Blogs

  • Phoebe is Coming!

    Posted: August 20th 2015 @2:33 PM

    … Phoebe Légère, that is. One of my favorite artists—and favorite people ever!

    Check out her appearance at the end of the month in Orleans… that’s Sunday, 30 August 2015, 19:30, you must call or email for directions 508-255-3864.

    MV5BMTg1NDkzNTQxNV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwODk1NzUxNTE@._V1_UX214_CR0,0,214,317_AL_PHOEBE LEGERE is a songwriter and resident of Maine, and of Acadian and Abenaki (First Nations) descent. She sings, and plays piano, accordion, cello, Native American flute, organ, buffalo drum, synthesizer, guitar and cavaquinjo. Her latest release is called ACADIAN MOON, and is inspired by her Acadian heritage. She has created the Shamancycle, a giant, 15-person, ride-able Eagle sculpture-vehicle, running on alternative energy. Legere will be performing on the solar stage of the Shamancycle at the San Francisco Makers Fair this May 16th and 17th. At age 16, Phoebe made her Carnegie Hall debut and was signed to Epic Records. Her original song “Marilyn Monroe” was a hit on college radio in 1990, and her accordion song “Amazing Love” was in the Top 40 on Adult Contemporary in 1997. She starred in cult films including Mondo New York and Toxic Avenger 2 and 3. She opened for David Bowie, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in music in 2000. Phoebe has released 15 CDs of original music, and has appeared on National Public Radio, CBS Sunday Morning, PBS City Arts, and Charlie Rose. She has sung at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and at the Congres Mondial Acadien. Recently Phoebe appeared on HBO, singing her original song about the environment, “Hip Hop Frog” (now available on iTunes).

    A great introduction to Phoebe is here:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrTuh2ocAj8<br< a=””> /> http://www.last.fm/music/Phoebe+Legere

     

     

     
  • Housesitting Mystery Perfect Beach Reading

    Posted: July 27th 2015 @2:27 PM

    61W5u73ymLL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_It’s an interesting way to spend one’s retirement, but Truxton (“My parents named me after a highway sign”) Lewis, a retired NYPD detective captain, is able to spend his time traveling by … housesitting. He gets to stay places for free, and homeowners are thrilled for have a former cop in their houses; not a bad idea all round.

    Tru is housesitting in rural Kentucky and is learning something new: Max Beasley is teaching him the almost-lost art of dry stone walls (rock walls that hold together without mortar). Which is fine until Tru arrives at the job site to find that the wall’s knocked down—and Max has disappeared.

    Well, he hasn’t disappeared, exactly: he’s in jail. For murder. A greedy developer whose offers Max had been refusing (even when they involved threats and more) is dead, crushed beneath the dry wall.

    Tru, of course, is immediately on the case, determined to prove Max innocent. This is the beginning of a new series and if subsequent books assemble the same witty dialogue, oddly satisfying characters, and final unexpected twist, they are bound to be successful.

    Take it to the beach this summer, and enjoy!

     

     

     
  • “X” Marks the Spot for Great Reading

    Posted: July 4th 2015 @2:05 PM

     

    It’s Book #24 in a series about a private investigator.

    Think about that for a moment. 24 books. 24 stories, all following the likeable Kinsey Milhone as she lives her life, finds and loses love, and—oh, yes—solves mysteries. Honestly, that’s a whole lot of books. That’s a long time to stick with one person. You’d think that, by now, the character would start becoming a caricature of herself. You’d think that the reader might lose interest in where the protagonist has been, what she’s done, what she thinks about, where she lives.

    You’d be wrong.

    24940998Sue Grafton’s latest novel, X, is as satisfying a read as was the first time readers met the protagonist in A is for Alibi… more so, in fact. Kinsey Milhone has developed nicely over the years. She’s smart without being smart-assed, clever without figuring things out too quickly, and—more than any other endearing feature—is not above making mistakes.

    In X, the reader doesn’t have to figure out who the “bad guy”—in this case, a serial killer—is: Kinsey takes care of that very early on in the story. Distracted by side issues (who are her neighbors, and what’s their game? Why was her last payment composed of counterfeit bills? Has she unwittingly placed someone in jeopardy? Will her water consumption ever earn her landlord’s approval?), she’s been handed a list of victims and intends to find out how the seemingly innocuous villain pulled it off—and how to stop him from killing again.

