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Posts Tagged ‘Art’

Mesa Morning

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on May 18, 2015| 1 Comment »

In the old days, Bob and I would travel together to medical conferences with some frequency. I toured historic sites while he schmoozed with colleagues (or rather attended lectures). It was a welcome break from the usual; seeing SanFrancisco, or Atlanta and Baltimore instead of shoveling snow in the Berkshires. But in the past few years I’ve stayed home, and I’m not sure why. Travel trauma? Apathy? Well today we awoke to an alien landscape, Arizona!

Bob is off to learn a few new tricks in his trade of Emergency Medicine. There will be a state of the art SIM lab and more dead bodies, yay. I’ve tagged along because when he’s done, later in the week, we’ll be visiting the Rocker and Ms Cait in California. LA is a mere one hour plane hop from here, but meanwhile what to do?

There are museums, a desert botanical garden and shopping. Since when did travel mean/equate shopping malls? There are premium outlet shopping malls, big southwest fashion malls, and a historic upscale designer district. I’ve got a strange feeling that the same stores you’d find in a shopping mall in NJ will be represented here. And walking around a garden in 90 degree heat isn’t my cup of tea so that leaves the museums. 

And since I’m currently reading “Alena” by Rachel Pastan, I’ve got the nomenclature for art down pat! It’s the story of a young woman who becomes a curator at a small museum on Cape Cod. It’s a little mystery, a little romance, and a lot of contemporary art talk. I am prepared to be moved by art, to get goosebumps, to expand my understanding of the process and see what an arid, brown landscape can reveal. 

Last night I watched the Call the Midwife finale on PBS which was luckily on early since we’ve switched time zones. I can’t rave enough about this period drama and one of the most profound subplots was the one about the doctor and his wife – who used to be a nun/midwife. I don’t want to spoil this for anyone, but it did give me chills. Especially because in the Berkshires I knew a woman who was affected by this “medical miracle.”

Art in any form reminds us of our humanity. The art of medicine, of painting, music or film. Sometimes even writing can take us away from our ultra mundane 21st Century lives. Now I’m off to explore and conquer the cactus!  

 

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Le Monde est Uni

Posted in books, Country, Journaling, wedding, tagged , , , , , on January 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I remember what our cousin Jamie said to me a few days after 9/11. Her husband worked on Wall Street and she lived just a few blocks away from us on the Jersey Shore. “This is how the Israelis live every day.” It made me stop and think. To live in fear of the next suicide bomber on a bus, of a woman totally covered with hijab or a burka, or a terrorist, dressed as a policeman, with a bomb-exploding vest strapped to his chest. You learn not to trust anyone unless you know them, you build a safe room in your house, and then you go about your life.

I had to tell myself that the 9/11 terrorists shaved their beards and tried to look “normal” when they boarded our planes if I found myself profiling people in airline terminals. I remembered the Irish girl who’s Arab boyfriend packed a bomb in her suitcase the day before we landed in Heathrow. She was flying ElAl, so of course even in the 80s they found the bomb and arrested them. When the Bride lived in Paris her Junior year at Duke, she was profiled while trying to attend high holy day services at a synagogue. Could she recite the Hebrew prayers? After all, she didn’t “look” Jewish. Terrorists don’t all look like ninjas.

One news affiliate reported that one of the French suspects wanted to kill Jews, but his handler told him it was better to avenge their prophet by killing cartoonists. In a way this was a mistake. Because explaining the massacre of Jewish people, even today, fits into a tidy European notion of the Mid-East Conflict playing out in their neighborhood. It’s like saying black-on-black or gang-on-gang gun violence in the US doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t affect US. Mais non, let them kill each other is what conservative talk radio will say. Arab vs Jew? It’s a biblical dilemma right?

The Islamist terror campaign in Europe has focused on Jews and cartoonists, but it will not end with Jews and cartoonists. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/01/europe-is-under-siege/384305/

But flying planes into the Twin Towers, and now this massacre at a satirical French weekly, Charlie Hebdo, this brings the utter monstrosity of these Islamist zealots to light. It’s not just that they hate Jews, which they do, but they hate all of us…Westerners who speak freely and allow our art to be exhibited and our women to walk without covering our hair in the street.

