Hi Natalia,
Sorry to be so late in answering you. I'm getting a student ready
with a wonderful recital that happens on Saturday. She doing six
languages including an encore in Lakota. It's time consuming but a
wonderful thing to do. Old Italian, Schubert, Puccini, Faure,
Rodrigo, Rachmaninoff and Wioste Olawan. She's just 18 and has
hungrily devoured this music like a man drinking water in death
valley. She and another 13 year old mezzo gives me hope for the
future. They won't all turn out like the last generation now in the
job market who can think of nothing but desperation and money.
Yes of course I know the "Winter's Tale". I read it in the
Catskill Mountains years ago. It was a "trip" to think of the
Hudson river in that way. We may have that frozen horror soon if the
weather shifts from hot to cold as some think it might. I always
enjoy your mind. Let me finish with a little story about
something that happened last week. I met a former student on the
street. He's an old man now who is spending his later years working
in plays. He retired as an MD and so has the money to work where he
wants. His son was playing a concert in Berlin with a major
orchestra there. The theme of the work that he was playing is Jewish
music. They are both Jewish. We were talking about what that is
like. I mentioned that the Germans had not had the problems that
the rest of Europe and England is now having with the economy. He
said that he appreciated them because they were blunt about where they
were and what they had done. They didn't refer to Jews who didn't
survive the camps as deaths but as murders. Now this man was a part
of the group that was later called Neo-conservatives here as they made
music together and I taught some of them and studied with their Patron
who was a concert pianist-critic. I never believed their politics
but music making is good. So he told me how he appreciated the
Germans being honest about the reality of the Holocaust. Both of
us then agreed that America has completely failed as she lies about
the massacres, calling them "battles" and speaks of the death marches
in these words: "Alas for them their day is o'er." With music by
capitalist composer Charles Ives.
Everyone hears about the Spanish boot on the backs of the Quechua at
Potosi but it took an Irish professor at Yale to write the true
history of the world genocides. He pointed out that the English
Empire and their Immigrants actually murdered more people here and
elsewhere than the Spanish and of course deliberately kept less good
records of such. For them the "problem" is always "out there."
However value is intrinsic and the solving of solutions begins with
confession and speaking the truth then proceeds to competence and the
design of a well ordered action plan for solving the problem. But
for that to happen you have to speak the truth and have an ideal in
the imagination. If the ideal is flawed then the product will be as
well. That in a sentence is my judgment of most of the solutions
offered on this list to the current "Winter's Tale."
REH
*From:* [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] *On Behalf Of *Darryl
or Natalia
*Sent:* Monday, August 16, 2010 4:46 PM
*To:* RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION
*Subject:* Re: [Futurework] America should have supported the Monroe
Doctrine in the Falklands
That was uplifting!
What did you learn from Ann Boleyn?
Thought I'd ask if you've ever read a book titled, /'Winter's Tale"
/by Mark Helprin. Out of print, by A Harvest Book, Harcourt, Brace &
Company, but the library, at the very least, should have it./
/I recently re-read it after about twenty years, having gratefully
come across it in a Sally Ann. It's centered in New York, starting at
the beginning of the belle epoch, and is so rich with beauty that one
reviewer from the New York Times Book Review remarked /"...I find
myself nervous, to a degree I don't recall in my past as a reviewer,
about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance." /Of
all the reviews I could have picked, this one resonated most.
/
/Why I think it will appeal to you is that Helprin incorporates all
senses to reflect what draws people to such a place, and unveils a
core of genius, if only his own, in every fiber. It's educational,
it's familiar, and it's adventurous. I remembered from before how
amazed I was to be so taken with detailed descriptions of even
mechanical things. This guy turns this mundane exercise into poetry.
Light and music, which he brings about with imaginative virtuosity of
language, course through his veins, as do humour and compassion.
Fantasy is masterfully integrated, though I wonder just how much may
once have been a part of New York's history. This author can reveal
things about life and New York that you have never seen, and will make
you even more proud and determined to be a part of it.
Are you sold, yet? Let me know if you can't find it.
Natalia
Ray Harrell wrote:
An antidote to Bill Gates? I taught an Argentinean during the Falklands.
He was a very cultivated fellow who left his Red Poncho with black trim with
me as a parting gift. I have it next to my Sandinista Mask from the brother
of another student who ran the National Library in Nicaragua. Both
brothers are children of culture and affluence who tried to rebuild what
Samoza had destroyed.
