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Mother Ginger
Clara's dream in the Nutcracker is full of a child's Christmas
fantasy - Sugar Plum Fairies, a Mouse King, a Nutcraker Prince.
A ginger bread house comes to life.
In his 1816 book The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,
E.T.A. Hoffman provided the stuff of dreams and inspiration of
the Nutcracker Ballet that is performed around the world.
Urbi et Orbi
The child of Bethlehem directs our gaze towards all
children, particularly those who suffer and are abused in
the world, the born and the unborn.
-Pope Benedict XVI Christmas sermon 2006
May peace come to children of all the world.
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Quiet landscape outside Albuquerque before the big snow
storm.
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Dresden Dolls at Zero
Since listening to a cassette demo years ago, we've had nothing
but admiration for the talent and tenacity of singer,
songwriter and performance artist Amanda Palmer. Talent
because she writes hard hitting songs busting with emotion.
Tenacity because she can do it all by herself with a little
help from her friends and record label. Not odd, then, to hear
Robert Woodruff, Artistic Director at the American
Repertory Theatre was inspired enough to invite Amanda and her
Dresden Doll cohort Brian Viglione to create a theater
piece for the A.R.T.'s new black box space near Harvard Square.
Only days before the recent opening of the Dresden Dolls-A.R.T.
collaboration The Onion Cellar, Amanda's interviews with
the Boston press and her blog signalled
that her experience in what Woodruff terms the "relationship of
music and text" was not what she planned.
Inside the theater lobby, a merchandise table sells drink
tickets and Dresden Doll ties, t-shirts, souvenir books and $10
posters that read "Lungs Locked, Lips Locked - Join the
Rennaissance" and "You Can Stop The Truth From Leaking."
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Since finding volunteers to help at a .org tradeshow booth some
years ago in San Francisco, we've always found craigslist to be very helpful. The
plain vanilla community oriented website has grown to be the
envy of many a newspaper classified ad sales department. So, it
is with great amusement that we read founder Craig Newmark and his
Chief Executive Officer Jim Buckmaster not only think
outside the box, but show no apparent interest in stepping
inside one.
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J.B. Zimmerman revisits
the battle in Massachusetts over the state government's
initiative to adopt open standards for software, specifically
the OpenDocument (ODF) format.
With a new executive government taking the reins at the State
House in January, how Massachusetts officials proceed with
information technology remains to be seen.
A Technology Advisory Group is advising Governor-elect
Patrick. Absent from its list of members that includes a
Microsoft employee are any open source community or vendor
representatives. Admirably, one IT executive whose company has
an existing state contract,
reclused himself from the transition working group.
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Massachusetts Democrat Governor-Elect Deval Patrick on
Election Night
Democrats held victory parties for their candidates across the
U.S. last night. In Massachusetts, 6,000 people gathered at
Boston's Hynes Convention Center to celebrate the election of
Deval L. Patrick, the second African American governor
in U.S. history and the state's first Democrat in that office
after sixteen years of Republicans.
Given the shortage of victory celebrations for Democrats in our
lifetime, pouring rain or not, this was one Party's party we
did not want to miss. Like a blue themed nightclub for
the multicultural thousands, there were open bars for VIPs
upstairs and cash bars for others downstairs. The standing room
only crowd cheered old fashion, but throughly rousting speeches
by Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy.
Patrick's team ran a positive, grassroots TOGETHER WE
CAN campaign in a year of negative ads from the opposition.
Help from appearances by national figures Bill Clinton
and Barack
Obama bolstered his state organization and campaign
contributions. Through October 31, his campaign spent
approximately $8.4 million. His Republican opponent spent $12.8
million as of the same date.
Patrick was reared by his mother on the southside of Chicago
when abandoned by his father, a jazz musician who played jazz
with Sun Ra
Arkestra. The Governor-Elect remembered his mother at the
close of his speech to supporters and press last night:
In an article in mid-January 2005, the Boston Globe first
reported that I was considering getting into this race. I
visited my ailing mother that evening to show her the
headline. She smiled, kissed me and said her last good-bye
– and she died a few hours later. We spread her ashes
this morning, Election Day, as a way to mark this milestone
in our family’s journey, and to honor her lasting
presence in our lives.
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We remember
In the days and weeks that followed 9-11-01, mementos were left
by visitors to Ground Zero forming an impromtu memorial to
those lost in the attacks.
Roses, a teddy bear, an angel statue, handwritten notes,
American flags and a framed picture of a firefighter were just
few items on this iron fence photographed in November, 2001 at
Trinity Church in lower Manhattan.
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If you're poor or a minority, your kids are less likely to
have time at the school computer and you are less likely to
have Net access at home, where real skill-building with
technology begins. Just 23 percent of households with
annual incomes of less than $15,000 have home Internet
access, compared with 90 percent of those with incomes of
$75,000 or more, according to government data calculated by
The
Children's Partnership, a non profit.
