Exhibit Space
This was an opportunity to step off the financial rollercoaster ride we've all been experiencing and focus on ways to bring more pleasure to our respective surroundings. While the specific projects we explored are scheduled to take place in the Yerba Buena neighborhood of SF, they offered a roadmap that can be applied to improving the public realm in our own cities (even if they won't stop a riot...).
Vest pocket plaza alongside the Old Mint
As San Francisco mayor Ed Lee noted “These are important programs to facilitate vibrant social interaction and to promote pedestrian safety, beauty, sustainability and community pride."
This is the third is a recent series of Meetup events featuring urban design. Previously we attended presentations by Rebecca Solnit with her imaginative atlas on the Infinite City, and Chron architecture critic, John King, who presented his list of appealing Cityscape views.
As with all such programs we metup next door after for a beverage or dinner to discuss our impressions.
The Yerba Buena Street Life Plan was hatched over many months of neighborhood input led by CMG Landscape Architects. The specific 36 recommendations have been rendered and were hanging at the SPUR Urban Center. We had a representative of CMG Landscape Architects, which was involved in developing the proposals and guiding them through the process, to present the plan to our group on an evening when SPUR stays open later.
Most of you know about the reuse of Belden Place by the B of A building.This plan has identified a number of similar places around Yerba Buena that follow the spirit of introducing more life into underutilized spaces like alleys and creating a friendlier sense of place. We probed how these local recommendations have transferability to other locales. These ideas covered such topics as sites for public art, pedestrian interaction, food truck zones, even dog runs. We will visit a "parkmobile" (below), now located around the corner from SPUR, that brings temporary gardens to a highly urban streetscape.
SF SALON IV: Does Democracy Automatically Produce More Happiness
Not much notice, but I thought a handful of members would enjoy anotherPhilosophy Talk show at The Marsh in the Mission to spark our discussion. I am particularly interested to include members who were raised in other countries like Lebanon, or Belarus or Egypt, as well as European countries (we will have a guest who grew up Romania). We would then have a snack at a nearby café to discuss the topic further.
This is very BARTable; as you can see from the map link above, the 24th St. station is three blocks away.
More on Philosophy Talk can be found here: http://philosophytalk.org/ Tickets can be purchased here:http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/196766 .
The Blue Angels will be flying at this time, but the SF Brainiacs would much rather be experiencing the life of the mind than an air show (which you have probably already seen).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is Democracy a Universal Value? with Larry Diamond.
Americans value democracy, and expect others to value it. But is it a universal value?
~Does God, or rationality, or something very basic about human sensibility, dictate that states should be organized democratically?
~What if there were empirical evidence that some non-democratic form of government is more likely to produce human happiness, cultural achievement, and sound money for countries at different stages of development (after all, the West had many hundreds of years to get it woven into social institutions)?
~For these non western countries would trying out democracy "prematurely" be counterproductive to their advancement?
John and Ken, the hosts of Philosophy Talk, consider the universality of democratic values with Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Spirit of Democracy.
The Cityscapes of San Francisco
In conjunction with the release of his firstbook, Cityscapes: San Francisco and its Buildings, San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic John King spoke about “10 ways to look at a city” — everything from cultural battlefields to archi-tectural collage, art exhibitions and measuring rods. The discussion covered what’s taking shape in the year ahead, both in the skyline and along the street.
From a review of Mr. King's book:
In sparkling prose and with full-color photography, Cityscapes looks at fifty buildings that convey a distinct slice of San Francisco. These are the buildings that are defined by bold visual moves and the ones that offer tactile delight. These are the structures you notice every time you pass by, and the ones that escape notice until the light hits them a certain way. Included are some of San Francisco’s most familiar buildings and works by some of architecture’s biggest names–but also plenty of buildings that are often ignored yet add a unique texture to this fabled place.
An outgrowth of “Cityscape,” a weekly column that debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009, Cityscapes is part history, part guidebook, and part architectural primer. And the points it makes about specific buildings convey something true to all great cities–that every building shines in its own way as a distinctive piece in a much larger puzzle, one still being assembled before our eyes.
Based on some responses, changed the date to Tuesday from Sunday with a start time at 7:00pm. As many of you know the Roxie is right around the corner from BART
SUNDAY SALON in Berkeley: How Language Shapes Thought
Stanford University philosophers John Perry and Ken Taylor, hosts of Philosophy Talk, the Bay Area's only philosophy radio show, returned to downtown Berkeley to tape two live programs at The Marsh. For their second show, their guest was Lera Boroditsky of Stanford's psychology department.
