Writing the Play His Curiosity Led Him To // Playwright Matthew Lopez and 'The Whipping Man'

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Felicia R. Lee

Matthew Lopez is ready for the question but continues to refine the answer. How did he, a self-described “foxhole Episcopalian” from the Florida Panhandle, the son of a Puerto Rican father and a Polish-Russian mother, come to write a play about a Jewish Confederate soldier and two former slaves raised as Jews who, in the charred wreck of a Virginia home after the Civil War, celebrate Passover together?

Keep reading...

__________


On a similar subject (sort of), a book club at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham looked this past month at Dara Horn's novel All Other Nights, about a Jewish spy in the Civil War.

The Thorny Path to a National Black Museum // The National Museum of African American History and Culture

Full article here // Excerpt below

By Kate Taylor

In the late 1970s, when Lonnie G. Bunch III had his first job at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, veterans of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black squadron, accused the museum of playing down their contributions during World War II. In response, the museum asked some of the African-Americans on staff to allow their faces to be used on mannequins, increasing the “black presence” in its exhibits.

“I didn’t do it,” Mr. Bunch said recently, who was among those asked. “That’s not the way I wanted to be part of a museum.”

Thirty years later Mr. Bunch, and African-American history itself, are part of a Smithsonian museum, but in a very different way. As the director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Mr. Bunch, 58, is charged with creating an institution that embodies the story of black life in America.

Keep reading...

Cambodian Art Emerges from Horrors of Murderous Past

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Robert Turnbull

PHNOM PENH — Slowly but surely, Cambodia’s visual arts’ scene has been emerging from the shadow of the Pol Pot era, nurtured by a clutch of mostly Western-owned galleries dotted around the capital. Years of faith and investment are finally paying off.

"In a dark time the eye begins to see" // A first glance at Bernd Brunner's new book "Moon: A Brief History"

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Cornelia Dean

Every faith and culture, it seems, kept an eye on the Moon, setting Passover, Easter, Ramadan, Tet and other observances according to the lunar calendar. The Buddha was supposed to have achieved enlightenment by the light of the full Moon, and as belief in a Moon goddess faded with the advent of Christianity, Mr. Brunner tells us, Mary became associated with the Moon. // Read On...

Holy Ignorance // When Religion & Culture Part Ways

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Alan Wolfe

Every winter Fox News, seeking to stir up anger through the land, uncovers evidence of a war on Christmas. Secular humanists ignorant of religion and hostile to its traditions, someone in the studio will declare, want us to say “Happy Holiday” or give Kwanzaa equal standing. But Christmas, as its name suggests, is about Christ. These enemies of Christianity will stop at nothing to get their way. Not even Santa Claus is sacred to them.

Actually, as the brilliant French social scientist Olivier Roy points out in “Holy Ignorance: When Religion and Culture part ways,” it is those defending Christmas who are not being true to their traditions and teachings. There are no Christmas dinners in the Bible, which is why America’s Puritans, strict adherents of what that venerated text offers, never sat down by the raging fire awaiting St. Nick; indeed, they briefly banned Christmas in Massachusetts. Read On

"Making the Darkness Luminous" // A Carrboro resident weighs in on the meaning of the Solstice

Full Post Here // Excerpt Below

by C. Hawk Croft

At first glance, it might seem odd to spend the longest night of the year celebrating the return of the sun. For many of our Pagan ancestors, this was the essence of the winter solstice mystery... With lives rooted deeply in the rhythm of the seasons, they were dependent upon the reliability of their gods and goddesses to once again return the sun and its greening of the Earth. This night, the turning point from darkness to light, was more than just a metaphorical reflection on the meaning of winter; it was a choice between life or death... Keep Reading

With and Without Sight // Representations of Lady Justice through the ages

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Randy Kennedy

As the Yale Law School professors Judith Resnik and Dennis Curtis show in an unusual new book just out, “Representing Justice” — an academic treatise on threats to the modern judiciary that doubles as an obsessive’s tour of Western art through the lens of the law — Lady Justice’s familiar blindfold did not become an accessory until well into the 17th century. And even then it was uncommon because of the profoundly negative connotations blindfolds carried for medieval and Renaissance audiences, who viewed them as emblems not of impartiality but of deception (hence the early use of the word hoodwink as a noun, meaning a blindfold or hood).

“Sight was the desired state,” Professors Resnik and Curtis write, “connected to insight, light and the rays of God’s sun.” Even in modern times the blindfold continues to fit uneasily in Lady Justice’s wardrobe, used as a handy prop by political cartoonists and a symbol of dysfunction by others. “That Justice is a blind goddess/Is a thing to which we black are wise,” Langston Hughes wrote in 1923. “Her bandage hides two festering sores/ That once perhaps were eyes.”

Keep Reading...

Straight Outta Hoboken // How Sinatra's swagger has influenced Hip-Hop

Full Op/Ed Here // Excerpt Below

by James Kaplan

But ultimately, Sinatra's vulnerability is at the core of his magic. There was an operatic intensity to Frank Sinatra’s existence. His life mistakes were legion; he was, always, at the mercy of powerfully oscillating emotions. The conflicts filter into the molecules of his music. We hear, we respond.

