Opinion
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Conflating Lovecraft, Mugar and Houellebecq
iterary Sources for an Artist’s Work
By: - Mar 18th, 2024Of course my painting is not in the realm of the noxious monsters of Lovecraft but the eventual push of the visual event off the surface seems to speak to a similar aggressive desire to reach out and engage the viewer. It also begins to abandon the pleasant color field that had dominated my work from the beginning of the millennium.
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Blue Heron's Stillness
By: - Mar 03rd, 2024The blue heron, a majestic bird with piercing yellow eyes and a spear-like beak, embodies a unique paradox. It is a creature of both profound stillness and lightning-fast action. But it is the heron’s stillness that truly captivates, a quality that has enthralled artists, writers, and philosophers for centuries. This stillness isn’t just an absence of movement; it’s a potent force, a language of patience, focus, and a deep connection with the environment.
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Squirrels, Taiji and Stillness
By: - Feb 27th, 2024The squirrel comes each day to eat peanuts with me on one of the benches in the meditation garden that surrounds my training and teaching deck. Sometimes she will sit in my lap, sometimes she will sit on the cushion beside me, and sometimes she just sits on the cinder block armrest. But she comes every day, and several times at that.
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Plagiarism, Its Permutations, and How to Avoid Them
There Are Few Clear Guidelines
By: - Jan 09th, 2024Plagiarism has been very much in the news. Even the recent president of Harvard has been under the gun. And yet there seems to be no firm guidelines to instruct non-academics and even academics as to how to spot evidence of plagiarism. What follows is a meditation on plagiarism and how to avoid it.
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Jeff Koons Kills Brooklyn Rail Article
Chilling Impact on Arts Criticism
By: - Dec 17th, 2023As the New York Times reported on December 17, “When (Romy) Golan arrived at Koons’s 10th Avenue studio in New York last winter for her interview, she said she was asked to sign a filming release giving the artist the right to “view and approve any footage, still images and/or promotional material that are proposed for use.” Golan had no plans to film her interview or take photographs but signed the release." Koons effectively killed the story in Brooklyn Rail.
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Jimmy Carter and The Cairo
Looking at Old Snapshots
By: - Dec 05th, 2023Now a Berkshire resident Steve Nelson and his wife Jan resided high above D.C. when Jimmy Carter became president. This piece was inspired by looking at vintage snapshots.
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Jane Hudson’s Tarot
Vernissage and Reading
By: - Sep 23rd, 2023Last night I sat for my first ever Tarot reading. Well, Kindah. Not a full reading but just one card and a brief analysis. The format was devised to accommodate many visitors. Jane Hudson became energized explaining the significance of The Tower.
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American Tenor Stephen Gould Dies at 61
His Performances Were Always A Treat
By: - Sep 20th, 2023Berkshire Fine Arts was fortunate to hear Stephen Gould sing Parsifal in Bayreuth two years ago. He retired from Bayreuth this summer when he was diagnosed with incurable cancer.
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Williams '62 Center Season
Performances Open to the Public
By: - Sep 15th, 2023The ’62 Center for Theatre and Dance unveiled its nineteenth season of extraordinary theatre, music, and dance programming for the Williams College community and beyond.
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WBCN Legend Charles Laquidara
Pairs With Matt Siegel for Benefit Event
By: - Sep 07th, 2023“An Afternoon with Charles Laquidara & Matt Siegel,” moderated by Joyce Kulhawik, is a fundraiser for the Paul “Tank” Sferruzza Scholarship Fund. The late Sferruzza was a sports director at WBCN and WZLX. The event is at City Winery Saturday, September 9.
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Belonging and Stillness
By: - Sep 06th, 2023In the morning, we play qigong for about 90 minutes to circulate the qi we had gathered the previous evening throughout our entire body. The Heavenly Horse Qigong routine is designed to work various areas of the body, and to prepare the body for whatever the day has in store for us.
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Jane Hudson Cuts the Deck
Tarot on the Go
By: - Sep 02nd, 2023In late 2019 I made a piece (later to become The Chariot) and a friend suggested that I pursue a series based on the Tarot. Up to that point I had not worked in series, allowing myself to explore developing imagery as it occurred to me. Of course when Covid hit, I was faced with isolation and focused studio time, so the project took shape then.
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Living a Daoist Life In Today's World
Fall Course Offering
By: - Aug 14th, 2023This fall, beginning after Labor Day, I will be offering a new course entitled "Living a Daoist Life In Today's World." The course will be 20 classes long and will include study of the Dao de Ching, The Law Of The Heart, and The 49 Barriers To Spiritual Growth.
