This coming Sunday there will be a huge “Summer of Love” 40th anniversary concert in Golden Gate Park, featuring everybody from Moby Grape to Jesse Colin Young (“C’mon people, now smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now”). I was there for the first summer of love, although I …
I have a well-established habit of greeting passers-by. When I take my walk by the Bay, I like to smile or say hi to everyone I pass. I feel good when people cooperate. I sense a local lightening of the atmosphere, an infinitesimal exchange of positive energy. When people stare straight ahead or keep their …
The trip to London from which I’ve just returned was the first time I had visited that country since 1987, twenty years. I’d seen some of my English friends at international meetings or on visits to the U.S., but until this month, we hadn’t sat together for long, convivial chats, taking stock. I learned a …
Did you miss me? I missed you: I’ve been traveling pretty much nonstop since the beginning of July, and am glad to be home (in body at least—my spirit needs to complete the journey through nine time zones). I had speaking engagements in Barcelona and London, and in between, vast conversations about culture and politics. …
When the unknowable future unfolds (since it is unknowable, we may as well expect the Great Awakening as the Great Slumber), someone, sometime might ask you this: “How clueless were you guys back then, anyway?” You can tell that person: “This clueless,” and pull out the New York Times‘ report this week on the great …
A small gray bird lives in a palm tree in my back yard. Every few minutes for the past several weeks, the bird flies straight toward a high window, then pecks at it with vigor and determination. So far the window holds. A friend asked me to write here about the immigration issue. Every time …
Here’s kind of a fun thing. The theater writer and teacher Scott Walters has “tagged” me to take part in a “meme” originated by Laura Axelrod. This virally transmitted unit of cultural information comprises five questions and answers. Its irresistible quality comes from the pure pleasure of talking about oneself, so I predict it will …
A little over a year ago, I wrote a series of three essays about a perceived generation gap between people my age and younger activist artists (click here to find the first; the others come right after). This past weekend, I attended a gathering of a few dozen people across the generations, so I want …
No, it isn’t an exotic bean curd dish at a very special Japanese restaurant. It’s Hebrew for “without form” and “void,” or “formless” and “empty,” as most English versions of Genesis 1:2 translate the Hebrew description of the chaotic state that preceded creation: “And the earth was without form, and void (tohu v’bohu); and darkness …
This is the first part of the text of my keynote address offered at the Western Pennsylvania Arts in Education Partners Resident Artists Conference in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, 16-17 May 2007. There’s a link at the end you can use to download the whole text in PDF format. I’m working on a community arts project …