler is at least 10 years too old for the role, as the softly focused close-ups suggest, but she’s a pip. She’s the ball that bounces against Ms. Fey’s formidable wall, a nonstop, joyfully watchable whirligig. Drawn in broad, often crude strokes, Angie is dumber than the usual dumb blonde so beloved of the movies largely because she’s also coded as white trash, a kind of urban Daisy Mae, complete with short shorts, wads of chewing gum and a tag-along buffoon, Carl (Dax Shepard). If Angie works at all, it’s because Ms. Poehler puts a sweet spin on her character’s gaffes, whether she’s yelping in horror at the unfamiliar taste of water or squatting in a sink when nature makes an untimely call.
There’s more, though not much, mostly some amusing nonsense from Steve Martin as Kate’s boss, a belligerently New Agey entrepreneur with an unkind ponytail. Greg Kinnear also shows up now and again as Kate’s inevitable love interest, perhaps so things don’t overheat when Angie moves in. Not that anyone need worry about this female odd couple, given that Ms. Fey, who doesn’t have the acting chops that might invest her character with some personality, has been forced to play it straight and narrow. The close-up medium of television is more forgiving of those comics who tend to stand in the middle of the frame as if they had just been planted. But unlike Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, Ms. Fey doesn’t even have a funny voice.
That’s too bad, because she is genuinely funny. And if there’s anything the movies could use it is funny women, especially those who earn laughs by keeping their clothes on and their dignity (more or less) intact. Under the old Hollywood system, the studio boss might have ordered up a dance coach for Ms. Fey, maybe a few lessons on how to walk across a set or move her upper body once in a while. She might not have been able to rip loose as a writer-performer, which makes the idea of her developing a simultaneous on-and-off-screen presence all the more tantalizing. Real funny women — Mae West, Elaine May — come along every few decades, so the timing seems right. But the clock is ticking.
“Baby Mama” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some gentle raunch.
BABY MAMA
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Written and directed by Michael McCullers; director of photography, Daryn Okada; edited by Bruce Green; music by Jeff Richmond; production designer, Jess Gonchor; produced by Lorne Michaels and John Goldwyn; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes.
WITH: Tina Fey (Kate), Amy Poehler (Angie), Greg Kinnear (Rob), Dax Shepard (Carl), Romany Malco (Oscar), Steve Martin (Barry), Maura Tierney (Caroline), Holland Taylor (Rose) and Sigourney Weaver (Chaffee Bicknell).
VERDI CRIES
VERDI CRIES
Natalie Merchant / Christian Burial Music © 1987
the man in 119 takes his tea alone
mornings we all rise to wireless Verdi cries
I’m hearing opera through the door
the souls of men and women impassioned all
their voices climb and fall; battle trumpets call
I fill the bath and climb inside singing
he will not touch their pastry
but every day they bring him more
gold from the breakfast tray, I steal them all away
and then go and eat them on the shore
I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand
sing of a lover's fate sealed by jealous hate
then wash my hand in the sea
with just three days more I’d have just about learned the entire score to Aida
holidays must end as you know
all is memory taken home with me
the opera the stolen tea the sand drawing the verging sea all years ag
Natalie Merchant / Christian Burial Music © 1987
the man in 119 takes his tea alone
mornings we all rise to wireless Verdi cries
I’m hearing opera through the door
the souls of men and women impassioned all
their voices climb and fall; battle trumpets call
I fill the bath and climb inside singing
he will not touch their pastry
but every day they bring him more
gold from the breakfast tray, I steal them all away
and then go and eat them on the shore
I draw a jackal-headed woman in the sand
sing of a lover's fate sealed by jealous hate
then wash my hand in the sea
with just three days more I’d have just about learned the entire score to Aida
holidays must end as you know
all is memory taken home with me
the opera the stolen tea the sand drawing the verging sea all years ag
sex and the city
The Girls Are Back in Town
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: May 30, 2008
A little Botox goes a long way in “Sex and the City,” but a little decent writing would have gone even further. A dumpy big-screen makeover of that much-adored small-screen delight, the movie was written and directed by Michael Patrick King, one of the guiding lights and bright wits of the original series, based on Candace Bushnell’s newspaper columns and subsequent book. Once again, Sarah Jessica Parker has stepped into the dizzyingly high heels of Carrie Bradshaw, that postmodern Lorelei Lee — a hardly working New York writer with a passion for men and Manolos — but this time she’s taken a terrible tumble.
Fans of the show were accustomed to Carrie’s falls, metaphoric and literal (as in her spectacularly horrible trip during her catwalk promenade); they were crucial to the show’s appeal, softening its hard, brittle edges. Then in her mid-30s, Carrie was one of New York’s most fearless of the zipless It Girls, able to leap tall men in a single bound without batting a single mascaraed eyelash, but as the show’s nifty opening credit sequence reminded you, episode after episode, she wasn’t above getting muck on her tutu. Her vulnerability — and that of her girlfriends — was the badly kept secret of the show, the glue holding together the froufrou, the lunches, those absolutely fabulous and ghastly clothes and all that muscly man bait.