    One of Grafton’s best skills is in making the everyday interesting. She takes readers through scenes step by step without it ever feeling that one is reading a description: the reader isn’t visualizing what’s happening, they’re right there with Kinsey as it does, even when it’s as small a scene as pulling out her typewriter from under her desk.

    Ultimate accolade: I stayed up late reading it. You will, too.

     

     

     

    X by Sue Grafton

    Marian Wood Books/Putnam

    (August 25, 2015)

     
  • The Rock and Roll Pride Ride and the Tomboy Queen

    Posted: June 28th 2015 @8:22 AM

     

    I was the queen of the TOMBOYS.

    I remember rough housing on the school play ground in the 1st and 2nd grade with the boys, playing in the dirt with TONKA trucks, trading horror comic books for models of GODZILLA.

    At the grand old age of seven, I was having a blast.

    I would join up with my best friend Ronny, a perpetually filthy red-haired little boy who loved war games in the dirt. We would set up our plastic army figurines or our cowboys and Indians (I was always the Indians) and go to war in the back alley.

    I was happy.

    My second grade teacher, Mrs. H. (oldest and meanest teacher in my Bradley Beach, New Jersey, grammar school) didn’t like the fact that I had all male friends, dressed like a boy, wore my hair short like a boy and acted like what she felt a boy should act like. After I got into a fight on the school grounds (I WON) with a boy, Mrs. H. told my parents to send me for a psychological evaluation for “gender confusion.”

    I called it “TOMBOY” she called it “gender confusion.”

    For 8 weeks, every Wednesday after school, I was taken to Miss O.

    Miss O. was a tall, pretty woman in her early 30s. She was the first adult I’d ever met who truly wanted to know what I was thinking and how I was feeling. She looked into my eyes when we spoke. She asked me about my dreams!

    About my dreams?! Wow! I dreamt of being the Indian warrior on the horse with the bow and arrow, not his wife sitting home in the tee pee! Who would want to be left home in the tee pee?!

    She laughed, “NOT ME!”

    I was in love.

    After 8 weeks, my mother said that Miss O.’s evaluation of me was, “There is nothing wrong with your daughter. She is just overly creative and a little eccentric. Let her be.”

    Rock on!

    Except that I didn’t.

    That year, my brother, sister and I were sent to a private yeshiva filled with rich kids who all spoke Hebrew and had known each other since they were in nursery school. We were brightly colored Legos in a jigsaw puzzle box.

    I was told that not only did I have to wear a dress to school every day, but one that covered my knees. My mother sent me off in a maxi skirt that hovered below my ankles. The first time I tried to play kick ball with the boys, I fell flat on my face.

    My Indian warrior was dead. I was banished to the tee pee.

    When I was ten, my parents moved to Rumson, New Jersey, a very posh little town.

    After a ceremony that entailed tearing my old maxi skirt to shreds, I tried to go back to my Queen of the Tomboys ways, but I had lost my mojo. Plus being the new kid in school when your parents drive a Volaré and everyone else’s drives a Cadillac was not so easy.

    But the year I turned 12 something happened.

    Lindsay Wagner.

    Every Wednesday night, “The Bionic Woman” would come on television. There was nothing, nothing that could keep me away from that show. I would forgo ice cream, movies, and bribery. Lindsay was tall and pretty like Miss O., but powerful. She could jump over a building, beat up the biggest, nastiest guys. She was my hero.

    Once again, I was in love.

    By the time I got to high school, I had abandoned all pretense of fitting in, and for the first time since I played in the dirt with Ronny, the Queen of the Tomboys was back, only this time, I had discovered the power of being sexy.

    I wore jeans cut off just below the butt with California hiking boots, cut-up Blondie T-shirts, a coke spoon dangling from a strand of leather around my neck. I screamed the lyrics to the Sex Pistols “God Save the Queen” as I marched down the hallways of Rumson Fairhaven High School.

    This was not gender confusion, I really wanted to be a girl, but I wanted to be a girl like Joan Jett not Julie Andrews.

