I saw "Bluebird" last night. This play by Simon Stephens was first produced by English Stage Company in London in 1998, but it didn't seem dated to me. The staging is simple: a few chairs on a raised platform on a bar stage. The only other fixed props are two telephone booths (open) mounted stage rear and off to one side.
The premise is that a cab driver, Jimmy, played with stunning realism by Simon … <Read More>
U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote ruled on August 1 that a transgender inmate could proceed with her constitutional and statutory discrimination claims against an in-patient substance abuse treatment center that denied her the opportunity to participate in the support group of her preferred gender. The opinion, published in the August 19 edition of the New York Law Journal is particularly interesting in holding that the NY state human rights law's ban on housing discrimination … <Read More>
Last night the Mostly Mozart Festival presented a no-Mozart concert – a rarity this month! Only two works on the program: Stravinsky's Symphony in C and Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 4. Music Director Louis Langree conducted, and Nelson Freire was soloist in the Beethoven, for a program a bit short by MM standards (about an hour and a half, including intermission).
A complicating factor last night, which may explain some of the empty seats, was … <Read More>
Circuit Judge John Schmidt of the Seventh Illinois Judicial Circuit Court in Springfield (Sangamon County), ruled yesterday that the state of Illinois was not obligated to renew its contracts with Catholic Charities to continue providing foster care and adoption placement services in the state. Granting summary judgment to the state and denying it to Catholic Charities, Judge Schmidt ended up applying a simple principle of government contract law: no individual has a right to contract … <Read More>
An important part of the federal-level gay rights agenda has been attempting to find a way around the failure of federal law to acknowledge the reality of bi-national same-sex couple families for purposes of immigration law. Nobody knows exactly how many people are affected by this, but there are enough bi-national same-sex couples for this to have emerged as a real issue. A foreign national comes to the U.S. on a student visa, temporary work … <Read More>
Last night I attended a Mostly Mozart Festival concert led by British conductor Jonathan Nott, the long-time music director of the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, with piano soloist Juho Pohjonen, a young Finnish musician, soloing in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488. The program began with Igor Stravinsky's "Symphonies of Wind Instruments," and concluded after intermission with Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 in Bb, Op. 60.
This concert provided me with … <Read More>
A unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit denied a petition by a lesbian from Venezuela for review of the Board of Immigration Appeals' rejection of her asylum and withholding of removal claims based on her sexual orientation and political views. The court agreed with the BIA and the Immigration Judge that there was not sufficient evidence of persecution of homosexuals by the Venezuelan government to justify treating the petitioner … <Read More>
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM), a New Jersey-based non-profit political organization dedicated to fighting against same-sex marriage, has lost its constitutional challenges to campaign disclosure laws in Maine and Rhode Island. In a pair of opinions by Judge Kermit Lipez, the Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit ruled on August 11 that neither of the states' laws suffered from the constitutional defects alleged by NOM.
NOM's lawsuit parallels recent efforts by … <Read More>
A unanimous U.S. Court of Appeals 8th Circuit panel ruled in Wolfe v. Fayetteville, Arkansas, School District, 2011 Westlaw 3444555 (Aug. 9, 2011), that a public school student seeking to hold the school district liable for sexual harassment under Title IX, 20 U.S.C. Section 1681, must show that the harassment he suffered was motivated by his sex or his failure to conform to gender stereotypes. Rejecting a challenge to the trial judge's jury instructions, the court affirmed … <Read More>
Having had a good experience with the Glimmerglass Opera Festival in Cooperstown, NY, last summer, I decided on a repeat. This time, my husband came along as well as my regular concert-going friend. We drove up from NYC to Cooperstown on Friday morning, arriving in plenty of time to attend the benefit recital by Nathan and Julie Gunn. That evening, we had a sumptuous repast at the American Hotel Restaurant in Sharon Springs. On Saturday, … <Read More>