Yes we allow photographs of a crucifix dipped into the artist’s urine to be displayed, and a painting of the Madonna in elephant dung to be in a museum. I am rather peeved that only the Huffington Post had the balls to publish the offending prophet cartoons. I guess the NYT doesn’t want to employ armed guards for its editors? Maybe every publication in the free world should pick a day to publish the offending cartoons? We should be like the Danes in WWII.

What this Paris attack has shown us, is that we are all living like Israelis now, whether we admit it or not.

If you want an in-depth look into how disaffected, home-grown terrorists are recruited from Europe and the US and taught to hate and kill in Yemen and Syria and Iraq, I’ve found this Foreign Policy website to be most instructive: http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/01/09/live-coverage-multiple-hostage-standoffs-in-charlie-hebdo-hunt/

The terrorists in Paris want to die as martyrs, I say let them, and change the word to criminals.

By Ruben L Oppenheimer

By Ruben L Oppenheimer

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So So Sony

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on December 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Last night I happened to watch a snippet from the movie Notting Hill. Hugh Grant’s character is courting Julia Roberts, a Hollywood movie star. The scene is a dinner party at his sister’s house. A clueless British stockbroker friend has just asked Roberts what she does for a living…then he continues to deplore the paltry pay his buddies on the stage are making. Oh and by the way, he asks her outright what she makes. Now in no universe could I imagine this question in some party dialogue in a London second. Still, his face is priceless when the ravishing Roberts responds, “15 Million a movie.”

It’s one of those moments when we Americans get to feel superior. And boy do we need to feel superior; our kids are testing below other developed nations, with China leading the pack for instance. And let’s not get started on early education, or supporting working women with affordable child care and sane family leave policies. We wonder why we’re not keeping up, while our legislators quibble and quake to get out of town for the holiday season. We should be so happy they passed a spending bill.

Sorry about the rant, but I’m not plugged into the news here in Nashville.

And at first I thought this must be a mistake. I’d heard about the Sony email hacking incident, and felt vaguely sorry for the female exec who wrote that another movie star, Angelina Jolie, was “…seriously out of her mind.” Honestly, wouldn’t you be out of your mind and body probably if you had that many kids? But calling her a “spoiled brat,” now that’s just mean. And then another Sony exec reports that no, “We have not caved, we have not backed down,” as he tries to explain why they are NOT releasing a new comedy, The Interview, on Christmas Day. http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-30528772

But they are caving into terrorism. North Korea is right to be worried about this little comedy, because art shines its light on everything, including the ridiculous regime of its Supreme Leader. And today, even if the studio doesn’t release the movie, we all know that hackers will release it online, for free, and eventually folks, even the people of North Korea may just be able to see Seth Rogan making fun of their government. Hey, Seth, how about writing a screenplay about our government? You know, how money runs everything, and our low voter turnout, and Detroit, and #BlackLivesMatter, and oh wait. I agree, it’s hard to make fun of the truth. Just try to consider turning that Rolling Stone UVA rape article into a satire for film – see. Better to keep making rom/coms and action movies.

And thank God for Disney. Cause I’ve been getting up close and personal with Frozen this week. And I am really, really enamored of Olaf. IMG_1902

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Islands of Security

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 15, 2014| 2 Comments »

Yesterday was Bastille Day, so happy holiday to our French friends belatedly. I love following the Instagram pictures of the French student we hosted one summer, who is now a lawyer and mother of two young boys in Paris. Her shots are miniature art works: a still life of different flowers in bud vases; a building in the south with violet shutters; the backs of her boys in shorts entering a garden with dappled light; or the colorful play of fresh vegetables on her kitchen table “Retour de marche.”

Whenever I see Stephanie’s children, I think of Madeline.

Madeline at the Paris Flower Market 1955

Madeline at the Paris Flower Market 1955

She is turning 75 this year and is currently on exhibit at The New York Historical Society. “The Art of Ludwig Bemelman” will be shown until November 19 and then travel to Amherst, MA. “Bemelmans’ grandson, John Bemelmans Marciano, has continued his grandfather’s work with three more books of Madeline’s adventures. He says that Madeline is not French, but a real New Yorker.” http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28233820

Ludwig Bemelman immigrated to the USA in 1914 from Austria-Hungary. Because his mother was German, he was not allowed to go overseas in WWI, though he did serve in the Army. He was assigned to a mental hospital in upstate NY where he nearly suffered a mental breakdown.