The froufrou and the lunches are back, as are, kind of, Carrie’s three girlfriends, Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Samantha (Kim Cattrall), all tricked out with their customary accessories (men, children, handbags). Also back and in and out of Carrie’s bed is Mr. Big (Chris Noth), the longtime lover and habitual heartbreaker with whom she had (hallelujah) reunited during the show’s bitter and sweet finale four years ago. Written by Mr. King, that episode opened with Carrie wandering Paris in a funk and then stumbling into bliss by literally falling to the ground with Big. At once melancholic and defiantly hopeful, it was the kind of rueful happy ending that didn’t make you choke on your own tears.
“Sex and the City” delivered the television goods for six seasons, no small thing in the pop culture annals. That should have been enough or at least plenty for all concerned, but Ms. Parker apparently felt compelled to go big screen, making good on a project that had started to come together in 2004, only to fall apart over money issues and Ms. Cattrall’s reluctance to climb aboard. I wish Ms. Parker had let that bee in her bonnet go silent, because the movie that she and Mr. King have come up with is the pits, a vulgar, shrill, deeply shallow — and, at 2 hours and 22 turgid minutes, overlong — addendum to a show that had, over the years, evolved and expanded in surprising ways.
There are no surprises in the movie, at least not good ones. On opening, all the peas are in their designer pods, from Carrie and Big cooing in his swank New York digs to Samantha and her boy toy, Smith (Jason Lewis), sunning in a seaside Los Angeles perch. Charlotte and her husband, Harry (Evan Handler), are nesting in Manhattan; Miranda and her husband, Steve (David Eigenberg), are bunking in Brooklyn. All is right in this carefree world until Big casually asks Carrie if she would like to get married, a question that leads to the usual luncheon postmortem (oh my gawd, he proposed) and then the usual rom-com clothing montage and a staggering number of product placements. (Louis Vuitton co-stars.)
Somehow it all goes lugubriously south. Carrie is let down Big Time, and she licks her wounds down Mexico way, accompanied by her amazingly accessible gal pals. Jokes about Montezuma’s revenge ensue (really), along with hard laughter and free-flowing tears and yet more clothes (and clothing montages) and jokes and jokes, most of them flatter than Carrie’s steely six-pack. Unlike the show, which allowed the men to emerge occasionally from the sidelines with lines of actual dialogue, the male characters in the movie stand idly by, either smiling or stripping, reduced to playing sock puppets in a Punch-free Judy and Judy (times two) show. I’m all for the female gaze, but, gee, it’s also nice to talk — and listen — to men, too.
I guess size does matter after all, if not in the way that the sex-addled Samantha might assume. On television and in tasty 30-minute bites, the show “Sex and the City” managed to entertain and sometimes even enthrall with self-consciously glib morality stories about love and desire in the modern world. Everything scaled nicely to television’s modest dimensions, from Ms. Parker’s Cubistic face to Patricia Field’s costumes. Kooky and at times insanely unflattering, the clothes caught your eye instantly, directing your attention to the itty-bitty figures, exactly what they were supposed to do. But those same loud outfits, mugging faces and picayune dramas just don’t translate when blown up on a movie screen, which makes all that small-screen stuff seem even punier.
There was something seductive about the bubble world that the show created back in 1998, in the fantasy that all you needed to make it through the rough patches were good friends and throwdown heels. That was a beautiful lie, as the show acknowledged in its gently melancholic return in the wake of Sept. 11. Back in Season 3 Carrie asked, “Are we getting wiser, or just older?” The ideal, of course, is to do both. There is something depressingly stunted about this movie; something desperate too. It isn’t that Carrie has grown older or overly familiar. It’s that awash in materialism and narcissism, a cloth flower pinned to her dress where cool chicks wear their Obama buttons, this It Girl has become totally Ick.
“Sex and the City” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex in the city.
SEX AND THE CITY
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Written and directed by Michael Patrick King; director of photography, John Thomas; edited by Michael Berenbaum; music by Aaron Zigman; production designer, Jeremy Conway; produced by Mr. King, Sarah Jessica Parker, Darren Star and John Melfi; released by New Line Cinema. Running time: 2 hours 22 minutes.
WITH: Sarah Jessica Parker (Carrie Bradshaw), Kim Cattrall (Samantha Jones), Kristin Davis (Charlotte York), Cynthia Nixon (Miranda Hobbes), David Eigenberg (Steve Brady), Evan Handler (Harry), Jason Lewis (Smith Jerrod), Lynn Cohen (Magda), Mario Cantone (Anthony Marentino), Willie Garson (Stanford Blatch), Jennifer Hudson (Louise), Candice Bergen (Enid Frick) and Chris Noth (Mr. Big).