Exhibit Space
This was an opportunity to step off the financial rollercoaster ride we've all been experiencing and focus on ways to bring more pleasure to our respective surroundings. While the specific projects we explored are scheduled to take place in the Yerba Buena neighborhood of SF, they offered a roadmap that can be applied to improving the public realm in our own cities (even if they won't stop a riot...).
Vest pocket plaza alongside the Old Mint
As San Francisco mayor Ed Lee noted “These are important programs to facilitate vibrant social interaction and to promote pedestrian safety, beauty, sustainability and community pride."
This is the third is a recent series of Meetup events featuring urban design. Previously we attended presentations by Rebecca Solnit with her imaginative atlas on the Infinite City, and Chron architecture critic, John King, who presented his list of appealing Cityscape views.
As with all such programs we metup next door after for a beverage or dinner to discuss our impressions.
The Yerba Buena Street Life Plan was hatched over many months of neighborhood input led by CMG Landscape Architects. The specific 36 recommendations have been rendered and were hanging at the SPUR Urban Center. We had a representative of CMG Landscape Architects, which was involved in developing the proposals and guiding them through the process, to present the plan to our group on an evening when SPUR stays open later.
Most of you know about the reuse of Belden Place by the B of A building.This plan has identified a number of similar places around Yerba Buena that follow the spirit of introducing more life into underutilized spaces like alleys and creating a friendlier sense of place. We probed how these local recommendations have transferability to other locales. These ideas covered such topics as sites for public art, pedestrian interaction, food truck zones, even dog runs. We will visit a "parkmobile" (below), now located around the corner from SPUR, that brings temporary gardens to a highly urban streetscape.
SF SALON IV: Does Democracy Automatically Produce More Happiness
Not much notice, but I thought a handful of members would enjoy anotherPhilosophy Talk show at The Marsh in the Mission to spark our discussion. I am particularly interested to include members who were raised in other countries like Lebanon, or Belarus or Egypt, as well as European countries (we will have a guest who grew up Romania). We would then have a snack at a nearby café to discuss the topic further.
This is very BARTable; as you can see from the map link above, the 24th St. station is three blocks away.
More on Philosophy Talk can be found here: http://philosophytalk.org/ Tickets can be purchased here:http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/196766 .
The Blue Angels will be flying at this time, but the SF Brainiacs would much rather be experiencing the life of the mind than an air show (which you have probably already seen).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Is Democracy a Universal Value? with Larry Diamond.
Americans value democracy, and expect others to value it. But is it a universal value?
~Does God, or rationality, or something very basic about human sensibility, dictate that states should be organized democratically?
~What if there were empirical evidence that some non-democratic form of government is more likely to produce human happiness, cultural achievement, and sound money for countries at different stages of development (after all, the West had many hundreds of years to get it woven into social institutions)?
~For these non western countries would trying out democracy "prematurely" be counterproductive to their advancement?
John and Ken, the hosts of Philosophy Talk, consider the universality of democratic values with Larry Diamond, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of The Spirit of Democracy.
The Cityscapes of San Francisco
In conjunction with the release of his firstbook, Cityscapes: San Francisco and its Buildings, San Francisco Chronicle urban design critic John King spoke about “10 ways to look at a city” — everything from cultural battlefields to archi-tectural collage, art exhibitions and measuring rods. The discussion covered what’s taking shape in the year ahead, both in the skyline and along the street.
From a review of Mr. King's book:
In sparkling prose and with full-color photography, Cityscapes looks at fifty buildings that convey a distinct slice of San Francisco. These are the buildings that are defined by bold visual moves and the ones that offer tactile delight. These are the structures you notice every time you pass by, and the ones that escape notice until the light hits them a certain way. Included are some of San Francisco’s most familiar buildings and works by some of architecture’s biggest names–but also plenty of buildings that are often ignored yet add a unique texture to this fabled place.
An outgrowth of “Cityscape,” a weekly column that debuted in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2009, Cityscapes is part history, part guidebook, and part architectural primer. And the points it makes about specific buildings convey something true to all great cities–that every building shines in its own way as a distinctive piece in a much larger puzzle, one still being assembled before our eyes.