- Maggie Jackson
reports in the Boston Globe.
In Brasil, a model of digital inclusion for the poor is
successfully being provided by public telecenters in urban and
rural areas. The South Korean government, through its Ministry
of Information and Communication, made South Korea one of the
top ranking countries in Internet usage by providing broadband
to apartment buildings and financing of home computers.
The United States, which ranks 12th globally in broadband
usage, also lags behind in providing any comprehensive plan to
include all of its citizens in the information society.
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Nothing to be done. - Estragon in Waiting
for Godot
En attendant Godot (Waiting for Godot)
On the occasion of the Beckett centenary,
we recall actress Ruth Maleczech, protuding from a large pile
of dirt on the stage as Minnie in Beckett's play Happy
Days.
Ruth Maleczech as Minnie
Raised and educated in Ireland, Beckett later made his home in
Paris. He was fiercely protective of his privacy and the manner
in which his work was staged - insisting that it not be
deconstructed or reinterpreted, but rather mounted exactly as
the stage directions he wrote.
A Young Beckett
RTÉ has produced some Beckett audio
that gives us a sense of the man and the volume of work he
left.
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GO WITH THE GLOBE, READ J.J. HUNSECKER - The Eyes of Broadway
EXT. BROADWAY - NIGHT
The southeast corner of the intersection of Broadway and
46th Street, CAMERA, fairly high, shoots north towards the
impressive vista of electric signs, silhouetted against the
darkening sky. Very heavy traffic and crowded sidewalks.
CAMERA descends towards the Orange Juice stand on the
corner, passing the booth which sells souvenir hats. It
moves through the congestion of chattering passersby,
steadily approaching a smartly dressed young man, who
stands at the counter of the Orange Juice stand. Oblivious
of the hub-bub around him, SIDNEY FALCO is concerned only
with his private problems.
He turns as a newspaper truck pulls up at the curb behind
him; this is what he has been waiting for...
So begins the Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman screenplay,
Sweet Smell of Success, the 1957 film which is brought
to mind by recent stories about a widely read New York gossip
column Page
Six.
CLOSER ANGLE - NIGHT
The news truck delivery man tosses a bundle out onto the
sidewalk besides a newsstand.
DETAIL
The bundle of newspapers. It hits the sidewalk with a
smack. CAMERA PULLS BACK as Sidney Falco crosses the
sidewalk. The owner of the newsstand, IGGY, comes to pick
up the bundle; he is a grizzled gnome with a philosophical
sense of humor; Sidney snaps his fingers with impatience.
Iggy wears spectacles and is clearly more or less blind, he
has to grope for the cord that binds the papers.
IGGY
Aw Lady, if I looked like you, I'd--
SIDNEY
C'mon...C'mon...
IGGY
(recognizing Sidney's voice)
Keep ya sweatshirt on, Sidney.
Majestically taking his time, Iggy lifts the bundle to
his stand and cuts the cord.
IGGY
Hey, Fresh, the Globe just came in -- Hey, Sidney, want
an item for Hunsecker's column? Two rolls get fresh
with a baker! Hey, hot, hot, hot -- etc.
In Sweet Smell of Success, Burt Lancaster plays J.J.
Hunsecker, a powerful New York columnist roughly based on
Walter
Winchell. Tony Curtis plays the role of Sidney Falco, the
ambitious, pretty boy press agent who will stop at nothing to
find ink for his showbiz clients in JJ's tabloid column
.
Sidney and J.J. at Twenty One Club
Life Imitates Art
In what is playing out like a real life sequel, the attorney
for a former supermarket bagboy self-made billionaire, whose
friends include a President and a movie star's supermodel
ex-girlfriend, goes to the FBI and launches an investigation of
a gossip column stringer for the New York Post's Page Six. The
story
was first broken by the Post's competitor tabloid the New York
Daily News.
George Plimpton, Jared Paul Stern, and Cameron Richardson at
Elaine's on Manhattan's Upper Eastside (Larry Flint photo,
1996)
"Match me, Sidney"
In the movie, a newspaper columnist Leo Bartha, threatened with
blackmail for philandering, tells Sidney what he thinks of him
and J.J.
BARTHA
Your friend Hunsecker - you tell him for me - he's a
disgrace to his profession. Never mind about my, my bilious
private life. I run a decent, responsible column. That's
the way it stays. Your man prints anything. He'll use any
spice to pepper up his daily garbage. You tell him I said
so. Tell him that like yourself, he's got the scruples of a
guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.
SIDNEY
(sneering) What do I do now? Whistle 'Stars and Stripes
Forever'?
The business of gossip
Campbell Robertson writes
about the gossip game that plays upon people in nightclubs,
restaurants and their
big houses.
Might Nikki Finke, Los Angeles journalist and bane of
high profile movie industry executives write her own screenplay
on the unfolding
story?
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