Rap, of course, would seem to be about outer rather than inner conflict: swagger and defiance don’t just set the tone, they shout it. And yet the best rappers expose the sorrow and humanity that underlie the swagger. Eminem’s hymn to recovery “Not Afraid” is both brutally self-critical and self-transcending, reaching out to listeners who’ve been down the same addictive path.

And Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” which begins by trumpeting the rapper’s importance to the big city, modulates to sympathy for those who get lost in it: wayward girls from small towns, ball players and rap stars hooked on Ecstasy and addicted to the limelight. When a Swedish interviewer asked Jay-Z, “What is your talent?” he answered shyly. “I guess, telling the truth in rhyme..."

Keep Reading...

The Tea Maker // Yoko Remembers John

Full Op/Ed here // Excerpt below

by Yoko Ono

John and I are in our Dakota kitchen in the middle of the night. Three cats — Sasha, Micha and Charo — are looking up at John, who is making tea for us two.

Sasha is all white, Micha is all black. They are both gorgeous, classy Persian cats. Charo, on the other hand, is a mutt. John used to have a special love for Charo. “You’ve got a funny face, Charo!” he would say, and pat her.

“Yoko, Yoko, you’re supposed to first put the tea bags in, and then the hot water.” John took the role of the tea maker, for being English. So I gave up doing it.

It was nice to be up in the middle of the night, when there was no sound in the house, and sip the tea John would make. One night, however, John said: “I was talking to Aunt Mimi this afternoon and she says you are supposed to put the hot water in first. Then the tea bag. I could swear she taught me to put the tea bag in first, but ...”

“So all this time, we were doing it wrong?”

“Yeah ...”

We both cracked up. That was in 1980. Neither of us knew that it was to be the last year of our life together.

Keep on reading...

30 years gone, still shining on // Remembering Lennon

Thirty years ago today John Lennon breathed his last. A flood of remembrances and commemorations are to be found this day from a variety of media outlets, but this one from Rolling Stone magazine might be a cut above the rest. -- Leif

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Rolling Stone

Three days before John Lennon was killed, Jonathan Cott spent hours interviewing him for a planned cover story. The complete Q&A, which is running in the new issue of Rolling Stone — available on stands, as well as in the online archives — has never been published before now.

Moved by the Spirit: Celebrating 'Revelations' at 50

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Gia Kourlas

Members of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater perform “Revelations” nearly as often as ordinary people brush their teeth. This magnificent work, created by Alvin Ailey in 1960, is a dance on land and in water, a journey through African-American spiritual music and, for dancers, an act of reverence for the generations that came before.

“It doesn’t matter how tired I am,” said Briana Reed, a company member since 1998. “As soon as the music starts, I feel myself transported to another place.” Told in three sections —“Pilgrim of Sorrow,” “Take Me to the Water” and “Move, Members, Move” — Ailey’s burning exploration of grief and joy celebrates its 50th anniversary on Wednesday at City Center.

Keep Reading...

Thanksgiving, 1621 // Peace, Love, and... Puritanism?

Harvard Divinity's David D. Hall has published a fascinating Op/Ed in the Times this week which forces us to reconsider and re-imagine the Puritans as well as the meaning of Thanksgiving. Also keep in mind Hall's forthcoming book, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of public life in New England. Enjoy! -- Leif

Full Op/Ed Here // Excerpt Below

by David D. Hall

To return to the first of these harvest feasts is to return to the puzzling figure of the Puritan, the name borne by most of the English people who came to New England in the early 17th century. What did they hope to gain by coming to the New World, and what values did they seek to practice?

The easy answers simplify and distort. Nathaniel Hawthorne, who came along a couple of centuries later, bears some of the blame for the most repeated of the answers: that Puritans were self-righteous and authoritarian, bent on making everyone conform to a rigid set of rules and ostracizing everyone who disagreed with them. The colonists Hawthorne depicted in “The Scarlet Letter” lacked the human sympathies or “heart” he valued so highly. Over the years, Americans have added to Hawthorne’s unfriendly portrait with references to witch-hunting and harsh treatment of Native Americans.

Contrary to Hawthorne’s assertions of self-righteousness, the colonists hungered to recreate the ethics of love and mutual obligation spelled out in the New Testament. Church members pledged to respect the common good and to care for one another. Celebrating the liberty they had gained by coming to the New World, they echoed St. Paul’s assertion that true liberty was inseparable from the obligation to serve others.

Keep On Reading...

One Drawing/Painting for Every Page of Moby-Dick // Matt Kish illustrates the Great American Novel

Well, this is something you surely don't discover every day. Matt Kish created a blog in August 2009 devoted to publishing (at a rate of about one per day) an original drawing/painting for each page of the great American novel Moby-Dick. As of today (Nov. 22) he's on page 451 which means, regardless of which edition he's reading, he's nearing the conclusion of his Ishmaelian journey. Start from the beginning by clicking here. Enjoy! -- Leif

More than "Just Kids" // Rocker Patti Smith wins National Book Award

Full Article Here // Excerpt Here

by Julie Bosman

The rock musician Patti Smith won the National Book Award for nonfiction on Wednesday night for “Just Kids,” a sweetly evocative memoir of her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe and the romantic days of bohemian New York.

