MODERNISM, MADNESS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
Accomplishment is the fruit of striving. Creation is the fruit of being. — Frank Rubenfeld Lately I’ve been experiencing interstices in time. These interstices come just after finishing something, a task, a conversation, a meal, and before fixing on the next idea or project on my mental to do list. Sometimes they come in the […]
You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered… Where are you living? What are you doing? What are your relationships? Are you in right relation? Where is your water? Know […]
Just six week ago my wife, Sharon, got the go-ahead from the Calaveras County Behavioral Health Services to expand an after-school arts program. She was given a grant to provide studio space, Monday through Friday after school, with free art supplies to high school kids living in our region. I volunteered to build large cabinets […]
Two weeks ago we had ferocious windstorm. Two majestic oaks (albeit already dead) crashed to the ground. The PVC pipe that feeds our rainwater cistern broke off and the orchard gate blew down. Fixing the gate, which was already falling apart, had been on my “to do” list for a year. Now I couldn’t ignore […]
Both Sharon and I have been stumped as to how to write about what we are experiencing right now, but we want to share it with you. (Check out Sharon’s blog post for her account.) We are ensconced in an apartment in a old stone chateau in the medieval village of Le Broc, halfway […]
The French New Wave director Francois Truffaut once remarked that: Shooting a movie is like a stagecoach ride in the Old West. When you set out, you are anticipating a pleasant journey through a beautiful landscape. But half-way though you just hope you will make it to your destination! I am not halfway through. I […]
And now for something entirely different! A few years ago I did a solo trek in Yosemite’s backcountry to the high alpine basin of Ten Lakes. I spent a long summer day being entirely mesmerized by a stream descending from a mountain lake. I felt completely immersed in the landscape as sometimes happens when […]
This post concerns the year, 1937, in Paul’s life, just after he got his diploma in engineering and architecture from the Swiss Federal Technical University in Zurich. He went to London to look for a job. The chapter develops the seed of the story that was planted earlier in this blog, PAUL AND LÁSZLÓ MOHOLY-NAGY. […]
My father’s earliest memory is of lying on a red Persian carpet under a brown dining table. He is three years old. He is trying to decipher the symmetrical patterns in the carpet… as if they signified something; something hidden, yet knowable. He tries to explain this to his mother but he lacks the words. […]
It has been a whirlwind week in New York where I went to promote The Restless Hungarian at a conference of the Jewish Book Council. (Read their review here) One is invited to do a carefully rehearsed, two–minute pitch to curators for Jewish Community Centers, synagogues, and other organizations around the country. Think two-minute Ted Talk. I had […]