SUNDAY SALON in Berkeley: How Language Shapes Thought
Prof Boroditsky, who was born in Minsk and has presumably experienced first hand her subsequent lab findings, has collected data around the world: from China, Greece, Chile, Indonesia, Russia, and Aboriginal Australia. She and her colleagues have learned that people who speak different languages do indeed think differently and that even flukes of grammar can profoundly affect how we see the world. How does an artist decide whether death, say, or time should be painted as a man or a woman? It turns out that in 85 percent of such personifications, whether a male or female figure is chosen is predicted by the grammatical gender of the word in the artist's native language. So, for example, German painters are more likely to paint death as a man, whereas Russian painters are more likely to paint death as a woman.
Research with bicultural bilinguals has revealed that linguistic and other cultural cues may be fundamentally related. To take one example, the narrative style of Russian-English bilinguals who reported autobiographical memories depended on what language they used. When speaking in Russian, they recounted events in a more collectivistic way, but when speaking in English their stories were more individualistic
This phenomenon tends to be reflected in the criminal justice system. Americans hold people, regardless of their circumstances, responsible for their actions. Other cultures put more emphasis on the conditions that lead to anti social behavior. Or so says Prof. B.
English speakers tend to phrase things in terms of people doing things, preferring transitive constructions like “John broke the vase” even for accidents. Speakers of Japanese or Spanish, in contrast, are less likely to mention the agent when describing an accidental event. In Spanish one might say “Se rompió el florero,” which translates to “the vase broke” or “the vase broke itself.”
Language is a uniquely human gift, central to our experience of being human. Appreciating its role in constructing our mental lives brings us one step closer to understanding the very nature of humanity.
Background reading:
Lera Boroditsky, "Lost in Translation", The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2010.
A short summary for a general audience.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.html
HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? EDGE.ORG
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html
Meetup is a great platform to explore this, since the membership is so ethnically diverse.
Ian Morris “Why the West Rules -
Background reading:
Lera Boroditsky, "Lost in Translation", The Wall Street Journal, July 23, 2010.
A short summary for a general audience.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703467304575383131592767868.html
HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? EDGE.ORG
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/boroditsky09/boroditsky09_index.html
Meetup is a great platform to explore this, since the membership is so ethnically diverse.
For Now” ts /
A Malaysian lawyer told a British journalist: "I am wearing your clothes, I speak your language, I watch your films, and today is whatever date it is because you say so."
Do chaps or maps drive history? Human brilliance and folly, or geography? Or maybe genes, or culture? Ian Morris goes a level deeper than Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel to determine why the standards of Europe and North America now prevail in the world when it was the East that dominated for the 1,200 years between 550 and 1750 CE. Why did that happen, and what will happen next?
Ian Morris is an archaelogist and professor of classics and history at Stanford. His splendid book is Why the West Rules -- For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future.
Discussion followed afterward at a nearby cafe
Do chaps or maps drive history? Human brilliance and folly, or geography? Or maybe genes, or culture? Ian Morris goes a level deeper than Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel to determine why the standards of Europe and North America now prevail in the world when it was the East that dominated for the 1,200 years between 550 and 1750 CE. Why did that happen, and what will happen next?
Ian Morris is an archaelogist and professor of classics and history at Stanford. His splendid book is Why the West Rules -- For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future.
Discussion followed afterward at a nearby cafe
& discussion of the film:
The Economics of Happiness
Matt Ridley on "Deep Optimism"
This was one in a series of Seminars About Long-term Thinking.
Since it went for over 90 minutes with Q&A and intros, I've uploaded this Video synopsis of Ridley's point of view that he gave to the TED conference
For those who want to watch the entire program surf over to: http://fora.tv/2011/03/22/Matt_Ridley_Deep_Optimism
Matt Ridley on “Deep Optimism” Novellus Theater at YBCA
We met up after at the Grove to chat about the talk
About this Seminar:
Via trade and other cultural activities, “ideas have sex,” and that drives human history in the direction of inconstant but accumulative improvement over time. The criers of havoc keep being proved wrong. A fundamental optimism about human affairs is deeply rational and can be reliably conjured with.
Trained at Oxford as a zoologist and an editor at The Economist for eight years, Matt Ridley’s newest book is The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. His earlier works include Francis Crick; Nature via Nuture; Genome; and The Origins of Virtue.
Long Now is presented this Seminar in partnership with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, whose commitment to providing a forum for the most compelling contemporary thought continues with this collaboration.
About Long Now
The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996* to develop the Clock and Library projects , as well as to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today's "faster/cheaper" mind set and promote "slower/better" thinking. We hope to creatively foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years.
Two of Mr. Ridley's most notable previous books:
In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, Alice meets the Red Queen who runs everywhere but stays in the same place. This book champions a Red Queen theory for the evolution of sexual reproduction: that it was invented to keep changing the genetic locks so as to remain one step ahead of constantly mutating parasites. The Red Queen also addresses dozens of other riddles ofhuman nature and culture – including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and why the human brain may be like the peacock’s tail – a seduction device.