Accepting the award to wild applause and cheers, Ms. Smith — clearly the favorite of the night — choked up slightly as she recalled her days working as a clerk in the Scribner bookstore as a young woman. “I dreamed of having a book of my own, of writing one that I could put on a shelf,” she said. “Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.”

Read More...

Rock 'n Roll Catholicism // The surprising unity of Catholicism and the so-called "Devil's Music"

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Mark Oppenheimer

For the rock stars that Rob Sheffield writes about, there is a lot of God, but not much church attendance. From Depeche Mode or Bob Dylan, you learn that God is a big deal — but you will not find much support for weekend rituals that require fighting a hangover to rise early.

Mr. Sheffield, who writes for Rolling Stone, feels otherwise. His second memoir, “Talking to Girls About Duran Duran,” published by Dutton in July, not only contains important observations about the Go-Go’s, Tone Loc and New Kids on the Block. It also explains why a literate suburban teenager might become a major fan of both rock ’n’ roll and regular Catholic Mass — how those sacred experiences are not opposed, like Satan and God, but united by one sensibility.

Keep Going...

'Frank - The Voice' // Attempting to capture the spirit of Sinatra

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

By Michiko Kakutani

He provided the soundtrack for several generations of Americans trying to navigate the rocky shoals of romance and grapple with love and heartbreak. And he became one of 20th-century pop culture’s quintessential men of contradictions: the bullying tough guy whose singing could radiate a remarkable tenderness and vulnerability; the ring-a-ding-ding Vegas sophisticate with an existential outlook on life; the jaunty urbanite who could deliver a torch song like no one else. Fans could recognize his voice from two or three perfectly phrased syllables, and they knew him instantly from his style: the rakishly tilted hat, the coat slung over one shoulder, the Camels and Jack Daniel’s. He was the original teeny-bopper heartthrob and the harbinger of a new age of celebrity.

Keep Reading...

Where Time and Timelessness meet // Reflecting on T.S. Eliot's seminal Four Quartets

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by James Zinsmeister

Although T.S. Eliot would labor assiduously in several genres, it would be more than 20 years before he completed what critics and poets alike regard as his magnum opus—the exquisite "Four Quartets." Comprising four long poems of five parts each, "Four Quartets" incorporated a number of themes that had been essential to Mr. Eliot's earlier work. Each of the poems was named after a place that had deep personal significance for Mr. Eliot, who was born in St. Louis, and had spent the first two decades of his life in America before immigrating to England.

But these are more than works of personal reflection. Mr. Eliot called on a vast store of images, symbols and allusions that, deployed in a historical context, enabled the poet to keep his readers' focus on such themes as the redeemability (in the Christian sense) of the individual and the complex relationship between existence, reality and time. Indeed, the setting of the entire work seems to be "the point of intersection of the timeless / With time." ("The Dry Salvages," V, 201-2).

Read More...

In Montana // The novelist Thomas McGuane divides his time between his ranching and literary lives

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

by Charles McGrath

McLEOD, Mont. — Thomas McGuane, whose new novel, “Driving on the Rim,” comes out on Thursday, is the only member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters who is also in the National Cutting Horse Association Hall of Fame. Yet he claims not to be a real rancher. “All the ranchers I know have had back surgery, operations on their rotator cuffs,” he said recently. “They all have new knees. I’d like to think I belong to that breed, but I don’t.”

But neither is Mr. McGuane a hobbyist or a dude rancher. Together with his wife, Laurie, he raises black Angus cattle here on a 2000-acre spread in the foothills of the Absaroka mountains in south-central Montana, country where the sky really is big: a vast blue dome under which a sea of grass surges back and forth.

Continue Reading...

First Listen // Bob Dylan, The Witmark Demos 1962-1964

This past Tuesday (October 19) saw the release of an anticipated album of demos from Bob Dylan which contains many of his iconic tunes in their rough draft infancy. Below is an excerpt from NPR's First Listen column where Bob Boilen reflects on the new album and Dylan's enduring significance. Enjoy! -- Leif

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

After listening to the nearly 50 songs on The Witmark Demos 1962-1964, it slayed me to think that Bob Dylan wrote and recorded these songs before he was even 24. It's one thing to write "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" or "Blowin' in the Wind" by that age, but add "Ballad of Hollis Brown," "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," "Boots of Spanish Leather," "Mr. Tambourine Man" and other bits of genius to the list, and it really hits hard what a phenomenal talent Dylan was at such a young age.

Taking a closer look at the origins of Photography

Full Article Here // Excerpt Below

By The LA Times

Historians seem to agree that the first photographic images were created around 1825 by Joseph Nicephore Niépce, a French scientist who experimented with various imagery techniques, including heliographs made on pewter plates. This week, the Getty Conservation Institute is presenting research that reveals new details about how Niépce created those first photographic likenesses.

Continue Reading