My first book just came out, now in stores and available on Amazon – “Angell at 100: A Century of Compassionate Care for Animals and Their Families” – about the second oldest and still one of the busiest animal hospitals in the country. On Thursday August 13, 7 p.m. at Brookline Booksmith, I’m giving an author talk along with two of the hospital’s amazing veterinarians as part of the store’s “WRITERS & READERS” series. I’ll talk about the eye-opening process of researching the book -- mining the archives for the story of the hospital’s rich history and what I learned from talking to staff about hilarious hijinks and amazing innovations, trailing a veterinarian for “A Day in the Life,” seeing life and death drama in the ER, watching an acupuncture session. Then I’ll do a little interview with the vets and open it up for questions to them. Here’s your chance to “stump the doctor,” ask about animal health, exotic pets, veterinary ethics, etc. And yes, pets are welcome. Love to see any and all who can make it! (No pressure to buy the book, but proceeds go back to the non-profit hospital and the MSPCA.)
THE HEMLOCK4/21/2014
0 Comments It had to come down. Ceaselessly pummeled by heavy wind, it finally split at its vulnerable heart, half splayed precariously atop the roof the other still standing, mangled A dazed torso with limbs ripped off at the sockets. The surgeon in his bucket truck whistled as he excised branches. As the chainsaw whined, feathery pieces drifted softly, saw dust wafting like new snow. Heavy logs fell with the sickening thud of fist on flesh, spearing holes into the soft earth below. In respect, I watched with muted grief a witness to the hemlock’s final demise a silent eulogy forming on my tongue. 0 Comments NUMBERS -- "The Housekeeper and the Professor"11/30/2010 0 Comments Recently read Yoko Ogawa’s poignant and provocative “The Housekeeper and the Professor,” an exploration of memory, mathematics and baseball. This little novelistic gem is a sweet, poignant read, but it also rekindled my appreciation for numbers – prime, triangle numbers, perfect…I’d forgotten how much numbers offer a kind of reassuring truth, bringing order to chaos. 0 Comments THANKSGIVING STAR11/25/2010 0 Comments Last night I saw the Star of Bethlehem. OK, it was probably a planet, not a star, and it wasn’t really last night, it was about 5:30 this morning, when a certain someone’s explosive snore/snort jolted me out of my dream and sent me heading to the bathroom and a peak out the window. But it was low in the southeastern sky, huge and brighter than anything I’ve seen up there that wasn’t solar or lunar. Anybody know what it might have been? If I hadn’t been so determined to dive back into another few hours of sleep, I would have lumbered up to the attic to drag out the telescope. As it was, it seemed like a very auspicious start to Thanksgiving Day. I went back to sleep counting my blessings like sheep… 0 Comments FASHION, FORM, FUNCTION...9/26/2010 0 Comments I’ve always had an on and off relationship with fashion. Since I was a little girl, coveting my Barbie doll’s ball gowns, I’ve had an appreciation for distinctively styled clothes that are skillfully tailored in beautiful fabrics. But despite my aesthetic appreciation, at heart I’m a comfort and function dresser. I don’t care how great it looks, if it doesn’t feel right, forget it. And if it’s a big bucks purchase with extremely limited use, it’s not in my budget. At the press conference for “Scaasi: American Couturier” at the Museum of Fine Arts recently, the iconic designer riffed on some of his fashion ideas for some of the wealthiest and most stylish women of the late 20th century, including Barbara Streisand. “I think clothes should be pretty and flattering and colorful,” he maintains. Simple, sound advice. I asked him if comfort and practicality ever factor in to his decisions. “Not at all,” he said flippantly. “If you want to look fabulous, screw it.” Interestingly, however, the designs on display at the MFA are not only artfully stunning but seem decidedly wearable. Maybe not the helmeted, zigzag patterned motorcyle outfit for “Funny Girl,” but I could really see myself in that black and hot pink number… If you check out the show, also stop by the Richard Avedon exhibit of photographs taken for Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue from 1944-2000. The intensity, exuberant energy and play of light in these photographs is thrilling. 0 Comments THE EDGE OF DREAMING, ON POV9/15/2010 0 Comments I caught Amy Hardie’s intriguing and provocative “The Edge of Dreaming” a few nights ago on PBS’ “POV.” It’s a fascinating exploration of the subconscious prompted by the Scottish filmmaker’s dream that someone told her she would die at the age of 48 – only a year away. I keep thinking about one of the contentions that dreams are the subconscious mind’s way of processing information the awake mind is too busy and distracted to even be aware of. Maybe that’s why I like to sleep and meditate so much – and why I always feel a little gypped when I can’t remember my dreams. Though God only knows what that dream about taking the cat to the library on a bicycle meant…. 