Well, here's the answer to Milton Friedman and the current English ax on the
only English identity that seems worthwhile. Constant chatter is no
substitute for poetry of music. Ann Boleyn was one of the favorites on my
reservation when it came to poems about life and love. It seems that the
spirit of poor Ann has revived and the English culture is now her surrogate.
Better we should listen to the Argentineans, the Venezuelans and the Costa
Ricans. Or maybe the great Scandinavian cultural programs. Their
orchestras regularly come to New York and blow the critics away. And then
there is Anna Netrebko and the Russians. Damn!
REH
Books venerated in a land where culture is everything
Argentines have a different understanding of government's obligations
By Andrew Cohen, FreelanceAugust 12, 2010
To call El Ateneo Grand Splendid a bookstore is to call St. Peter's Basilica
a church; it does not begin to describe its breathtaking, celestial beauty.
This emporium of books began life in 1919 as a theatre, with a deep stage, a
brocaded curtain and a painted dome (with its allegory of peace) designed by
an Italian artist, Italians having built much of this elegant capital. For
decades the Grand Splendid featured silent film, orchestral music, ballet
and of course, the tango, the soul of Argentina.
Since 2000, it has been a bookstore, the largest in Latin America. This is a
temple of books, a literary shrine, a cathedral of curiosity.
Some 3,000 people come here every day to browse, read and buy. You find them
reading in every corner of the place, curled up under the cornices, sipping
an espresso in the cafe (which was once the stage) or lounging in the
blood-red velvet boxes where patrons once watched performances.
The performance today is books, and books alone, playing every day and night
to a loyal, rapturous audience. Forget the Internet and online book sales.
Forget Amazon and Indigo. Forget e-books. They are here, but they have not
yet breached the citadel of Buenos Aires, what may be the world's last
refuge of books, the kind made of paper and ink.
This is a city in love with books. There are said to be more bookstores in
Buenos Aires than in Brazil, a country of 190 million (compared with 42
million in Argentina). In some neighbourhoods, there are more bookshops than
in all of Santiago in neighbouring Chile.
Booksellers claim there is one bookstore for every 6,000 residents of Buenos
Aires. Books matter here, which is why there are so many of such variety.
Bookselling is "a true profession," they argue, which isn't to say that it
is a hugely profitable one, or a safe one.
Help comes from the state. By law, books are sold at the same price
everywhere in the country -- Germany follows a similar practice -- which
means that independent bookstores are not undercut by the big-box retailers.
Booksellers also benefit from tax breaks.
Why is this so? Books have been part of life here since Argentina became
independent in 1810. Two of the founding fathers -- Jose de San Martin and
Manuel Belgrano -- donated books from their own collections to found the
national library, just as Thomas Jefferson donated much of his collection to
the Library of Congress after it had been burned by the British in the War
of 1812.
Both Belgrano and San Martin thought books, and the ideas they germinated,
were central to the survival and success of the new republic. In the 20th
century, the generals would think the opposite: among their assaults on
democracy, they would ban and burn books, arrest authors and close presses.
Books, though, are just one example of the extraordinary commitment to
culture in Buenos Aires. It holds a literary festival here every year, one
of many festivals celebrating theatre, dance, music and film. Its annual
international book fair draws a million visitors.
In a city of 13 million struggling to get by, it spends three per cent of
its budget on culture. The sidewalks are heaving and the subway stations are
crumbling, but there is money, by God, for free tickets to the Tango!
It is about civic priority. Argentina has not recovered from its economic
collapse of 10 years ago, when it defaulted on its debt and deflated its
currency, but the show must go on.
"If you don't invest in culture, you go home," Hernan Lombardi, the minister
of culture, says of governments that ignore this deeply human need. "In a
crisis, we worry about losing identity. That's when we need to support
culture." So the city finds the money to run 10 museums, while the national
government maintains even more, with minimal admission. Some are minimal,
some are often closed, some are under renovation.
There is money to restore the spectacular Colon Theatre and support for
sophisticated free guidebooks to the city's pizzerias, ice-cream parlours as
well as bookstores. And subsidies to keep tickets to the performing arts
affordable, especially for young people, whom Lombardi says will walk rather
than take the bus to afford a play.
Cut culture? Not here. The reverence for culture represents a different way
of looking at life, a different understanding (like public transit) of the
obligations of governments to citizens. It is a common attitude in Europe
but largely foreign in North America.
Lombardi -- a man of humour and warmth who sweetens his conversation with
classical references -- will take that message, and more broadly, one
celebrating the charms of Buenos Aires, when he visits Canada this autumn.
We should listen.
Andrew Cohen is president of the Historica-Dominion Institute. These views
are his own.
C Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal
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