Friday, May 30, 2008
Natalie Merchant with the Boston Pops at Symphony Hall
By Joan Anderman
Globe Staff / May 28, 2008
From the moment Natalie Merchant uttered the sweet opening stanza of "Autumn Lullaby," a traditional British text set to Merchant's own melody and sure-handed orchestration, it was glowingly, elegantly, poetically clear that the Boston Pops EdgeFest has finally found a match.
Natalie Merchant with the Boston Pops At Symphony Hall, last night and tonight.
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More to the point, Merchant has found her medium. Yes, the singer-songwriter scored platinum sales with her pop band 10,000 Maniacs, and she forged a commendably searching solo career in the group's wake. But Merchant's woody quaver has never sounded quite so right as it did framed by flutes, a weaving clarinet, and a gentle harp. Keith Lockhart's orchestra - prone to frustratingly slight flourishes during the lion's share of previous EdgeFest outings - was a full partner in the rich, handsome music.
The concert wasn't without bumps. Without a rhythm section to anchor the songs, mistakes were freely made and gingerly corrected, prompting Merchant to explain that the single allotted rehearsal is what really accounts for this festival's suggestive title. She's right. Far from edgy, Merchant and the Pops performed six new songs and as many from her back catalog, each as literate and lovely as the next.
"Verdi Cries" was transformed from a 1980s folk-rocker into a densely textured art song (with orchestration by frequent Pops contributor Sean O'Loughlin), and it stood as an unexpected companion to "Sonnet 73," a Merchant-Shakespeare collaboration. Calm and formidable as a Plainswoman, in a long blue dress and dark red shawl, Merchant had the quiet bravura required to make unabashed eye contact while singing the Bard.
By contrast, she was moved to tears during "Life is Sweet." That emotional song from 1998's "Ophelia" was a vocal high point for Merchant, who bit off and savored her lines as if they were a last meal, but a sappy interlude for the orchestra, which can't seem to conceptualize anything beyond cheesy strings and toothless drums when faced with a pop tune.
Merchant has been on extended maternity leave for the past five years, and motherhood has made an indelible mark. She set an anonymous nursery rhyme, "The Man in the Wilderness," and "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child," a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins, to earthy, graceful melodies; both are slated to appear on the artist's forthcoming Children's Poetry Project album, due out in December.
Thanks to the strength and clarity of her musical personality, her stately new works made surprising sense alongside "This House Is On Fire," reimagined by orchestrator Stephen Barber as a sinewy, restless meditation, and "The Letter," stripped of everything but its beauty.
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of May 29, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of May 29, 2008
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
This would be a good week to celebrate failure -- to laugh about the comic horror stories of your past defeats, to gain a new appreciation for the prickly lessons you learned, and to let go of any regret, shame, or anger you might still be lugging around. I'd even recommend that you and your friends stage a Brag About Your Failures party. Try to outdo each other as you render in ignominious detail the things that went wrong, the mistakes you made, and the people who let you down. I think you'll be amazed at how effectively this will dissolve the karma left over from those misadventures -- and help free you from their ghostly clutches.
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
This would be a good week to celebrate failure -- to laugh about the comic horror stories of your past defeats, to gain a new appreciation for the prickly lessons you learned, and to let go of any regret, shame, or anger you might still be lugging around. I'd even recommend that you and your friends stage a Brag About Your Failures party. Try to outdo each other as you render in ignominious detail the things that went wrong, the mistakes you made, and the people who let you down. I think you'll be amazed at how effectively this will dissolve the karma left over from those misadventures -- and help free you from their ghostly clutches.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of May 22, 2008
Capricorn Horoscope for week of May 22, 2008
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
I'm issuing a too-much-of-a-good-thing warning. Soaking up too much pleasure could dilute the value of your bliss. Expressing too much personal power could scare away valuable allies who are competent but not entirely confident. Pushing too hard on behalf of your creative pragmatism could subtly undermine the labor of love you've worked so hard on. Therefore, Capricorn, please accept my invitation to enjoy a period of rest and assimilation. You can return later for another round of pure intensity.
Verticle Oracle card Capricorn (December 22-January 19)
I'm issuing a too-much-of-a-good-thing warning. Soaking up too much pleasure could dilute the value of your bliss. Expressing too much personal power could scare away valuable allies who are competent but not entirely confident. Pushing too hard on behalf of your creative pragmatism could subtly undermine the labor of love you've worked so hard on. Therefore, Capricorn, please accept my invitation to enjoy a period of rest and assimilation. You can return later for another round of pure intensity.
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