He saved himself by creating what he called “islands of security”: “I have started to think in pictures and make myself several scenes to which I can escape instantly when the danger appears,” he wrote in a memoir, “instant happy pictures that are completely mine, familiar, warm, and protective.”

Like Bemelman, I will often see my prose in pictures first. He considered himself more of an artist and less of a writer, and like many artists he had to support himself over the years by working in the real world, and in his case it was the hotel industry. His first Madeline book was published at the cusp of WWII.

I find it fascinating that his red headed girl in the yellow hat was always the one in 13 girls who did not fit into her convent school life – she had a personality and some spunk. It’s as if he took a New York schoolgirl and dropped her into Paris to deal with an ancient regime, because God knows nobody likes what happened to France during the war. Whenever Madeline left her house covered in vines, in two straight lines of girls, we always knew she was in for an adventure. And we always knew she would step out of line. I must remember to get the first book for my Love Bug to read!

Here is a self portrait of my beautiful sister Kay, a gorgeous artist who also worked in the health industry, and sent her daughter to the Convent of the Sacred Heart on East 91st Street and Fifth Avenue. The school was founded by French speaking nuns in 1881. Thank you Kay for putting me up, and putting up with me, during Sue’s shiva. Your apartment was my island of security in NYC.

My Sister Kay

My Sister Kay

I believe we red headed girls think alike.

 

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Musical Karma

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 12, 2014| 1 Comment »

What goes around…

Underneath my 1966 high school yearbook picture is the caption, “Dover today, Broadway tomorrow.” It was good to have a friend on the yearbook staff, thank you Bess, but in my defense I did try out for every single play in high school. From Freshman year when I was a CanCan girl dancer in Oklahoma, to Senior year playing Adelaide to Bob’s Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, (Achoo) you just can’t make this stuff up. And whatever part of the right side of our brain that’s responsible for creativity, well that part was squared when the Rocker was born.

He would practice the violin while our Corgi howled right next to him. He spent hours filming stop-action cartoons in our garage. Later on, in middle school in the mid 90s, he would design websites for his friends. He started his first band with his buddy Alex around the same time. I was deep into filming dance aerobics workouts for our local cable channel, while Bob played old 60s music extremely loud in the background of the Rocker’s early life. In fact, Bob said the only way he could calm him down as an infant was to blast Led Zeppelin in the car.

So I am happy to announce that the Rocker is going back out on tour this week. He’ll be playing guitar with Nicole Atkin’s band http://nicoleatkins.com/home/ and his old friend Christopher will be on drums. They will share the stage with the Avett Brothers again, and open for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. My son will visit his sister in Nashville on the 16th when they play TN Music City Roots – they will also be filming for PBS to benefit the Nature Conservancy. http://musiccityroots.com/events/

He’ll be onstage for his birthday this summer, so chances are he’ll have a big crowd singing “Happy Birthday.” All the while working on The Parlor Mob’s reunion shows this Fall and scoring music for film on the road. http://www.davidjamesrosen.com Unfortunately, he’s going to miss his Grandma Ada’s second 90th birthday bash in NJ (the first was in Mexico), and I can’t tell you how many people want to sing and dance at her party!

Which makes me think about the Flapper, sneaking out of her bedroom window in Scranton, PA to dance all night to the Tommy Dorsey band. Later in the 20s, Tommy joined his brother Jimmy in a band they called the Scranton Sirens. Later still, as a dowager on Lake Minnetonka, my brother Mike had Cab Calloway play piano for our Mother. The rest of that jazz is history

…it comes around.

The Rocker was named after Sue’s father, and got off a plane from Mexico with Ms Cait to attend her funeral. I like to think he was her favorite cousin.    photo

 

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Naked Prejudice

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 29, 2014| 3 Comments »

An old/rich/white/guy tells his mistress not to bring one of the most respected black basketball players in the world to one of his games. He owns the NBA team you see. And whatever you do, he told her, don’t post any pictures with him on Instagram. This octogenarian knows about Instagram? Why is he all hot and bothered? Because his other old/rich/white/guy friends are calling him up… to what, ridicule him or complain about his loss of photographic control over his seriously augmented girlfriend?

