“Let’s make a Sandwich” is perhaps not the most interesting invitation. Even a sandwich you can eat with a fork doesn’t really inspire much emotional conviction. So, a sandwich of micro-operas inspired by a 1950s infomercial of the same seems dubious at best. Then again dubiousness is just that at which Geurilla Opera, the ensemble-in-residence …
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Can writing be taught?*
In my life as an editor and occasional writer, I’ve found there to be two basic types of people who write. The first group call themselves “writers.” They know the rules and tricks and processes and take great pride in exercising their facility therewith. They really like to talk about punctuation and the proper — …
english: all day, every day
Do, you like me, tire of the same-old, same-old? Occasionally desire the other, greener grass? It’s a common enough malaise, regardless of the greenness of the grass in which we find ourselves. A friend currently living in Hawaii but having spent most of her life abroad expressed the dullness of her every day there this …
Salem-London-Paris
Saturday morning, I spent a couple hours in the basement of the old-Salem house in which I’ve most recently been roosting, doing some some work and making some discoveries. In an effort to create a “staging area,” we had to move cases of un-opend tonic water in glass bottles from the ’50s, unidentified boxes from …
Thanksgiving 2.0
“Some five million tons of food—enough to fill the John Hancock Building more than 14 times—will be wasted between Thanksgiving and the end of 2013. Worldwide, some 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted annually, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.” http://foodtank.org/news/2013/11/in-a-world-full-of-holiday-excess-lets-stand-up-and-combat-food-waste It’s no surprise that preparing a meal is an offering. But what …
a supreme meal
Who feeds your family? Who’s given the responsibility of preparing the most ritualistically important meals of the year? For many, the values that inform this decision probably still mirror the upbringing of famed food writer Raymond Sokolov who writes in his recent memoir Steal the Menu: “My father would have shuddered at the thought that …
Future Beauty
A creativity manifesto: Going around museums and galleries, seeing films, talking to people, seeing new shops, looking at silly magazines, taking an interest in the activities of people in the street, looking at art, travelling: So begins a “manifesto” on creativity written by Rei Kawakubo, the untrained founder of the trailblazing Japanese fashion house Commes …
a crucible
: a pot in which metals or other substances are heated to a very high temperature or melted : a difficult test or challenge : a place or situation that forces people to change or make difficult decisions In case you’ve ever wondered, this is the definition of a “crucible,” which also serves as the …
free stuff
I occasionally receive invitations to a rather diverse array of events, and increasingly find it difficult to decipher in what capacity I am expected to attend them: as a reviewer, an editor, a random schmuck who subscribed to the e-newsletter. So when I received an invitation from a gin company to attend its “Voyage into …
Eet smakelijk!
When my roommate/landlord/house-sit headed off to the Netherlands, I asked him to bring back some foreign food magazines for my browsing pleasure. Something I wouldn’t normally see, that would challenge and inspire. He brought me Foodies and La Cucina Italia, whose titles belie their beautiful images, boundless recipes, and bizarre arrangement of letters. Foodies featured on …
Goat anyone? 