In The Origins of Virtue, Ridley argues that the human mind has evolved a special instinct for social exchange that enables us to reap the benefits of co-operation, ostracise those who break the social contract and avoid the trap of being 'rational fools'. It traces the evolution of society first among genes, then among cells, then in ants, vampire bats, apes and dolphins, and finally among human beings. Along the way, it plays games with computers, traces the psychological roots of football riots, finds trade to be ten times as old as economists believe, compares dead mammoths to lighthouses, explains the evolution of human emotions and shows how to save the rain forest. In an interview with Foreign Policy magazine, former US President Bill Clinton named this book as one which had influenced his thinking.[5]
Infinite City~a unique atlas of San Francisco
![Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas [Book]](http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/public/oNFAbBdhZVbdQKuu7pmijMjJmy4MkaRRzavYwepQfu1Gq9nj-59hvRU-JuqCvrLBPsRUsUPMG_fQvtKBYDMjskxAuOPEJur1kvJf77frM5ArcWqTlFcPJp0kYQdWHmEOma7ASYQa1H2pOfKC1n10YBTkK0C0SlMa)
Following the talk we headed down the street for our usual dinner discussion where we suggested other areas for inclusion in such an atlas
Members Free; Public $12
Rebecca Solnit is the best-selling author of many books, including River of Shadows, for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award, A Paradise Built in Hell, Savage Dreams (UC Press), and Storming the Gates of Paradise.
From cuisine and martial arts to sex and self-esteem, Vietnamese-American Andrew Lam, referencing the essays in a new book, discussed the bridges and crossroads where two hemispheres meld into one worldwide "immigrant nation." In this new nation, with its amalgamation of divergent ideas, tastes, and styles, today's bold fusion becomes tomorrow's standard. But while the space between East and West continues to shrink in this age of globalization, some cultural gaps remain.
Lam bounced his observations off of Richard Rodriguez himself an essayist and journalist who writes about class, ethnicity, and race and is author of Brown: The Last Discovery of America.
We adjourned to a nearby reasonably priced restaurant, Café Metropol, for our own conversation.
Meetup dinner before 8 p.m. performance was moved from the Arlequin Cafe to Ristorante Allego, 406 Gough at Hayes. Run by Turks, the menu was Italian. Very tasty. It worked for us because there was room, it was quiet, and entrees were in the teens.
The San Francisco Symphony teamed with two exciting young artists on a journey through one of the world's most mesmerizing musical cultures. The dynamic Alondra de la Parra led the Orchestra in the captivating overture to Mikhail Glinka's opera Ruslan and Ludmila Modest Mussorgsky's timeless Pictures at an Exhibition. Joyce Yang, critically acclaimed as "the most gifted pianist of her generation," offered a true Russian classic: Rachmaninoff's impassioned Third Piano Concerto.
Every few months we hook up with CulturePlaces and SF Brainiac members to join the Bay Area Wine Society for a wine oriented gathering.
In honor of La Fête Nationale and my heritage (Merle, meaning blackbird in French, is the derivation of word Merlot) we have invited California wineries with a French connection such as Mumm Napa Valley, St. Supery, Newton, Opus One, Chateau Potelle, DeLoach, Sonoma Cuvée, Raymond, and Tablas Creek to submit samples of new releases. Domaine Chandonhas sent their outstanding "still wine" Pinot Noir
The wines were paired with French hors d'oeuvres, including charcuterie, paté and saucisson from Fabrique Délices, "nibblettes" fromLa Boulange, and cheeses from the Marin French Cheese Co. The names of those who rated and ranked the wines for our blog went into a drawing of wines.
The Old Mint, which opened in 1874, was turned over to the City by the U.S. Treasury in 2003 and has been used only sporadically for private events. It is now being temporarily opened to the public for a fee until the end of the month for a unique exhibit.
This was a rare chance to gain access to the Mint's gorgeous and ornate interior .
The Bay Area’s Innovations in Farming and Food
The exhibit featured many of the Bay Area’s most important food and drink innovations, including the development of organic standards, the connections between producer and diner, and innovative approaches to ethnic and regional cuisine.
Eight exhibit galleries explored two important trends:
1. Restoring the Past: How we are reviving practices from the past because they are the right solutions for growing and preparing our food today.
