Category Archives: information

Entitled

My quandary over what to «name« a post has led me to refine my activity.

I think I am gaining skill in the art of titling a story.

It’s about defining what you want to say.

It’s about grabbing a  reader’s attention. It’s an important part of the process, especially in my «opinion« pieces. It’s very much a challenge for my poems.

Ok, so I have laid bare my longs and my shorts.

Here’s one where I came up with an “alternative” to the title I used.

Man walks into a bar

The original was «Barkeep, I’ll have a….« The subject was simply musing on the art of tending to a coffee bar.

Did ya know?

Saffron, that rare and expensive spice, is rare and expensive because it’s challenging to harvest.

As a spice, it’s a deeply yellow hue. The little florets are purple.

I did not know that.

Here’s advice that is both timely and practical, well, timely for me since there was a leak in my egg drawer.  Not eggs, I’m happy to report as that would be a big mess, but it caused a need for a clean-up.

Don’t keep the fridge door open for longer than 5 minutes. Then give your refrigerator 20 minutes for recovery.

I don’t think I knew that. Didya?

I learned a new word from the NYT The Morning pangram (I want to call it pan-a-gram, but it’s not). Monocracy, government or rule by one person, also referred to as dictatorship.

Posters

The poster has been dorm room art for very many years.

The Poster House is a museum that treats posters as art and their designers as artists.

A poster for a bygone event is now a work of art  decorating a French cafe.

Lithographs were created as commercial art. They were made as accessible reproductions of famous works by famous artists.

They were utilitarian or they proselitized, or they were affordable, or they were mementos.

Poster House shows the best of these and expounds on their background. It houses a huge variety of these types of artwork.

Poster House displayed political art as well as advertising art at the exhibits I saw.

My first visit to the museum was in tribute to a boss back in the day who started his businesses selling posters via catalog.

Admission is  free on the First Fridays of the month.

It’s a sweet and friendly space. Go and enjoy it.

Music to your ears

You are hard-wired to react to music. We all are.

This is a neurological fact.

Music is what we, or rather our forefathers, used to communicate before they developed language.

You might think of song as words before words were formed.

This is amazing, as is the theory you will hear about in the video linked above.

Music releases dopamine.

It can help alleviate pain.

Music can stimulate memory as well.

It can mitigate the effects of Parkinson’s.

It also helps with other neuro- degenerative diseases.

Professor Daniel Levitan will tell you more in his conversation at StarTalk.

In the pod

Huddling with podcasts has become a source of comfort for me. I spend a part of my respite time under earphones and tuned to one of these specific three.

At the moment, that rotation is led by Julia Louis Dreyfus. I am caught up on Wiser than Me, which gladdens me (I have been enriched), and I can’t wait for Wednesday.

Anderson Cooper offers wisdom on grieving; perversely, I find tremendous uplift in listening to All There Is with…. I am far from done with the seasons of this series.

Somehow, Brooke Shields snuck on to my listening cycle. On Now What? she interviews people who have dealt with moments of transition. (Who hasn’t?) These shared pivotal moments are  enlightening.

I found myself listening to one of the most distinctive voices the other day. [Bebe Neuwirth has a special timbre when she speaks.]

I appreciate her work as a dancer and actress, but I love her for a moment at a Broadway Cares event some 4 years ago.

The audience was instructed “cell phones off.” A routine command in the theater. Within minutes, a phone went off. 

Ms. Neuwirth rose to the occasion in righteous outrage admonishing the offender.

I hate hearing ringing during a performance, don’t you?

Apparently, she and I are in sync on this one.

Is Forrest Gump just looking for El Dorado?

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

We’ve seen Candide at least a couple of times. If by “seen,” you count the back rows of the Theatre, which is still occupied by Wicked for these dozen plus years. The stage is away aways from the topt’o the house there.

We saw Grand Hotel with Cyd Charisse uptop, too. Even from that height, she had spectacular legs.

I digress a bit, but yes, everyone should be aware of Ms. Charisse’s beauty in her Bway debut at age 70 and the steep incline that defines the Gershwin Theatre’s  seating capacity.

Candide was led by Jim Dale and a newly minted Jason Daniely and featured Arte Johnson. Its music is by Leonard Bernstein with some additional Sondheim songs.

Like Forrest, Candide falls into a series of adventures [well mis- adventures].

His naïveté, [well their naïveté] creates the disconnect between how unsettling things are and their happy-go-lucky reactions.

“The best of all possible worlds” offers many upsets to the hero [well heroes] of these picaresques

In Gump’s best world, “life is like a box of chocolates.”

Two views, two famous lines. Two innocents abroad.

M.C.N.Y.

Sing it to the tune of .. yeah you guessed it.

When you tell people you plan a visit to the Museum of the City of New York, they usually have a positive response.

My friend M said something to the effect of , “I love that place.” You get the drift.

I loved the Manny Vega exhibit. That especially, but there was a lot to like in every gallery.

So, a chance to enjoy tea [and crumpets?] with a curator just seemed like a perfect lunchtime activity.

One such event passed us by on the 2nd (with Sarah Henry), and The Curator’s Cup: Afternoon Tea with Sarah Seidman is on Oct 22nd, aka this Tuesday.

I am intending on attending the November 19th. I look forward to The Curator’s Cup: Afternoon Tea with Lilly Tuttle.