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Letting Go: Stillness
By: - Aug 07th, 2023The Law Of The Heart, an ancient scroll, speaks of the Three Treasures: The Way, The Teacher, and The Scripture. Each plays an important role along the spiritual path we walk.
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Sorrow, Fear and Stillness
By: - Aug 01st, 2023Each of us, each of us all, have lost someone or something. Each of us has faced fear – fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of death. In the moments of experiencing those fears, and of the sorrow that can accompany them, they were real. In some instances, they were debilitating.
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Jan Lewis Nelson's Book on Deborah Sampson
Disguised as a Man She Fought in the American Revolution
By: - Jul 06th, 2023To make money Deborah Sampson told her story to Hermann Mann who published The Female Review: Life of Deborah Sampson: The Female Soldier in the War of Revolution. To boost sales he played loose with the facts. Jan Lewis Nelson expresses Sampson’s anguish over fabrications. She saw action but did not fight in the Battle of Yorktown as Mann falsely claimed.
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Simplicity and Stillness
By: - Jun 21st, 2023Cultivating stillness requires hard work and perseverance. Stillness is far more than merely thinking simple thoughts, and it is much more than a weekly yoga session, a massage to calm yourself, or alcohol to settle yourself. It is a state of being.
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A Sex-Positive Xerxes
Komische Oper's Ecstatic Production
By: - Jun 19th, 2023Handel’s Xerxes is a sex-positive party in this ecstatic production presented by Komische Oper. The theater itself is a beautiful little jewel box seating about 1200 people, an intimate setting appropriate to a production that would highlight intimacy.
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The Memoir of a Female Soldier
Steve Nelson Discusses Book by Jan Lewis Nelson
By: - Jun 10th, 2023In The Memoir of a Female Soldier, a novel by Jan Lewis Nelson, Deborah takes quill pen in hand to tell her story. A wife and mother disabled by her war wound, her petition for a veteran’s pension ignored by Congress, and the victim of media misinformation, she became the first American woman to do a lecture tour. She won respect as the man she wasn’t, but sought respect for the woman she was.
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Be Bamboo
By: - Jun 08th, 2023A freak June storm, an ever-more-common aberration in these times of climate change-induced storms, befell the northern Berkshires last week. It offered five inches of rain, and an hour’s worth of half-inch hail that left the ground looking as though it had snowed. The results were devastating to the meditation garden I have been building for 4 years.
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Pablo Picasso Died FiftyYears Ago
Global Exhibitions and Critical Evaluations
By: - Jun 06th, 2023Pablo Picasso was the most famous and influential artist of the 20th Century. The marking of fifty years from his death has created numerous global exhibitions. Critics have waded in with evaluations that acknowledge the work but deplore the man. Simply put it begs the question. Was Pablo Picasso and asshole?
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A Renewed Boston Skyline
A Love of Geometry
By: - Mar 10th, 2023There are three examples of a new look to Boston’s skyline: Boston University’s Center for Computing and Data Sciences or “Jenga Building” near Kenmore Square; Harvard’s John A. Paulson Science and Applied Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) Building in Allston; and the One Congress Street Building at the Bulfinch Triangle next to Government Center.
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Whitney Museum Workers
Negotiate First Union Contract
By: - Mar 06th, 2023After more than a year of bargaining, the Whitney Museum Union of Local 2110 UAW have reached a tentative agreement with the Museum on a first union contract. Union members are in the process of voting on the contract.
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The Literary Life
Winter Is for Writing Books
By: - Feb 28th, 2023In 2015 I wrote a book of poetry, Shards of a Life, which was launched with a reading and dialogue with director, Susan Wissler, at Edith Wharton's The Mount. It was an auspicious beginning. Each winter other books of poetry and oral history followed. There was a disruption in 2021 entailing recovery from spinal surgery. The eighth book, Annisquam: Pip and Me Coming of Age, is on track for a Spring/ Summer release.
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Gloucester 400th Plus
Video Access to 2022 Lectures
By: - Jan 12th, 2023Gloucester 400th Plus is an occasion for research and reflection on all aspects of the history and culture of Cape Ann. in 2022 the Cape Ann Museum hosted a range of panel discussions and lectures. Here is the full program with links to their videos. It is significant that the museum has preserved and made available such a valuable resource.
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