2. Modern Innovations: How we are changing the way we eat and drink for the better.
A timeline of innovations linked these galleries together, giving visitors the big picture of where we’ve been, where we are today, and how today’s innovations are linked to the past.
A “Predictions Gallery” featured cutting-edge trends in food and cuisine with contributions from chefs, producers, growers, food writers, and foodies.
Afterward we walked across the street for a tasting of vino and vittles at Little Joe's, itself an historic institution, starting up four decades ago on Columbus in North Beach.
The Mint Project will fill a gap in the city's cultural landscape and give the Bay Area a truly innovative 21st century learning center dedicated to its people, achievements and global impact.
The Mint Project will create a new kind of cultural attraction that integrates dynamic exhibits on the history of the region with an interpretative visitor center and rotating cultural retail from the region.
The Vision...
~Honor the Men and Women who made San Francisco and the Bay Area what it is today
~Makes history meaningful by connecting the value and relevance of history with our daily lives
~Establish the Mint as a Gateway to the city and region providing an orientation to the Bay Area's rich cultural heritage
~Invite all to contribute and share their own perspectives and stories
Urban Design Exhibit:
Architecture: the Other Pleasure
Image Gallery @ AIA
130 Sutter St. Suite 600
San Francisco , CA 94104
"Environmental numbness, a symptom of over-stimulation and over-saturation, renders the subtle as un-see-able. By raising awareness of the ephemeral, architecture helps reengage the marginal and nuanced qualities of environments."
-Quoted from a backgrounder essay by one of the curators, Mallory Cusenbery, a Sonoma architect, who will guide us through the artwork on display.
Commissioned and presented by LINE (www.linemag.org), the design journal of American Institute of Architects, San Francisco, the exhibition offered an interdisciplinary exploration into the relationship between pleasure and design featuring works by contemporary architects, designers and artists.
Works by international talents, such as Shigeru Ban (Nomadic Museum), David Adjaye (Idea Stores), Predock_Frane (Center of Gravity Foundation Hall), pd DESIGN STUDIO (skin light bulb) and Slade Architecture/Ga A Architects/Mass Studies (Dalki Theme Park), complement local practitioners, including Kate Pocrass (Mundane Journeys) and Brian Barneclo (A Food Chain).
Some Background:
Raise the subject of pleasure and design, and it is difficult to avoid the well-worn threads of amusement parks, retail entertainment, themed restaurants, and other commercial spectacles. It's hard to broach the subject of pleasure and its relationship to the built environment without feeling the dominance of marketplace forces. This exhibit seeks to resist those very pressures.
Rather than add to the abundant statements on the commodification of delight, experience, and memory, the artists cast light on the less-explored relationships between pleasure and our designed environments to consider what exists outside the realm of market-driven, predigested, and deceptively limited pleasure choices. What are the other pleasures, not dominated by economic imperatives, and what are their relationship to design.
The answers, which reveal the phenomenal, political, and social dimensions of pleasure, fall into three subcategories: the intimate (everyday, personal pleasures), the transgressive (pleasures that are pursued in the margins or in spite of the design intent), and the purposeful (pleasure harnessed for social benefit).
Surprising, empathetic, joyful, and often humorous and rebellious--these are some of the qualities of pleasure we find when we pull away the constraints of focus-group-driven design and commercial ambition. Design for pleasure can engage us, challenge our sense of the built environment, and set in motion positive change.
After viewing the show, we slipped next door to a café to discuss our impressions.
Jonathan Franzen in conversation with Steve Winn
Presented by City Arts & Lectures
Herbst Theater, SF
Novelist Jonathan Franzen develops vast, multifaceted plots with modern characters dealing with intensely personal issues. Sprawling, socially engaging, and highly readable feasts, Franzen's books include The Twenty-Seventh City, Strong Motion, and the essay collection How To Be Alone. This dramatic intersection of personal stories with larger social themes resonated strongly in Franzen's highly praised novel The Corrections. The sweeping social panorama of life in our times included broad themes as well as specific details of contemporary culture through the portrayal of the most authentic characters. Winner of the National Book Award and The New York Times Editors' Choice for 2001, The Corrections is a stunning, funny, altogether heartbreaking book about the complexity of one American family. Franzen's first foray into memoir is The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History. Illustrating the common yet painful conflicts of his adolescence in 1970s suburban Missouri through his adulthood as a series writer, Franzen reveals himself to be one of America's smartest and most entertaining social critics in The Discomfort Zone. Franzen is an avid bird-watcher and his writing appears frequently in The New Yorker, Harper's, and elsewhere.