    So yeah, I got in trouble a lot, my grades suffered, and my conservative parents didn’t know what to do with the wild child under their roof. They didn’t know that after years of suppression, I was exploding out of my cocoon. As Joan would sing, “Don’t give a damn about my bad reputation!”

    My folks tolerated the cigarettes and the apricot brandy, but after my best gal pal’s mother called to tell my mom, “Your daughter is trying to turn mine into a lesbian!” Mom hit the roof.

    It was bearable to have a juvenile delinquent under your roof, but a gay one?!

    Oy vey!

    I took a tip from The Runaways and ran away, but after a particularly loud party I threw landed me in the Long Branch, New Jersey, police station, my parents shipped me off to a Chasidic rabbi in Crown Heights Brooklyn who specialized in turning wayward Jewish girls religious.

    Once again I was forced to wear skirts below the knees, shirts below the elbows and above the collarbone. I was told not to sing in front of men, lest the sensual sound of my voice might distract them from being holy.

    I was also told not to touch a man, not even a handshake, until I was married. That wasn’t a problem. I didn’t want to touch a man. I wanted to touch Grace Jones.

    I could have run away again, of course, but I was 16, broke, in New York City in 1981 and didn’t want to wind up being a hooker or a dead body, so I bided my time. I wore the dreaded maxi skirts with my jeans underneath. I wore long-sleeved shirts in the summer with a Rolling Stones T-shirt over them.

    I was fighting to keep my power.

    The rabbi wanted me to get religious, get married and have 6 to 12 kids. The moment I was able to move out of his house and into my own apartment, I proceeded to get myself a girlfriend instead.

    New York City in the early ’80s was not a safe place.

    Unless you were on Christopher Street, walking down the street holding your girlfriend’s hand might get you stoned, and not in a fun way.

    But for one day a year on Gay Pride, it was as though we owned New York. For one day a year it was okay to be whoever you really were, to love whoever you really loved.

    I would linger on Christopher Street into the late hours, long after the parade was over and the crowds had dissipated to soak in every last bit of pride that thousands of people had left like breadcrumbs from the day’s festivities.

    I was there, sunburnt, sweaty, exhausted, filthy and smiling ear to ear, once again digging in the dirt with Ronny, the Queen of the Tomboys.

    Long may she reign!

     

    **

    HAPPY GAY PRIDE NEW YORK CITY!

    HAPPY GAY PRIDE U.S.A.!!

    HAPPY ALWAYS, ALWAYS, GAY PRIDE IN PROVINCETOWN!

    AT LONG LAST MARRIAGE EQUALITY ALL ACROSS AMERICA!

    LOVE WINS!!!

     
  • Drawing-Room Drama… With Some Clever Twists

    Posted: June 20th 2015 @2:04 PM

    The story of a woman chafing at her traditional roles as wife and mother—and ultimately breaking free from them—may feel old-hat to those living in a post-1970s world, but when Norwegian playwright Henrick Ibsen wrote A Doll’s House in a different set of ‘70s—the 1870s—the situation was quite different. The play was considered shocking, and Nora Helmer a protagonist audiences couldn’t understand.

    Fischer Christmas Doll's House HarborThe audience for the Harbor Stage Company’s new production of Doll’s House may understand Nora, but that’s as much a result of founding member Stacy Fischer’s portrayal as it is of Ibsen’s writing. Nora’s initial self-absorption—irritating in other productions—feels naïve and harmless here, and her inability to see her secret as anything but blameless is believable. Her breathless wonder at her current good fortune lies oddly atop her apparent disinterest in other aspects of her life, including her children (who never appear in this production), but Fischer pulls it off without any cognitive dissonance and in fact keeps the audience pulling for her throughout.

    Founding member Robert Kropf’s adaptation is strong and unnerving, with only occasional lapses into verbal expressions at odds with their surroundings. He’s pared down the cast without paring down the drama, and the overall feeling of a claustrophobic world and claustrophobic lives within that world is powerful and sustained. Kropf’s own portrayal of Nils Krogstad teeters on the very edge of over-the-top smarminess without ever actually going there, and the audience easily accepts the sinister, even life-threatening dynamic the character embodies.

