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Summer Vacation in Northwestern United States....

My colleague, Ed Pazzanese and I decided to fly via Trans Air to Los Angeles and participate in my grandson, Hunter's graduation from New Roads HIgh School in Malibu...Great Event ..lots of dinners and talks with the children..visits to the folk art museum and a grand tour of the working class district in L.A. ..lots of walks along Venice Beach and the Venice Canals with Ed whom  I work and socialize, grow and worry about the world  with and earn a living through Community Partners' Families Creating Together.

We kept on Looking For America as we boarded the train in Los Angeles, Union Station and travelled via Amtrak Rail Pass Coach from Los Angeles to San Francisco where we  stayed at a Youth Hostel on Mason Street for a few days, taking in the galleries on Geary Street,  Russian Art, Tamara Lempeke tales told to us by the nicest curator, Travis Wilson, who  confided in us that he goes home in the evening and quietly paints his own idea of art inspired by The Weinstein Gallery artists on display. The Russian Art at the Nevska  Fine Art Gallery..is surprisingly not so hard to think about as a style of art to imitate.....many Marc Chagalls, Many unusual landscapes of the Russian Farms  including a Chicken House with brighly lit chickens imbibing kernals of corn.

Then...after some beer and hamburgers on Larkspur Island where working prison San Quentin is located and some eye opening art about the future of the planet at the Berkeley Museum of Fine Art ...their question was... does art help to save the environment? (this exhibit included a canoe shaped space ship ready to leave for  a new planet , populated with many thousand village sorts of people) we boarded the train for  Seattle ...amazingly, the sleeping coach style did not daunt our ambition to see America... the people on the train were totally interesting, Amish School Teachers, Librarians from  Centrillia Washington, Prison Wardens, Bar Tenders, Recovery from Cancer vacationers,  .....amazingly safe to socialize among....the dining room on the Amtrak Empire Builder  was not so expensive. Meals cost on the average of $7.50 unless you are up for wine which jacks up the price to about $15.00.  I stuck to Pepsi Cola and Canada Dry Ginger Ale most  of the time, only now and then did I adventure forth into a beer.

Seattle holds the Green Tortoise Youth Hostel ...not only are the accomodations as good  as sleep a way camp, but breakfasts are free...you can whip up your own pancakes, every  other night dinners are provided....the computers are free....(in San Francisco they cost  $3.00 an hour), and best of all the hostel is near Puget Sound and Pike's Market Place  where we took in Slim Pickens Jug Band Music, Three Sisters Cafe, and found strawberries  are about $2.00 a pint.    Long Walks and Talks with my old friends ....we listened and looked in particular at  William Kentridge, of South Africa, Shadow Puppet Maker ...mostly a fantastic  shadow box show of The Processions..about.leaving Dafur,  on the wall at the Seattle MFA.

But it is not over yet...Ed went back to Boston Via Chicago  on the EMpire Builder, and I went on to Parksville on the Silver Star Amtrak train... in Canada..well, British Columbia I  visited Cathedral Forest, stayed with friends who happen to be Foresters....then boarding the Empire Builder in  Seattle,  on to Chicago and Boston.  The Cathedral Forest will be on display November 6th in the  Roslindale Open Studio on Kittridge Street at the pleasant victorian home of  Phyllis Bluhm, long time associate in the arts.

June 2009

A stupendous landscape in North Devon...one of the best places I've been, although I say that about many places in England.  The cliffs in Lynton are the highest in England.  The wild goats roam free.  They're not at all afraid of humans.  One morning I found a group of them on the North Walk path, and they  just walked away quietly as I approached.  Two white goats  moved to the edge of the cliff and stood looking out to sea, as if posing for me.

For several days as I walked the cliff paths and the Valley of the Rocks, I saw the goats grazing on the gorse throughout the area.   They're most amusing with their long beards and curving horns and quizzical looks.

One evening I was alone on the summit of Hollerday Hill just before  sunset when two male goats began banging their horns against each other.  From the clash of horns it sounded as if they were trying to kill each other.  I stood transfixed for about five minutes while this ritual went on.  The goats reared up on their hind legs, charged at each other, banged their horns together.  All the while a female goat grazed peacefully in the background.  The setting sun trailed a  dazzling path over the sea, a cold breeze ripped across the hills, and I was alone on the hill top, watching these goats  enact this ancient ritual. 

From the top of Hollerday Hill one actually looks down on the massive Castle Rock, and the entire Valley of the Rocks is spread out below.  In an inland direction green hills roll away to the horizon.  It doesn't get much more spectacular than this.

Alvin Ailey

Pepper Greene and I went to see the Alvin Ailey Dance at the Opera House in Boston.  The Introduction was a film with Judith Jemison the present director of the Alvin Ailey. She introduced and explained the classic piece, Revelations, that was the evenings performance, and told interesting background biographical tales about Alvin Ailey.    

The music of the evening was the famous Gospel Music of our nation, Wade in the Water, Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?, Rock-a-my-soul in the Bosom of Abraham,     Oh Sinner Man...and others..     

What was unique?  The dancers appeared in Turkish Costumes, the gold pleated   whirling dervish for part of the performance.  And what else? Not all the choreography was a religious fervor nor celebration of the book of revelations as we think of it and as it was usually performed...added gestures:  The woman almost punches her partner in the face a dozen times but never quite, The two partners, woman and man intersaw wood or so it seems with each other gesticulating their arms back and forth between each others arms.....as if they are at the filing cabinet fighting over files...who has the authority to put that issue in that folder?  

Fight...Fight...Fight...

It was Fierce!

Salem Dance at MassArt Dance Project

A sneak preview of the grace of The Dance Project brought to us by Colleges at the Fenway
Directed by Kristen Young and Sandra Parks
April 18 at Tower Auditorium
What was so enticing.... it is so young and fresh!!
What is so beautiful and unusual, ...some of the dancers are not so skinny but pleasantly robust... plump.
What is so worth bringing home and writing about? "Amazing Grace"  the war in Iraq, in which the dancers wore fatigues and blessed the photos of their soldiers now serving overseas...
Hard to be graceful about.

Senagalese Dance

Held at the Dance Complex, Fatou D'jai performed with her troop...
Senegalese dance and song are always energizing..
What was unique? The black female dancers and white female dancers were in perfect synchronicity side by side.
My role: I did not dance, I videoed.  For a change.

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Play music
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