Afterward, went to Max's next door for a nosh and some conversation.
SFMoMA exhibit:
Anselm Kiefer on Heaven and Earth
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
If you missed what SF Chron Art Critic Kenneth Baker called "the museum event of the year", join us for another last day of display in S.F.
___________________________________________________
-Kenneth Baker
________________________________________________
INTERACTIVE FEATURE:
Explore 40 years of art by German painter, sculptor, photographer, and bookmaker Anselm Kiefer. This interactive program includes compelling interviews with the artist, as well as dozens of images from Kiefer's career-long meditation on the relationship between heaven and earth. Video interviews with the artist are presented alongside dozens of images of artwork and documentation from the artist's studio.
And download the curator's commentary using your MP3 or itunes software. It will increase your insight while gazing on the artist's work. http://www.sfmoma.org...
___________________________
Martin Amis
In conversation with Barbara Lane, JCCSF Director of Lectures & Literature
Regarded by many critics as one of the most influential and innovative voices in contemporary British fiction, Martin Amis delights in lampooning the excesses of Western society. His best-known works are the the acclaimed Time's Arrow and the trilogy that includes Money: A Suicide Note, London Fields, and The Information. Another book, Dead Babies, has been called a combination of the Marquis de Sade and P.G. Wodehouse. A lightning rod for controversy, Amis promises a stimulating evening.
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Vali Nasr on:
How Conflicts within Islam Will Shape the Future
World Affairs Council
312 Sutter St. Suite 200
San Francisco , CA 94108
Vali Nasr, Senior Adjunct Fellow on the Middle East, Council on Foreign Relations; Professor of Middle East and South Asia Politics and Associate Chair of Research at the Department of National Security, Naval Postgraduate School [a superb and incisive commentator ]
In The Shia Revival, Vali Nasr offers an analysis of the ancient struggle between Shias and Sunnis for the soul of Islam. The book sheds light on historic moments of Shia/Sunni competition over power, as well times of collaboration between the two sects against outside oppressors. Nasr believes that the sectarian divisions between Shia and Sunni, and the historic marginalization of Shias throughout the Islamic world, will come to play a large part in determining our collective future. Nasr believes Westerners have too often conceived of the Middle East through a Sunni perspective, and that in these changing times the Western world must now learn to understand the history, motivations, and philosophy of the Shia as well.
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Sonoma Museum of Art
The Pleasures of Influence: Bay Area Photographers Teach and Learn
September Salon: John Steinbeck and the Sense of Place
On the first weekend of fall, Sept. 22-24, we traveled down to the remarkable adult camp/retreat Asilomar situated along the ocean in Pacific Grove (Monterey). We discussed some of Steinbeck's illustrative writings, see clips from movies made from his books, visit Cannery Row--including the world renowned aquarium--and conclude with a tour of Salinas and the Steinbeck Center on Sunday. Susan Shillinglaw, the resident scholar at the Center and the preeminant authority on all things Steinbeckian, led our conversation at the Center. We hope to repeat this program next spring.
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Other recent programs involved conversations with:
-James Donohue, President of the Berkeley Theological Union,
-Amitai Etzioni, the founder of the Commutarian Network
-Adair Lara, writer for the San Francisco Chronicle
-Donlyn Lyndon, professor of architecture, UC Berkeley, and Editor of the journal Places
-Joel Kotkin, Irvine Foundation Fellow, New America Foundation, and author of a major new book on global cities
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We have also engaged in discussions that probed such theatrical pieces as the play Art, David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago @ ACT, and Brian Copelands one man show Not a Genuine Black Man.
We visited ~Cornerstone, A Festival of Gardens~, the Napa Valley Museum and COPIA in conjunction
Toured and Talked About the new DeYoung Museum
Celebrated the opening of the new Contemporary Jewish Museum at the first Target Family Day, a community-wide celebration where visitors will enjoy admission-free access to the new Daniel Libeskind-designed facility, lively music performances, hands-on activities, storytelling, and more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-Drop in Art Studio - Discover the Museum in the new Education Center by making your own art.
-Embellish a special edition Opening Day architectural souvenir poster.
-Create wearable art using art and architecture images from the new Museum.
-Create a fantastic mural of faces.
-Enjoy musical performances by Jonathan Bayer and interactive theater scheduled throughout the day
-Also, on the plaza we'll catch KLEZMANIA! San Francisco's premiere klezmer music ensemble and Kol Creation, Hebrew, Ethnic, and Reggae music from around the world.
