It’s hard not to have an ambivalent relationship with political power, no matter how modest. There’s some truth to the notion that the people who most crave it are least reliable when they have it; but no more truth than there is to the idea that those who are negatively oriented to power will never …
I wish so many people didn’t hate the phrase “paradigm shift,” because it really does the job of conveying one highly specific thought: that an old model of how things work is receding at the approach of a new and more powerful model (in the words of Ken Wilber, one that “subsumes and transcends” the …
What is the extent of our capacity for imaginative empathy? When is it easy to put oneself in the place of other, and when is the stretch too far to manage? I don’t have much trouble imagining how Henry Louis Gates felt earlier this week when he was arrested at the door of his own …
My media cravings lately have been the audiovisual equivalent of Elvis’s peanut butter and banana sandwiches, stupefying comfort food. A kind friend actually sat next to me for the entire length of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants—Part 2!—on TV. So I gulped hard when my forgetfulness in updating my Netflix queue brought me Terror’s …
I’m house-sitting for some people who have a very old cat. Although there is no physical resemblance, her presence reminds me of my beloved Kitsa Levine, who tiptoed off to kitty heaven at the end of 2004. When I hear a familiar cry, or feel a furry chin brush against my leg on the way …
The radio is blasting Michael Jackson features. All of them end with the same note, that he was planning a “comeback tour.” It appears he had to leave to come back, as befits a figure whose early dive into the oceanic adoration of celebrity turned his life inside out. I find myself thinking this morning …
This is the first section of a talk I gave on 19 June 2009 at the National Summit of Ensemble Theaters, meeting at the University of San Francisco. Click here to download the full text. I’ve just moved back to California, part of a big life-change for me. Whenever I come here, I touch down …
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote briefly about the May 12th White House Briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery I had helped to organize. Now, a detailed report on the briefing has been released. You can download it from the Cultural Recovery page of my Web site. The report is the next …
I took part in a “think-tank” at the Center on Age and Community, a structured brainstorm involving artists and people who work with elders and their families in long-term care facilities, advocacy organizations and other roles and settings. Our brief was to look at “transforming activities in long-term care,” “activities” being all the things that …
I have some advice for Rocco Landesman, the newly appointed Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, but first I have to convince myself it is worth offering. In case he reads this, I’ll summarize my advice up front: Rocco Landesman, the intelligence, risk-taking and independence for which you are admired on Broadway will …