    Founding member Jonathan Fielding’s Torvald is easy to dislike—weak, smug, self-assured and self-congratulating—and this heightens the impact of his rage when he finally explodes. Nora’s desperate fear of her husbandFischer Fielding Doll's Harbor in those moments is palpable and may serve as a trigger to some: it felt very real and very frightening. (Disclosure: I’ve worked for years with survivors of domestic abuse, and the scene between Nora and Torvald after he’s read Nils’ letter could not have been more realistic. Kropf’s sensitive adaptation/direction brought this right into the reality of living-rooms well into the 21st century and in ways that previous productions have never done for me.) Despite his constant endearments toward his wife, this Torvald is every bit as self-absorbed as Nora … and without her charm.

    As in every Harbor Stage production, founding member Brenda Withers is simply perfect. Her Kristine Linde is a multi-dimensional character, subtle and engaging. Previous productions have underscored Kristine’s role in Nora’s awakening; Withers shows us a character very much in charge of her own journey, with Nora a means to her own ends. She may have married to support her family’s needs, but it was her own decision and she is clear-headed about making more of them. If the play is a beginning lesson in feminism, Kristine is as much on its faculty as is, in the end, Nora.

    Kropf, Fischer Doll's HarborRobin Bloodworth’s Dr. Jens Rank is a gentleman in every sense of the word. While the actor’s commanding physical presence is at odds with the character’s terminal disease, he’s completely engaging and believable as the dying man at last declaring his love for an unattainable—and virtually uncaring—woman. And his gentleness around Nora is exceptional. He projects pathos without ever becoming pathetic.

    Some deft creative directing around barriers (the rooms are clearly separated and delimited until the end, when walls suddenly become fluid) and using costumes to underscore transformations complete this brilliant performance. Go see it.

    The unexpected bonus? The production is shot through with surprising moments of humor far removed from Ibsen’s occasionally heavy-handed script—and yet completely at home in this season début by one of the most talented ensembles on the Cape.

     

     

    A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

    Adapted and directed by Robert Kropf

    June 18-July 11, 2015

    Harbor Stage Company, 15 Kendrick Avenue (Wellfleet Harbor), www.harborstage.org

     

     

     

     

     
  • Captured 1614

    Posted: June 1st 2015 @8:34 AM

    Captured 1614_ Kidnapped Wampanoag bound in ship_ _Courtesy Plymouth 400The Mayflower arrived in what is now known as Provincetown Harbor in (according to the European calendar) November of 1620. But the happy fictional images of the first Thanksgiving were not the first encounter between the Native population and the Europeans, and the exhibition Captured 1614 currently on display at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum tells a darker story.

    In the summer of 1614, Thomas Hunt, arguably acting against specific orders from the absent Captain John Smith, captured and kidnapped 27 Wampanoag men from Patuxet. He sent them to Spain to be sold as slaves.

    Let’s back up a moment. The name Wampanoag means People of the First Light. In the 1600s, there were as many as 40,000 people in the 67 villages that made up the Wampanoag Nation, covering a territory stretching from Wessegusset (Weymouth) through the Cape and islands and down into Rhode Island. Their way of life followed the cycle of the seasons: they lived in forests and valleys in winter, and moved closer to rivers and the ocean to plant crops and fish in spring, summer, and fall. A way of life in complete harmony with nature.

    Alexandra Lopes-Pocknett_Captured 1614_An Empty Horizon._Courtesy Plymouth 400These are the people the European “explorers” encountered in their search for riches. When the anticipated gold did not materialize, many of them, like John Hunt, made up for it in flesh instead. Of the 27 men captured, only one ever came home again.

    The Europeans left good records. History is always written by the winners, and we’ve had centuries of hearing only the European side of these first encounters. But now the nonprofit organization Plymouth 400 is giving voice to the voiceless through Captured 1614—literally. Developed, designed, and produced by Wampanoag people, the exhibition features contemporary Aquinnah Wampanoag and Mashpee Wampanoag speaking the words and portraying the lives of their ancestors.

    These men were not statistics: they were people. They were husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, friends. They were loved and needed by their community, and they were ripped from it to satisfy rapacious greed.

