After school, I enjoyed a delicious, runny fried egg sandwich for lunch at Mill City Museum. In the winter, this lobby of the former 1890s flour mill hosts our local farmers market. Next door, hundreds of school kids poured out of the Guthrie Theater after a special performance of A Christmas Carol. I asked a teacher about it. “It was awesome, awesome!” she exclaimed, her arms raised in a celebratory gesture.
Category: Arts
Coffee, Donut, and Democracy
At Open Book, a building dedicated to all things book-related, The Minnesota Center for Book Arts had set up an antique letterpress machine. How could I resist pulling the lever? I’d ducked in from the rain for a coffee and donut at FRGMT Cafe. Today, the building is also serving as our polling place, though I’d already voted by mail.
How We Live
Movie night tonight! The blockbuster anime “The Boy and the Heron” is finally available for rent at a reasonable price. Today, I’ve been skimming the 1937 Japanese coming-of-age novel “How Do You Live?” (in translation, of course), which apparently provides some of the philosophical underpinnings of the movie but not the plot. Interestingly, the novel also makes an appearance within the film itself. The author’s backstory is a lesson for our times as we slide towards authoritarianism.
From Darkness to Light
Went on a journey from despair to celebration with the Minnesota Orchestra. The opening piece was based on W. B. Yates’ dark poem, Nine Hundred and Nineteen, reflecting the turmoil of Ireland in 1919. The concert concluded with Prokofiev’s Fifth Symphony composed in 1944 Russia with notes of celebration in the final movement. Time will tell if there are parallels with the upcoming days in the USA.
Orchestra Hall at 50
At Orchestra Hall, admired a LEGO model of the venue, part of a display celebrating the building’s 50th anniversary. The model captures the auditorium’s angle relative to the rest of the building and the street grid, a tricky feat with LEGO. Inside the auditorium, we enjoyed a concert featuring Shostakovich, Bernstein, and a recent commission by Chinese American, Zhou Tian.
Exploring the Elusive Nature of Home
A visit to the Walker always transports me. Today, the draw was a new exhibition, “This Must be the Place,” exploring the multifaceted concept of “home.” Anything I would write on this worksheet seemed pretentious, so I held onto my thoughts about home being more of an idea woven from experiences, relationships, and memories for this aging, gay, technocratic, married, …, immigrant.
Brushes With AI
At the Victoria & Albert Museum it was Digital Design Weekend. Here, museum visitors are on a date with a difference. They’re communicating via phones using language restricted by AI. Meanwhile another AI system is generating social media comments on how the date is going. Elsewhere, machines creating water colors inspired me to imagine the…… Continue reading Brushes With AI
View from Endless Bridge
Endless Bridge is a cantilevered structure that juts out of The Guthrie Theater, reaching towards the river. It has two levels, an outdoor space, and a bar. And the bar is where we’re enjoying a glass beside a mirrored window before The Lehman Trilogy. I’m anticipating a 3-hour critique of unfettered capitalism, starting in the…… Continue reading View from Endless Bridge
Hamlet’s Last Stand
Last night we watched the first three acts of Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996), tonight the final acts. It’s quite a marathon (4 hours) and uses the full original text, which makes it tough going at times, but the performances and settings (and subtitles) hold our attention sufficiently.
The Hidden Question
Spotted this parked in the Seward neighborhood. A quick Google search revealed that ‘Yhw’ is a vowel-deficient Hebrew deity. Looking closer, I noticed a compartment labeled ‘chalk.’ The orientation of the label suggested I was viewing the piece incorrectly. A photo search revealed it was by local artist Tom Saunders, who invites viewers to write…… Continue reading The Hidden Question