0 Comments LIFE IS A "CABARET?"9/11/2010 0 Comments Star billing in American Repertory Theatre’s raucous, immersive and hugely entertaining (if uneven) production of “Cabaret” may have gone to alt-punk queen Amanda Palmer for her rowdy, over-the-top portrayal of the MC. But the most affecting performance in this show is Tommy Derrah’s portrayal of Fraulein Schneider. In this inspired bit of cross-gender casting, Derrah gives a moving, nuanced portrayal of the aging widow without a trace of camp or irony, and it’s what sings in the memory long after the mocking, white-faced, red-lipped, and vulgarly equipped (I won’t spoil the surprise) performers of the Kit Kat Klub meet their cruel fate in the play’s shocking coda. Well worth checking out… 0 Comments MOVEMENT AND TEXT -- UNEASY BEDFELLOWS8/14/2010 0 Comments Movement and words often make uneasy bedfellows. Since seeing the Ann Carson/Rashaun Mitchell collaboration at Summer Stages Dance at the Institute of Contemporary Art a couple weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the constantly shifting dynamic when movement and spoken text are combined. Unless it’s a relatively straightforward storyline with movement representation, the two elements rarely form a synergistic relationship, such as often happens with music and dance. I find that instead of the movement and the spoken word creating something greater in combination, they often detract from one another. If I hone in on processing the unfolding text, understanding the subtleties of word play and narrative, my brain seems less able to appreciate the intricacies of the movement. In “Bracko,” based on Carson’s translations of the Greek writer Sappho. I found the obscurity of the text (and the repeated “bracket” to confer elisions) more irritating than illuminating, perhaps reflecting my own inability to understand Carson’s sophisticated translation of Sappho’s verse. But in “Nox,” Carson’s poetry was created as a kind of elegy for her brother, and it was incredibly powerful and direct, possessing a visceral quality that seemed to sometimes propel the movement, at other times provide context for Mitchell’s sharp, muscular choreography. As a work in progress, it wasn’t always clean and focused – I found myself veering back and forth between the two elements. But at certain key junctures, the movement and spoken text, as well as graphic elements created via real-time scrawls on overhead projectors, coalesced into shattering moments. Great promise here…If Summer Stages fostered nothing else all summer, this work would be enough. The following week’s collaboration between Jenny Holzer and Miguel Guttierez created connections between movement and visual text, which was a very different kettle of fish. Guttierez’s choreography was sophomoric, self-indulgent and messy, though granted, it was a work in progress. He integrated spoken text, indecipherably soft for the most part, voiced by his dancers as they moved or posed. But the whole time his energetic troupe was bounding about the space, it was hard not to wonder, “When will Holzer fit into this picture?” Three-quarters of the way through, apparently. But when Holzer’s video text, from two poems by the brilliant Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, began slowly scrolling up the back wall, the transformation of the space was breathtaking, the dark, uneven backdrop fracturing and bending the white text, challenging us to interpret, find meaning. The dancers immediately became incidental. As a collaboration, the project was unsatisfying. But Holzer left her mark. Upon leaving the ICA, a look back revealed the ongoing march of Szymborsk’s poetry, her words seeming to arise from underneath the building, flow up the walls and evaporate off the roof into the night sky, resonating in the cosmos. 0 Comments FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS STILL SHINE7/25/2010 2 Comments Despite its recent descent into some melodramatic extremes, “Friday Night Lights” is still one of the most compelling shows on television. And I don’t even like football – I had my fill of that growing up in a small football-crazed Southern town, with Sunday afternoons at Dad’s house monopolized by whatever game was on the tube. But “Friday Night Lights” isn’t really about football anyway. It’s about the warm support and stifling claustrophobia of life in a small, tight-knit, often small-minded and economically depressed town, and it’s chock full of the sweetness and pain of the everyday. It’s about teens grappling to enter adulthood in the turbulent wake of overbearing fathers and oblivious mothers. It’s about how an unexpected pregnancy can test the limits of a long-married couple or totally shift the dynamic of an unmarried one. It’s about desperately wanting more – to go to college, to see the world – but being paralyzed by the fear of letting hope take hold, and masking that hope with self-destructive disdain. It’s about a talented artist with a ticket