Afterwards we strolled back across the street for a picnic at Yerba Buena Gardens and a concert by Omar Sosa . Cuban composer and pianist Omar Sosa's new touring ensemble, Afreecanos, explores the rich heritage of African music in jazz and Latin music. Drawing upon his Afro-Cuban roots, Sosa artfully weaves traditional elements from across the African diaspora and the Americas with his own distinctive sound, producing a thoroughly unique jazz idiom. The band's arrangements combine the folkloric with the contemporary - the ancestral with the urban - all with a Latin jazz heart. http://www.ybgf.org/c...
Traveled to the Bach Dynamite and Dancing SocietyMiramar Beach, Half Moon Bay, to hear Jazz piano sensation Hiromi.
Discussed Multiculturalism at a Sunday Salon using Amarya Sen's essay in The New Republic [see ~Multiculturalism~ page ]
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ And used author presentations on their books to focus our dialogs: We explored the ~ins and outs~ of the world's Oldest The author was a witty and caustic observer of human behavior, and offering us some insight into the psychology of the sex industry. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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JARED DIAMOND COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In the companion volume to his mega-hit and perpetual bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond probes what caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what we can learn from their fates. Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives, moving from Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |
Camille Paglia On
How to Approach Poetry
Brake, Blow, Burn is a blistering critique of the forces, educational and cultural, that detract from our pleasure of reading poetry. She lashes out against the marginalization of art generally and poetry specifically "by the complacency of an academy besotted by trendy theory and contemporary poets who treat their poems like meandering diary entries."
She has selected 43 poems she considers exemplary and tells us why. The poets run from John Donne to Joni Mitchell. She sets out to augment the lure of images with the lure of words.
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Martha Nussbaum
on the Frontiers of Justice
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Frederick Crews
reading from
Even when he was a leading academic literary critic at UC Berkeley, Frederick Crews was also a deflator of theories that he felt abandoned common sense and logic. His parodies of literary criticism, The Pooh Perplex and Postmodern Pooh were both wickedly funny and incisive. Since then he has written essays, many for the New York Review of Books, that strike a sword of skepticism against what he sees as intellectual irrationalism in fields such as Creationism, Post Modernism, "American" Buddhism, Freudianism, Recovered Memory syndrome, and alien abduction. Frederick Crews will read from his new collection of essays Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays.
Pizza and Dialogue on Crews' views followed at Taste in Berkeley
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Other Previous gatherings....
Sorting out gender
Our initial confabs concentrated on three areas with major significance for contemporary life. We explored the evolving gender roles that make our time so exciting and challenging. We started this thread several years ago with a lively discussion on Susan Faludi's assessment of the plight of the male after the WWII.
This was followed by an exchange led by Kathy Bruin, the founder of About-Face, who focused on the effects that media images have on young women trying to develop an individuality free from damaging peer pressure.
Our roundtable then took up the recently released study of the American Association of University Women entitled. "Voices of a Generation: Teenage Girls on Sex, School, and Self."
We moved on to dissect a provocative essay by Andrew Sullivan on testosterone supplements which examined the how masculine and feminine traits can be accommodated by changing institutions.
Another session was devoted to the depiction of the family in the movie "American Beauty."
Journalist Cathy Young, led a discussion on her book The Gender Muddle: From War to Reconciliation. Cathy discussed how the real gains of feminism, with its emphasis on self determination, can mesh with the new "girlie" femininity espoused by the current generation of young women. Ms. Young offered a common sense road map to the challenging new territory that lies beyond "Sex in the City". The discussion dealt with what might be called postfeminism or as it is usually referred to "Third Wave Feminism" that seeks to build on the generational progress of the Women's Movement.
Digital Divide
Other dialogues considered the social implications of the information revolution. We convened a series entitled "Cruising into Cyberspace: Who should be at the Controls?" As we enter the new millennium there may be no phenomenon with greater implications for privacy, freedom and personal relations than the Internet.
The first roundtable in this series discussed the views of two of the wired future's most penetrating and lucid observers: Lawrence Lessig and Andrew Shapiro. Next we probed how another member of the digirati, Douglas Rushkoff, sees the influence of virtual reality on real reality. Stephen Donaldson, President of an East Bay design firm, led a discussion of branding and the Internet.
We also examined the American Association of University Women's most recent report "Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the New Computer Age" which lays out ways that the digital culture can be made more inviting to girls. Kathleen Bennett, founder of the Girls Middle School and who served on the commission that wrote the report, led the discussion on the report's findings and how her educational start-up in Mountain View is putting its recommendations into practice.
