10 year Gala

If you live on the UES, come support our community at the 10th Anniversary Gala of PS109 El Barrio Artspace. This milestone Gala brings together the artists, neighbors, and supporters who helped shape El Barrio’s Artspace into a vibrant hub of artistic expression. Like every milestone, 10 years down, is the beginning of the next […]

10 years in support

This evening, which just occurred on Saturday, was wonderful. For me, my friends at the table made it even more gala.

Unbeknownst to any of us, my friends had a past connection.

D. never forgets a face and she recognized C. from a workplace they shared 15 years ago. Talk about 6 degrees– no separation!

Follow PS 109 El Barrio Artspace on Instagram. There is a whole of a lot going on up there. All year round.

Speaks

Having recently had a speakeasy experience, I am alert to hidden bars.

You could easily pass this door without a thought about its late night program.

Having your name over the door technically disqualifies you or rather your joint as a speakeasy!

All of these are technically not secret enough to be speaks, but they harbor a mystery.

Back alleys, belowstairs steps and small doors are also mysterious. Enough for me.

We need h-i-s-t-o-r-y

We need calm, accurate, factual history to survive this moment. That history, American history, relies on the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, 250 years of democracy.

Most of us, by a margin so large that we should not despair, ⅔ of we, the people support that long ingrained democracy. Yes, there are more Americans who stand on the pro-democracy side.

Our national pro-democracy historian is the calm, sane voice of Heather Cox Richardson.

Heather Cox Richardson is a national treasure: share her words and efforts as widely as you can.

Those are just two samples of the exemplary HCR offering her wisdom. Spread it. Far and wide.

Men of a certain age

The heartthrobs of my generation included Cary Grant in old films from the distant past.

More contemporaneously I count Paul Newman, who was a grown man while I was still a girl. The movies keeps their beauty alive, of course.

Newman shared the screen with Robert Redford, a man just 11 years my senior.

Redford passed away at 89 last week. His filmography would be the curriculum for a degree in cinema. Redford was brilliantly handsome.

Redford was never handsomer than he’d been in The Way We Were. It’s always been one of my favorite pictures; Burt and I saw it any time it was on television.

As he aged, Redford kept his good looks, gorgeously craggy in films like The Horse Whisperer. He had been in front of and behind the camera on that project. One of many movies in his long movie star career.

Rebuttal

We Take Clouds for Granted
Clouds are changing, and we need to find out if it’s just temporary or from global warming.
By Gavin Pretor-Pinney and Taylor Maggiacomo

New York Times

My rebuttal: I beg to differ. I never take clouds for granted.

See #clouds at https://ourcitylife.art.blog/ for instance.

Mr. Pretor-Pinney is an author in Somerset, Britain, and the founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society.
I founded the Cloud Appreciation Society in 2005 because I believed we should all pay more attention to the sky. It was originally just a lighthearted idea — I felt I needed to stand up for clouds.
In Britain, where I live, they’ve always received a bad rap because they have a habit of raining on our barbecues. The Society was for anyone who, like me, believed that clouds are one of the most evocative, dynamic and accessible aspects of nature.
Over the past two decades, tens of thousands of people have joined the Society from all around the world, and I’ve come to realize there are also weightier reasons for paying more attention to clouds. Some relate to our mental health, and how the sky is an ever-present resource for us. Others relate to atmospheric science, and the way changing cloud cover in a warming climate could shift how clouds regulate temperatures below, which is the subject of my guest essay this week.
The world has changed in both these domains over the life of the Society. Our need to be out in nature for well-being has never been greater. Our attention economy is, of course, dependent on getting us to look down — at our devices. Looking up at the sky is something we can all choose to do at any moment. It is a way to lift our perspective.
Tuning in to the sky encourages you to slow down, to follow a narrative with no beginning and no end, to find what is common between us rather than what divides. No one, as far as I am aware, has ever come to blows over the beauty of a sunrise.
The scientific case for paying more attention to the sky is, I now believe, even more profound. That these most dynamic aspects of nature should change as the global climate heats up has, to me, always seemed likely. Now, the science is starting to show us how, and the stakes are high. The sky, it turns out, is both mirror and messenger. It reflects our need for wonder, and it carries the signals of what lies ahead.

New York Times