The air was cold and it had been a very busy and rainy weekend. I had just finished four performances of a play I was involved in and I was very tired. I went to work with my special needs students and took some of them on a walk. I was pushing one man in a wheelchair and holding a blind man’s arm in mine.  All of a sudden, I sang out a Christmas carol….softly… sincerely…..giving my day….which also happened to be my son’s 14th birthday to the Lord. I was so overwhelmed with His goodness and glory and beauty, having experienced the manger scene on stage many times. It wasn’t acting…it was real worship. I wanted to make my son’s day special, there was a lot to do and I was weary.

The blind man named Bill spoke up, “I’ll never forget the night of December ninth!”  He recalled with enthusiasm.  Then I replied, “What was December ninth?” “That’s when you all came caroling for us at our home, he stated.” Then I remembered. The Lord had burdened my heart to do just that. A few of my friends and I went to the group home where three of my blind students live and we shared a Christmas memory. It was blessed by Him and so it was very special. These blind friends of mine are able to see so much with their spiritual eyes and I thank God for them every day.

Patsy Ledbetter may be reached at patsyled@sbcglobal.net.

Liz Koerner graduated in 2009 with a BFA in furniture design from California College of the Arts.  Since then, she has worked for various Bay Area furniture makers and production shops. View Koerner’s Website at www.liz-koerner.com.

Statement from the artist:
“Our vulnerability to the larger forces of nature inspires me to design objects that suggest a personal connection to material movement and transformation. In my work geologic processes such as sedimentation, tectonic shifting and thermal flow are explored as physical principles that resonate with a subconscious landscape. Through abstracted natural forms I intend to trigger a sense of possibility and a regard for the nuances of deep reconfiguration and metamorphosis.”

“Recently I’ve built wall-mounted cabinets that play on the actions of sliding andstacking and the optical effects of glass, aluminum, and neon. By leaving unfixed elements to be changed by the viewer, I invite participation in a dynamic space and create the intimacy to be lost in wonder of something elusive and familiar.”

– Liz Koerner

Thoughts on West Side Story—and Life!

Shoppers in a mall have the eerie sensation of walking between two groups of guys staring at each other. A driver thinks he recognizes a rival gang member in another car, opens fire, and kills a father and two sons returning from a ball game. A ten year old girl answers a knock on the door and is downed in a hail of bullets: wrong house! Gangs today are a sad fact of life in metropolitan areas, and whether someone is a gang member or an innocent victim, gang violence tears lives and families apart.

Unless, of course, viewing West Side Story at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco, an unlikely place for a play about down and out kids of different backgrounds fighting it out for domination. Built in 1926, and modeled after a Spanish palace, it is fancy.  It is lavish.  It is ornate.   It is beautiful. With a BART station right at its front door, it is a grand and most accessible place to see great theater in San Francisco.

And the play—a loose tribute to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (Capulets and Montegues?  Sharks and Jets?), while following the gangs and violence theme, seems far removed from jarring headlines. The dancing and singing are excellent, powerful, and elevate the gang motif above the brutal grind of the daily news. At first, West Side Story is to gang reality as ballet is to walking.

However, the whole play is like a downward spiral, bringing us closer and closer to real life.  Beginning with the big picture where we meet the gangs, the neighborhood, the background of conflict,  the play gradually narrows down to a few characters, and then two, then ultimately one—Maria—left to mourn the tragic turn of events that killed both her brother and her beloved.

And therein lies the relevance of West Side story to modern America. We can delight in the muscular, active dance routines; we can ooooh and ahhhh at the great music, the fine lyrics. But by the end, we are involved in circumstances every bit as gritty and tragic and sad as the daily news. This forced transition from fantasy to reality is what makes this a truly great play.

Bruce Roberts may be reached at brobe60491@sbcglobal.net.