    We’ve come late to enabling the Wampanoag to tell their side of this story to the wider world, but now, finally, their voices can be heard. Through June 30th, you can hear them at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum. Isn’t it time you heard history told—and events remembered—from the other side?

     

     
  • Paul Wisotzky

    Posted: May 28th 2015 @7:20 AM

    He is himself a potter, but Paul Wisotzky doesn’t talk much about his own art. Instead, it’s the work of the other artists at his gallery—the Blue Gallery on Commercial Street in Provincetown—that captivates him. And it’s easy to see why.

    I started Blue Gallery as a way to bring a varied, unique and affordable portfolio of fine craft to the Outer Cape. The area has a rich and diverse arts community but is strangely lacking in venues for fine craft artists and makers to display and sell their work. I hope that Blue Gallery can help to fill this void.

    We live in a world of mass production where little is known about the making of most of the objects in our every day life. Yet there is a rich and vibrant community of craft artists still creating, making and building on the history of American craft. I see Blue Gallery as a small window into that world and an opportunity for all of us to celebrate this diverse and talented community of artists, their creativity and the handmade.

    I believe we need to bring the ethos of the eat local movement to the world of everyday useful objects. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we knew the name and a little bit of the story of the artists who make the items we use every day – the jewelry around our neck, the wallet in our pocket or the mug we drink our coffee from each morning. Even better what if the makers of these items lived in your community! Wherever you live, these artists and makers exist. I encourage you to seek them out and support them.

    Blue Gallery hopes to play a small role in keeping the tradition of American craft and the process of making alive and well.

    Paul Wisotzky 3 BottlesRunning Dog Studios - Chef Ving 2-Sided FishJody Johnson1Maia Leppo Steel NecklaceDonna Mahan LampJack Curran Keepsake BoxPaul Wisotzky Four Goblets 2Running Dog Studios Pearl Large PaddleFishBeth DonovanJodh Johnson2Nanci Jaye fish78.wMark Rea trio10eDanielle SchmidtPaul Wisotzky Three Striped MugsSally Prangley Color Swatch Basket II leopard front

    But to my mind the real feature of the gallery is Wisotzky’s own work. He is a master potter and an intrinsic light shines from his pieces.

    He works out of a Truro studio called Blueberry Lane Pottery—after the little dirt road where he lives and makes his pots.

    Paul is a studio potter, teacher as well as a gallery owner who fires his functional stoneware and porcelain pottery in soda and reduction kilns to cone 10.

    He currently teaches at Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill and has served as a studio/technical assistant at the Penland School of Crafts and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. Paul also makes and teaches brush making working with a variety of animal hairs and bamboo as the primary materials.  Recently he has taken up book folding.

    Paul sees his pottery as a collaboration between his mind and hands, the clay and glazes, and the fires of the kiln. He’s my guest on Arts Week on Thursday, May 28th; I hope you’ll listen it to the show or the podcast here on womr.org.

     
  • Marge Piercy on Healing Wisdom

    Posted: April 2nd 2015 @12:58 PM

    made in DetroitMarge Piercy, author of seventeen novels including The New York Times Bestseller Gone To Soldiers; the National Bestsellers Braided Lives and The Longings of Women, and the classic Woman on the Edge of Time; will be on WOMR’s Healing Wisdom Thursday April 9th at 9am. She will be discussing her lastest work: Made in Detroit. Piercy has been a key player in the women’s movement and has been a active participant in resisting and shedding light on wars in the Middle East as well as in Vietnam. We’ll talk poetry and where women are now.

     

     

     
  • Zoe Lewis is in the house!

    Posted: January 22nd 2015 @10:14 AM

    IMG_5783Hello, gentle listeners, and tune in to Arts Week today, January 22nd, for an interview with the charming and talented Zoe Lewis. We’ll be talking about music, performances, feminism, travel, and more! 12:30 pm ET.

     
  • Drawing the Line

    Posted: January 8th 2015 @12:41 PM

    With New Year’s Eve just passing us by, this little resolution seemed appropriate.

    I call it Drawing the Line.

    I remember taking my first and only trip (thus far) to Israel. I was told it would be a life-changing trip, and for many reasons that I can’t explain right now, it was, but the biggest impact the trip had on me was during the 13-hour flight back to New York.