into a bigger life feeling compelled to forego college to take care of an aging grandparent. It’s about a good girl attracted to a bad boy, who’s really not so bad at all, just dealing with a really crappy hand – parents out of the picture, no money and no job, a desperate brother with really bad ideas. (When is poor Tim Riggins going to catch a break?) Unlike the majority of characters in prime time, most of the characters on “Friday Night Lights” are truly likeable, flaws and all. And the privilege of checking into their lives each week can offer both deep pleasure and stinging heartbreak. However, lately the show’s writers have plunged these poor folks into extremes. Instead of the slow rhythms and common concerns of everyday people, the characters are finding themselves in the kinds of extreme situations common to soaps and cop-centric escapism, hyped-up drama fueled by chop shops, gang violence, drug addiction. Instead of sharing lives of quiet desperation, we are tossed into the maelstrom of volatile situations that seem exaggerated and over-the-top. It’s hard not to get sucked into the drama – the show is still that good. But the most engaging, memorable moments are not the action-packed arrests, the drug overdoses, the explosive board meetings, the insult-laden emotional smackdowns. The bits that stick with you from week to week are the small scenes of deep humanity – a quiet, strained telephone conversation between two ex-lovers, a late night visit to reassure a friend that he is “not a loser,” an intimate exchange between parent and child, husband and wife. After every episode, these little vignettes can resonate for days. 2 Comments Cirque du Soleil's "OVO"7/23/2010 0 Comments The last Cirque du Soleil production I remember vividly was “Corteo,” a brilliant display of acrobatic prowess set inside an imaginative and compelling storyline of great whimsy, pathos and humanity. It made me not just laugh and gasp in awe but touched my heart, made me think, remember. The new “Ovo” is a different kettle of fish – or perhaps I should say bugs. “Ovo,” Portuguese for egg, uses an oversized egg as an icon for a teeming world of flamboyantly costumed insects. While it lacks a little punch without the human element, the show is still hugely entertaining, packed with spectacular feats of physical daring and lots of humor. (I think the clown-oriented section with audience involvement takes the wind out of the show’s momentum, but I was clearly in the minority. The crowd loved it.) The show unfolds with many of the usual elements – spit and polish jugglers, rubber-spined contortionists, tumblers, flyers, slackwire, a poetic Spanish web and one of the best diabolo artists I’ve ever seen, sending four bolos sailing to the rafters at one time. The best act is the T-shaped trampoline that catapults a troupe of “crickets” up the side of a giant rock wall, clinging to the handholds then soaring back down with split-second precision and the visceral thrill of some of Elizsabeth Streb’s best Pop action shenanigans. But I did miss the humanizing element, the vulnerability and wonder that the “innocent” so often brings to the fantastical worlds of Cirque du Soleil’s best shows. Without that character with which to identify, the show reads as more jaw-dropping spectacle (like most circuses) and less involving theater, with the audience on the outside looking in. The company has set their own bar so very high…. 0 Comments Karole Armitage, Ballet's Voracious Omnivore7/21/2010 0 Comments I hadn’t seen Karole Armitage’s work live in ages, so I was thrilled to get out to Jacob’s Pillow over the weekend for her latest opus, “Three Theories.” It was inspired by Brian Greene’s best-seller on theoretical physics, but I don’t pretend to be able to track the strands of influence, even though Armitage titled the sections “Bang,” “Relativity,” “Quantum” and “String.” That cerebral inadequacy didn’t impair the appreciation of the choreography, however. I love how Armitage shatters the notion of classical ballet even while celebrating its core vocabulary. She calls ballet the “ingrained physical impulse” with which she creates new movement, crafting it with brilliant clarity then seasoning it, like a voracious omnivore, with a host of contemporary and ethnic movement aesthetics. You can see it in battements that slice and slash, pointe-shoed feet that not only flutter but stab, arabesques that coil in on themselves, balancés that exuberantly embrace off-kilter energy, développés that suddenly melt into a pool of molten flesh. She creates astonishing shapes as bodies stretch and twist, especially in vivid solos and partnered duets. In the big group sections, dancers create elegant patterns of mathematical symmetry, then spill into ordered chaos. The raga-accompanied “Relativity” featured some of the most gloriously sinuous arm work I’ve ever seen, ripples setting off undulations that surged like waves through the body. Long, occasionally playful, it was a little messy overall, but oh, the moments…. |
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