See what’s happening at the Orpheum Theatre: http://www.shnsf.com/

What others are saying:
“Dreams, a dissociative state, our minds persistent struggle against the shackles of reason. For Malin Gabriella Nordin, dreams, delusions and hallucinations seems to represent the incorrupt image of reality. Reconstructing fragments of them from memory, bringing them back to the stage set of the rational world; they appear like unaccounted extraterrestrial from a distant solar system, much more vivid than ours…”

-Samuel Nyholm, Artist
Stockholm, Sweden

Contact: malin@malingabriella.com

Website:www.malingabriella.com

I spend my Tuesdays at three in the morning the way most people my age do: watching movies in a cramped room with more people than available seating.  The last movie we watched together was the long-anticipated arrival of Sanjit and Ranju Majumdars’ Determinism. I was not sure what to think of the movie prior to viewing except for hope from the alluring trailer and rather cryptic title.  The movie itself was wonderfully dark and refreshingly insightful.  The director’s imaginative film style, creative music scores and powerful storyline make Determinism a movie you have to see to believe.

The film style was defined as “grunge” and certain rough shots and harsh camera movements were used to reinforce a darker ambiance for the viewer.  With that in mind I will admit that the exposure was off periodically and Majumdar was guilty of breaking the axis at times.  It had the downside of making dialogue difficult to follow, yet the methodical nature of introducing the characters reinforced the grunge style that the director was hoping for.  The special effects were quite impressive for the movie and the sweeping city shots were amazing (although arguably superfluous transitions).  Characters would be reintroduced in the movie with their name cleverly inserted somewhere on screen, which helped me to follow them since the beginning of the movie.  It had a unique character introduction, with Facebook profile-style introductions. The storyline also had a nice level of sophistication with a seemingly linear plotline that was actually threaded in layers of foreshadowing and backstories.

What I am truly concerned about, though, is the relationship between the director’s intent and the movie itself.  The very title provokes some deep insight into an existential dilemma.  We see the main character, Alec’s, struggle of being an authentic individual in a “racially charged” world that one is becoming increasingly disenchanted with which forces the viewer to question how much control he really has over his environment.  However, Alec became so engulfed in his own shortcomings as a first-generation Indian that he seemed to follow a path of despair and crime instead of working towards his own betterment.  Fortunately, it is the very apathy expressed by him that makes the movie particularly spectacular.  The characters are revealed slowly and their rather obscure history demands attention to every detail, every dialogue, and every little piece of information in order to understand the motives of all the characters.

You may contact the reviewer at cwilli10@ashland.edu.

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Time to go whizzing through December’s green and white landscape, in roller skates, whirling around to face smiling people everywhere without malice or bah-hum buggers! With deft fingers, you finished wrapping presents in July, perfectly, with bows that stick like magic, with youthful exuberance to spare- (and unlimited funds in your account)! Today window shopping for that perfect gift, looking at your size 10 in the windows at Macys you blow a kiss to that strawberry auburn bottled wonder- with the cute bob your stylist designed just for you; gee but its great to be that healthy, glowing, svelte middle aged gal, who will look just like this in 30 years, blessed with superior genes.

Than you come home to a hot dinner that Betty Crocker herself might have whipped up, with the savory scents of gravy and home cooked rolls warm and inviting with a big dollop of real butter gliding down the crease in the center-it never goes to your hips and by the way, who needs a fortune cookie with this life? You comb through the mail luxuriously, and note that once again you won the Readers Digest sweepstakes two years in a row, and of course half will go to the orphanage and you will be on the cover of Time magazine just in time for your pedicure and a visit with Opra. The lush pine from the Hallmark card Christmas tree is intoxicating, and the silver ware is polished to perfection.

You may reach Cynthia Lamanna at cynthialamanna@yahoo.com.

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About the Artist:

Joshua Braff is a painter and writer living in Oakland, California. He uses color and specific shapes to “evoke slashes of chunky movement or chaos amongst blips of order.”

Braff is an author of two novels, The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green (Algonquin 2004) and Peep Show (Algonquin 2010).

View his Website at www.joshuabraff.com.