    I love New York. I have done a good amount of traveling, but I’ve always felt happy to come home to the greatest city in the world. Except this time.

    Shortly after we took off, I realized I didn’t want to come home. I tried to shrug it off as a “Boohoo, my vacation is over” kind of thing, but it was more than that. I really truly didn’t want to come home.

    I couldn’t sleep – something about a screaming baby two rows back – but no matter. I used the time to ponder my reluctance to return to New York. The answer came to me mid-flight: It was because I didn’t have a home to come home to.

    My small catering business had grown into a bona fide company to be reckoned with. The phone was ringing off the hook. We were booked with events for 100 guests to 700 and often catered multiple weddings in a single weekend. I’d outgrown the warehouse kitchen in Long Island City that I’d shared with two other companies and built my own swank commercial kitchen in Lower Manhattan. There was much to be proud of, if I had the time to be proud.

    My kitchen was a 12-block walk; just a quick stroll. But to save time, I answered my business phone calls and emails from my apartment. I had an answering machine next to my bed receive all the forwarded calls from the office.

    In the morning, I would wake up, check my work emails for a few hours, and answer my work phone calls for another few hours. At about 2 in the afternoon, it would occur to me that my stomach was burning from hunger and that I was still in my underwear. So I’d down breakfast in two gulps, and then after having used up my entire morning and early afternoon working, I’d walk to work to meet clients and, you know, work.

    Late at night, as I drifted off to sleep, I’d hear the voices of bar mitzvah and wedding inquiries chatting away from my answering machine.

    I was getting fat and depressed, and my home was anything but my castle. It was just an outer office with a bed.

    I decided on that 13-hour flight to change all that. After I got home, I disconnected the Internet from my home, unforwarded my office phone and reclaimed my apartment.

    Mornings became my time to write, paint, stretch, think and have a proper breakfast that included this thing called chewing. The walk to work became a time to smell the air or a chance to cut through Tompkins Square Park and see the dogs playing in the dog run.

    I had thought that all those calls and emails waiting for me when I arrived would mean I wouldn’t get out of work until late at night, but oddly, my day got shorter. Something about getting “me” time, focused my brain so that I was far more efficient at work!

    At the end of the day, when I put the gate to my kitchen down, I left the phone calls, emails, proposals, bills and assorted mishegash at the office. No notebook in my bag, no calls to return later after dinner. DONE!

    At night as I went to sleep, I was not lullabied by Mrs. Horowitz from Long Island’s voice shrilly demanding “a kiddie bar with real-looking cocktails, not just Shirley Temples!”

    So that went OK … for a few years. Then my girlfriend asked that I install email in my apartment for personal things, like family or friends. So I did, promising myself that I would only check personal email while at home.

    That lasted about two days.

    I got an iPhone, promising myself that I would only check work emails in case of emergency. Yeah, that worked. … I knew I was in trouble when I caught myself two-finger typing a sample menu at midnight. Grilled flank steak, seasoned with insomnia, anyone?

    When I was flying home from a trip recently, guess what else came back? You guessed it: That feeling of not wanting to come home.

    I suppose I am a workaholic, or I’m a small business owner in one of the most expensive cities in the world, trying to keep up, or both.

    So I’m counting days again, as they say in recovery programs; no work emails at home, reclaiming my mornings to do things like write my column. I’m also reclaiming the evenings I am not supervising events. I have a gym membership, and I damn well plan on using it!

    Drawing a line between work and home gets pretty darn complicated when you are self-employed. Especially if you work from home. I am lucky enough to have another place to go. Not everyone does.

    I have an entrepreneurial pal who holds his meetings in a nearby hotel lobby, a professor pal who does her computer work from a local café. There are ways.

    I always banish work from the bedroom! Well, almost always. As I said, I’m counting days.

    I am grateful for that flight back from Tel Aviv that taught me that home is where the heart is, but it’s up to us how we fill that heart.

    Today I choose yoga (really bad yoga, but I get an A for effort) and writing to fill my heart.

    I choose oatmeal and bananas with almond butter for breakfast and enough time to enjoy the sweet banana flavor.

    It’s good to be home.