Design and Art
Another evening included a slide show from tour guide Donald Lyon who explored ways to use photography to heighten the experience of traveling to new locales.
We also convened a session on contemporary classical music - can it be pleasing as well as provocative - led by the coordinator of the SF Symphony's American Mavericks series. A second roundtable was led by the artistic director of the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and a composer, Paul Dresher, whom the orchestra commissioned to write a new piece.
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Our craft has followed more philosophical currents, exploring alternative ways that attempt to achieve and balance both a greater sense of place and tranquility in life. The Hellenistic philosopher Epicurus (340-271 BCE) proposed that serenity, ataraxia in Greek, represented the highest form of pleasure. But to reach such peace of mind requires immersion in the world around us. We will exchange views on various contemporary approaches for pursuing this goal.
Several years we gathered to discuss the ways that the basic principles of Buddhism can enhance our everyday experiences. Media maven Wes Nisker (known in his youthful investigative journalism days as "Scoop" Nisker) who several decades ago moved on to a higher calling, served as our guide. Mr. Nisker is the author of Buddha's Nature; a Practical Guide to Discovering Your Place in the Cosmos.
While we seek to pull more synoptic meaning out of contemporary life, we will also ground this meaning in the evolutionary tendencies that continue to influence our behavior. In the fall we heard Frans M. B. de Waal, Director, Living Links, Yerkes Primate Center, Emory University discuss The Ape and the Sushi Master: The Nature of Culture. One of the world's foremost primatologists, the author of 17 books, de Waal argued that the term "culture" should not be confined to human activity alone. Indeed, we can gain more insight into our own behavior if we understand how our hairier cousins successfully engage in social learning andresolve conflict. Prof. de Waal also explored how his path breaking findings in evolutionary biology and psychology underpin morality.
This talk was followed in the fall by a dialogue on Australopithecus to Homo:Transformations of Body and Mind led by Prof. William McHenry, Dept. of Anthropology, UC Davis who gave his views on the missing link between our animal and earliest human ancestors.
Down in the Wine Cellar of the House of Shields we explored the meaning of love and relationships, using an excerpt from Jacob Needleman's A Little Book of Love.
We devoted a second session to Prof. Needleman's reflections on the meaning of ideas, specifically on his comments on "The American Soul" presented before our dinner in February.
A selection of other sessions from previous years….
ENRON'S END RUN: PREVENTING FUTURE ABUSES
The Enron debacle is being played out in a number of other companies on a smaller scale but with equally unnecessary negative effects. How do we fix the structural problems that result in conflicts of interest and the blindsiding of shareholders? The group shared observations and proposals to increase accountability and eliminate the possibility of management deception.
OUT OF AFRICA:
THE BEGINNINGS OF HUMAN GLOBAL DISPERSAL
DAVID LORDKIPANIDZE, State Museum of the Republic of Georgia
Dr. Lordkinpanidze, who heads the Georgian Center for Prehistoric Research, oversees major digs in the Caucasus that have unearthed the oldest undisputed hominid remains ever discovered. He led us in a discussion of the most controversial issues of why and when our ancestors left their homeland.
A DISCUSSION OF JAMES Q. WILSON'S PRESENTATION ON THE CULTURAL & SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN AMERICA
Legendary social scientist Wilson argues in his latest book, The Marriage Problem, that a culture of individualism and experiences wrought by slavery have conspired to undermine the American family structure with disturbing consequences for children and society. We discussed his previous speech to the Club focusing on his commitment to social science research and the limits of what it can accomplish.
LIBERTY FOR WOMEN: Freedom and Feminism in the 21st Century led by WENDY McELROY, Research Fellow, The Independent Institute; Columnist, FoxNews.com
We discussed how the new feminism asserts the rights of consenting adults to their own sexuality, opposes censorship, and defends every woman’s right to self-defense. It champions competitive markets as the vehicle for women’s economic rights and prosperity. The new feminism celebrates the possibilities of technology and defends reproductive rights. And yet, it also defends the validity of choosing traditional values (e.g., to be a “stay-at-home mom”) for those who find satisfaction in doing so.
REGULATING BIOTECHNOLOGY TO SAVE DEMOCRACY
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Professor of Political Economy, Johns Hopkins University
This was another follow up to a Commonwealth Club presentation. The provocative thinker who wrote The End of History about the post-Cold War triumph of liberal democracy and capitalism now argues in Our Posthuman Future that species-altering biotechnology threatens both our common humanity and the philosophical foundation of liberal democracy: the belief that all men are created equal.
