I went last year and found the acoustics to be a major trial, but decided to go back this year with a different mind-set. As a patron donor to the Philharmonic, I am offered a VIP pass to the reserved section up-front, so I don't have to stand on-line outside. (An incentive to be a donor…)
On offer this year was a topically appropriate Memorial Day concert of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Ludwig … <Read More>
Just before heading down to Florida last week I went to see Woody Allen's film "Midnight in Paris," and after returning to NYC, I went this afternoon to see Terrence Malick's "Tree of Life." Two more different films in such a brief interval are hard to imagine – but they actually had something very much in common: a commanding director's sensibility and eagerness to take on big questions about the nature of life.
Allen's film … <Read More>
The May/June 2011 issue of International Piano, a fascinating British publication to which I subscribe, has an article by Jessica Duchen titled "Keys of Life" about the British musician Nick van Bloss, whose first recording, of Bach's Goldberg Variations, was recently released. What you would not know from the packaging of the CD or the material in the booklet, and certainly would not guess from listening to the gorgeous recording, is the fantastic … <Read More>
My husband Tim and I came down to Ormond Beach, Florida, on Wednesday for the wedding of my nephew Denver Scott Leonard to Kristin Larmer, which took place Thursday evening. This morning we decided to have a little expedition, so we drove up to St. Augustine. Along the way, we saw a sign for Bulow Plantation Ruins, and decided to take a look.
This is a wonderful little gem of a state park, off Old … <Read More>
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit has upheld a federal district court ruling ordering Massachusetts officials to provide hormone therapy and gender-appropriate clothing for a civil detainee at the state's Treatment Center for Sexuality Dangerous Persons. The court found that the state's refusal to provide such treatment, in the face of multiple expert opinions that it is medically necessary and an attempt by the plaintiff to castrate herself, … <Read More>
Ruling on a case with complex, even dismaying, facts, the California 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled May 6 in In re M.C., 2011 Westlaw 1734263, that a Los Angeles County trial court failed to complete the task before it when it concluded that three people had parental claims regarding a child, and that the child should be placed with its maternal grandparents with reunification services offered for all three presumptive parents. The Court of … <Read More>
Although a same-sex couple cannot get married in New York, they can go to another state that authorizes same-sex marriages and enter into a marriage that will be recognized in New York, and the New York courts will be available to them in case the marriage fails and they seek a divorce. That is the upshot of a May 18 ruling by New York State Acting Supreme Court Justice John Kelly, of Suffolk County Supreme … <Read More>
Yesterday I attended the matinee performance of Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. This is presented as an ensemble production (no names above the title), and this is an ensemble that performs together very well.
Particular standouts are Billy Crudup as the crude literature professor, Bernard Nightingale, Tom Riley as the early 19th century tutor, Septimus Hodge, and Lia Williams as the botanical scholar Hannah Jarvis. Raul Esparza as the modern scion of … <Read More>
Is a foster parent inevitably precluded from being treated as a de facto legal parent of a child? Not necessarily, ruled the Court of Appeals of Washington, Division 1, in In re Parentage and Custody of A.F.J., 2011 Westlaw 1833461 (May 16, 2011), rejecting a challenge brought by the child's biological mother, who is resisting parenting time for her former same-sex partner.
Mary and Jackie began dating in 2002. Jackie, unfortunately, developed a crack … <Read More>
Atlantic Theater Company in NYC presents a series of 10-minute plays annually in the spring, divided into three evenings. I attended "Series A" on Thursday night, which present 8 brief one-act plays of striking diversity.
Of course, at an event like this there will be hits and misses, but I thought there was a very high percentage of hits. I was especially engaged by John Guare's tribute to a once-famous Polish film star, Elzbieta, performed … <Read More>