Why am I not surprised. Some people are incapable of change. This guy has been living in his NBA bubble of privilege, making money off the very black backs he’d rather not see taking a selfie with his paramour. We all feign outrage. But in reality, the racism that is rampant in the sinew of our country’s soul has been on display for all to see for years. It’s a systemic problem, a kind of subtle apartheid that I’ve mentioned before. We took down all the “Whites Only” signs, and replaced them with hidden borders for our public schools. And since an education is a one way ticket out of poverty, our African American brothers and sisters haven’t got a chance.

Just because we integrated public transportation, swimming pools and restaurants with the Civil Rights Act in 1964; just because we passed Brown vs the Board of Education a decade before, doesn’t mean the courts haven’t thrown federal integration laws out the window. Since 2000, school districts throughout the South have been released from enforcing laws mandating court-ordered integration. A recent article in the Atlantic puts it flat out there. Sixty years later “Naked prejudice” hasn’t gone away:

Some big-city school systems are as segregated as they were in the 1960s. Leading public universities are admitting fewer black students than a decade ago. The black-white wealth gap has grown in recent years. Blacks are no more likely than whites to use illegal drugs, yet four times more likely to be arrested and jailed for it.     http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/segregation-now/359813/

Some people cast their votes for an issue. This Republican slashed that town’s budget and brought a project in on time; that voter is fiscally conservative. This Republican voted against an assault weapon ban, I’m voting him out! That’s your progressive liberal. Let’s not even bring up abortion. But never let anyone tell you the power to select a Supreme Court Judge isn’t awesome, and a very good reason to vote for a Democrat!. Thanks to an increasingly conservative judiciary over the Bush years, courts have ruled that school districts no longer have to prove they had eliminated segregation. And that, along with gerrymandered districts based on racial populations has produced our current “apartheid school system.”

Now when I see another old/rich/white/guy rancher holding up a dead calf, complaining about having to pay grazing taxes on federal land, hating our government and telling us he thinks blacks had it better during slavery, I have to turn away. I stopped laughing at these idiots long ago, because they make me physically ill.

"The Problem we All (STILL) Live With" by Norman Rockwell

“The Problem we All (STILL) Live With” by Norman Rockwell

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For Art’s Sake

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 16, 2014| 2 Comments »

There’s good news and there’s bad news this week. On the good side – Our do-nothing-Congress has passed a 1+ Trillion dollar budget deal that should keep our government humming along for the next nine months. On the bad side – Congress has defunded ALL portrait painting, which is pretty stupid since I understand that every single Treasury Secretary or Secretary of Defense doesn’t need an official oil-based portrait painted costing taxpayers thousands of dollars each.

But no more Presidential portraits? Are you kidding me? Even I have had my portrait painted, by my sister mind you! This may have started my fondness for hats.

The Author, age 15 in Oklahoma

The Author, age 15 in “Oklahoma”

You know that gallery at the Smithsonian with all of our Presidents hanging regally along its walls in a continuing line of American history? Well, it’s about to stop short. Someone on the blogosphere somewhere said it’s because we can’t have a “president of color” up there with Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy and really? I suppose this means no more First Ladies either.

The horse-trading was done by only about four dozen of Congress’ 533 members, working in private. What’s supposed to be 12 separate spending bills was combined into one mammoth stack that finances the government through Sept. 30.http://www2.macleans.ca/2014/01/16/5-things-to-know-about-deal-to-avert-shutdown-of-u-s-government/

It’s the “working in private” part that bothers me, behind closed doors in a secret session, along with the sheer lunacy of stopping a tradition that deserves to be maintained. I tend to think very forest for the trees about art. Artists are really doing our society a favor. They reflect back to us what’s going on in everyday life, with a different spin, giving us a new perspective. Enlightening, illuminating and just plain enriching our thirsty souls. Sometimes art can even change history. Think of the photograph of a child about to be shot in Vietnam. Think about the mini-series Roots. Think about a little Goldfinch.

Today the Oscar nominees were announced. Nothing new or unusual except Ms Oprah was denied again for her role in The Butler. A movie about a man who served how many presidents through sweeping social changes in our country. A true story, but one obviously overlooked in Hollywood. Instead a movie about a real political shakedown in NJ in the late 70s, the Abscam scandal, was the basis for the big winner, American Hustle.

“…today offering bribes in exchange for legislation seems almost quaint. The lobbyists do the same things we did, only to a much greater degree,” said John Good, a former FBI supervisor who oughtta know.http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/to-the-players-in-abscam-the-real-life-american-hustle-the-bribes-now-seem-quaint/2013/12/26/d67648c2-6c15-11e3-a523-fe73f0ff6b8d_story.html

I wonder who’s writing the Chris Christie biopic now? Maybe we need to get some art lobbyists up on the Hill. You know, bring in the big guns – the owners of auctions houses and film industry moguls, maybe a few museum directors? At least we need to appoint a Secretary of Culture, every other country in the free world has one! We don’t need to paint their portrait either. But we DO need President Obama’s portrait painted.

“I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization,” President Kennedy once remarked, “than full recognition of the place of the artist.” http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/07/should-the-us-have-a-secretary-of-culture/277409/

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To Kill a Goldfinch

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on January 14, 2014| 4 Comments »

My Ivy Farm Book Club is reading it. My MIL Ada just finished it. And the Bride wants me to send it to her, the book that’s all abuzz right now, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. I finished the last six pages of the book yesterday, in the middle of the day because I couldn’t wait until bedtime when I barely have enough energy to keep my eyes open…and I was afraid of that white space; the blank white space at the end of a book. I knew that I’d have a lot of feelings to process in that white space, and my mind wouldn’t be up to that at midnight.

The Goldfinch is a coming of age story, in the tradition of Catcher in the Rye. We are drawn into the life of Theo Decker, a typical New York teenager who grew up around Sutton Place and went to a private school. He’s being raised by a beautiful and kind single mom, one we imagine is like Holly Golightly, except instead of being a call girl she married the wrong guy, a drinker who disappeared one day. They are a happy couple, son and mother, until one day a terrorist happens to set off a bomb at The Met, just as Theo follows a pretty red headed girl into a hallway.

Tartt sets off the bomb and the motion of her book early on, and so we are hooked, wandering around with Theo who is trying to recover his connection to the world. The cast of characters is familiar. The trust fund kids, the socialite/philanthropist types, the doormen. But it’s the stolen painting, Fabritius’ 1654 Goldfinch,  that glues this epic journey together, through a few lost years in Vegas with the wandering father and Boris the Ukranian best friend, and finally back to the Big Apple. I haven’t been so drawn to a book in ages. In some ways, it’s the small Dutch masterpiece that propels our protagonist forward – his mother’s love for it, a dying man’s plea for its survival.

In the last six pages I wanted more, and I suspect that Tartt was hoping we would. Ms Bean startled me by barking at the window. A lonely hawk was spreading its wing on a tree too close to the house. photo I remembered one of my earliest teenage rules for living, like never stay where you are not wanted, or never cry in public. Never, ever keep a bird in a cage. It was a sort of pre-feminist, Ibsen-like decision. Live free, or die! And I wondered what would happen to Theo Decker. Will he be pulled into a life of crime and drug abuse, or more crime and more drug abuse, by Boris and end up in prison? Did he settle in at Hobart and Blackwell and become a respectable antique dealer like this guy? http://www.themillions.com/2014/01/my-not-so-secret-history.html                           Will he marry damaged-goods Kitsy or Pippa of the morphine lollipop?

As you know, my sister Kay lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She raised her only daughter alone, sending her to the Convent of the Sacred Heart with ambassador’s children. I used to visit them all the time as a teenager, and we’d often walk to the Met for a special exhibit or just for lunch. Later, I would always meet Kay for our mutual September birthday celebration in the City. After 9/11, we roamed around the streets in the Village, trying to find a place that was open for our birthday lunch. Determined not to let the terrorists “win.” 

Fifth Avenue is magical in every season. I told Kay that we  need to see the Goldfinch at the Frick Museum. I want to see this little bird who is chained to her food box. The bird that really did survive an explosion in Delft that killed its painter. Is it serendipity that art is reflecting the current literary scene, in the same city this MS author has captured so well? http://www.frick.org/exhibitions/mauritshuis/605   

Unknown   

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Planes and Conch Trains

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 3, 2013| 2 Comments »

IMG_2215

We were not leisurely shopping on Cyber Monday. Oh no, we were desperately trying to make our way home via Key West airport. For some inexplicable reason, Southwest decided to cancel their flights out of our tiny island. One couple managed to score a Delta flight, while the Love Bug and her Mama hitched a ride to Miami with another Big Chill couple. The Groom left us a little early to start his ICU rotation. Only US Air delivered us on time back to the Blue Ridge.

I thought I would share some Tuesday morning quarterbacking memories with you. First of all, there was the butterfly. Or I should say thousands of butterflies http://www.keywestbutterfly.com

Right in the middle of Duval Street – a veritable hub of humanity with every imaginable language you could think of – we strolled into a magic garden; “50 to 60 butterfly species from around the world, along with over 20 exotic bird species, all under a climate- controlled, glass enclosed habitat.” The Bug was enchanted. The moving sea of fluttering colors caught all of us off guard, it was as if we were a part of a living and breathing terrarium. I turned to Bob and said, “This exceeded my expectations,” and it did!

Then there were the chickens. IMG_2235We spotted a rooster when we first got out of the car on our little lane, and every day after that the search for chickens continued. Our 15 month old toddler loved to find hens with their chicks and red-combed roosters lingering nearby. These gypsy chickens are free-roaming on every street and nest in the trees at night. It seems the combination of outlawing cock fighting in the 70s and buying chicken in neatly wrapped packages at a grocery store led to this laissez faire attitude toward poultry. They are so tame, they will eat out of your hand and let you pet their chicks!

We hopped on the Conch Train for the 90 minute tour of Key West. Keeping the Bug occupied and safe meant I only heard pieces of the island’s colorful history but we enjoyed the ride and the ice cream stop especially. Later, the Bride stayed home with the baby and we took in a drag show at 801 Boubon. Our MC was Desiree, and she was a grandfather! Instant connection, I have to admit, since we are both redheads. Hysterical night, including the part where Cait and I did a little back-up singing! http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/travel/09hours.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

What more can I say? There was La Creperie and croissants galore. Salsa dancing and delicious Cuban food. Art galleries on every corner, and Serbian rickshaw drivers. Key West is a melange of Vegas, New Orleans, and Miami and I didn’t want to click my heels together.

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Nobel Pursuits

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2013| 2 Comments »

It’s that time of year again. No, not carving pumpkins time and trying to find or create a family-friendly Halloween costume. It’s the Nobel Prize announcement time; time to try and figure out just what the Higgs boson particle really is and how it’s responsible for the secrets of life and our universe, and I am not speaking biblically.

But try to find the 2013 recipient of the prize in physics, Peter Higgs, and you’d be out of luck. The elderly Edinburgh scientist left his cell phone behind and like Garbo, would like to be left alone.  Of course, once that Large Hadron Collider at Cern proved that his theory about the “god particle” was correct, Higgs was considered a shoe-in for the Nobel in Physics.

So maybe we’re closer to knowing “how” we got here, two other winners this year help us understand the “why.” A man whose mission is to heal won the Nobel Prize for medicine and physiology. Since I have a few healers in the family, I was interested in this article I found courtesy of my musical great niece: http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/10/nobel-medicine-winner-says-i-owe-is-all-to-my-bassoon-teacher.html  Dr Thomas Sudhof credits his music teacher with imparting a sense of discipline that helped to forge his “…powers of analysis and concentration.”

I always try to understand everything I encounter—not only in science, but also historical and political events and music and movies—get to grips with the content, meaning, and process. This is immense fun, as strange as that may sound.
Who was your most influential teacher, and why?
My bassoon teacher, Herbert Tauscher, who taught me that the only way to do something right is to practice and listen and practice and listen, hours, and hours, and hours.
Science and art, the interconnections are endless. Next is a woman whose elegantly sparse prose helps us to understand the human condition, along with the roles we all play; an artist who is also part of the faculty here at UVA. Congratulations to Alice Munro, recipient of the Nobel Prize in literature! This 82 year old Canadian writer had her first book of short stories published when she was 37…take heed all you late bloomers! She has only taught the occasional writing class in Mr Jefferson’s Academical Village, and was unavailable when I was studying fiction as a community scholar, unfortunately for me.  She is Queen of the Short Story, and has recently published Dear Life.   
Rumor is she will stop writing now, but I find that hard to believe. Here is what Munro, America’s Chekhov, had to say about her attempt at writing a novel, and I feel her pain:“It didn’t feel right to me, and I thought I would have to abandon it,” she said. “I was very depressed. Then it came to me that what I had to do was pull it apart and put it in story form. Then I could handle it. That’s when I learned I was never going to write a real novel because I could not think that way.”imagesSo that’s my problem. Too many years writing 300-500 word newspaper columns. Thank you Ms Munro, for sharing your knowledge and sense of possibility with us.

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