November 29, 2008

Beacon, NY

A couple weeks ago I went to visit my friend at her hideaway in Beacon. By train, it was less than 2 hours from Manhattan. She has a little studio there where she composes music.

We went for a lovely walk in the woods at Dennings Point, an historic thumb of land that sticks out into the Hudson River. Beacon is famous for being the home of one of the world's largest contemporary art museums Dia: Beacon, housed in the old Nabisco factory.

My friend, Deb K. in front of the concert hall where we saw a nice chamber music concert.



Map of Dennings Point

The video:

November 28, 2008

Thanksgiving at Lizzy's

Going to Carnegie Hall to Watch Irene

Giovanni, Suzanna and Liz

My friend Irene plays cello with the Park Avenue Chamber Symphony. They performed at Carnegie Hall last week in a concert benefiting the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. Due to high ranking connections, we scored the President's box. The concert was a little long, but fun. Arun showed up late (from work) slept during the concert, and went back to work, where he planned to spend the night (dude, you're working way too hard). There was a REALLY noisy group in the box next door. All of us gave them dirty looks, and they turned out to be one of the guest performers, a country western guy, and his family. You just can't take them country people anywhere.

Me and Lizzy



Park Avenue Chamber Symphony



Irene - see red mark

On another note, I played a trio with Yuri and Dili at Spielathon this year:




October 7, 2008

El Grand Canon

Whenever I come back from someplace like the Grand Canyon or Wyoming, I feel like a wild animal thrown back in its cage. I want to chew off my shackled paw and run back to the wilderness as fast as I can. I'm designing my escape plan.

En route...




One of my favorite places. It's better at the bottom.

September 24, 2008

May 19, 2008

Soy Una Tortuga

Man, I don't know why this year is going so fast. My head is still in February/March time zone. Spring was a blur and this is all I was able to capture:

March 13, 2008

March 10, 2008

March Madness

Body Paint by Rudy Everts (Australia)

What is a Pisces? Some key words to describe us include: Dreamy, psychic, sensitive, imaginative, creative, intuitive, abstract, compassionate, introspective, religious, clairvoyant, versatile, procrastinating, fatalistic, idealistic, unworldly, vague, easily led, addictive and exceptionally elusive.

Yes, we are slippery creatures and very hard to capture. Here are a few excellent examples of Piscean elusiveness, demonstrated by my subterranean friend Valerie:




My own preference is to take indoor photos with no flash under low light conditions. This creates a beautifully blurry world where anything can happen. Here are the highlights from an excellent party that we had recently. March/Pisces in attendance: Arun, David, Debbie, Diliana, Heather, Lenir, and Lucy. Isn't that amazing? There was A LOT of love in that room:




As we're a little hard to put into words, and as I'm a little lazy (being a double Pisces - Moon and Sun), I collected a few links for you that will shed more light on us:

How to Date a Pisces

Pisces Factually

General Observations

February 12, 2008

Our World At Night



The Fairy of Eagle Nebula

You have to turn out the lights to appreciate this post.

I'll bet you forgot that we're just a small but special organism living on a liquid marble in the middle of nowhere. Jobs and credit card payments aside, what are we doing here? I could tell, but I don't want to ruin the ending for you. We live in two universes; the day and the night. One we know so well and one we hardly know at all.

When Hale Bopp flew by our planet, I drove to Death Valley, one of my favorite places on Earth. Death Valley is so dark, you can see the enormous medicine shield drawn by the stars in the sky. It is impossible to miss. And heart stabbing. I highly recommend it.

I hope these images of our beautiful Universe give you a new perspective, just in case you're missing the point.



Elephant's Trunk in IC 1396



Horsehead Nebula



Venus and Jupiter Over Turkey




Winter Stars in Southern Iran




Stars over Mt. Taftan, Southeast Iran




Stars Over Monument Valley




And last, but not least, my number one very favorite horizon anywhere on Earth: The Teton Range, Wyoming

Tell me why you are here. I want to know.

Photos courtesy of the people who submited them to NASA and TWAN. Click on the photo title to view its source.

Mongolian Horse Head Fiddle

Do you know anyone who has been to Mongolia? No one that I know of has. Mongolia has this really cool instrument call the horse head fiddle. I found this guy on YouTube. He is totally crazy.





Mongolian Music on Wikipedia

January 26, 2008

Der Spielathon

Every year some friends of mine host a fundraiser for their music organization by hosting an event called the Spielathon, whereby amature chamber musicans purchase time to perform alongside professionals. The last one was held in December at Alina's house. Alina's dad was an internationally renouned pianist, but I like to maintain everyone's privacy, so I never mention last names here. You might be able to figure it out, though.

Kyle, who used to be a caterer, supplied a rather exotic (ok, erotic) schmorgesborg that was assembled by Heather and Lizzy in the kitchen.











Aren't these the most beautiful cupcakes you ever saw? They weren't actually at the Spielathon, but Kyle brought them to another event so I thought they were related. He claimed to have bought them but I think he really made them and then put them in a local baker's box to make it look like he bought them.


Heather and Lizzy making a big mess in the kitchen



Kyle and friends


Naomi and Bernie, true music lovers, with Diliana, Bulgaria's finest cellist

Larry seeing what it feels like to be in the audience


Tony the Tiger
Tony is one of New York's bravest (FDNY in Queens) who plays a mean violin



Me and Lizzy



A photo of Alina's dad talking with Albert Einstein


A painting of her dad


My all time favorite photo - her parents taking a stroll before they were married


Ah yes, the performance links
(these are not all of the performances of the evening):

Robert Shumann Fantasy Pieces, performed by Alina on piano and Diliana on cello
Zart und mit Ausdruck
Lebhaft leicht
Rasch und mit Feuer


David Popper, performed by Diliana, Suzanne, Larry (piano) and Valerie (I'm sorry this piece ended up in two pieces due to a camera technician issue)
Requiem for Three Cellos and Piano, Part 1

Requiem for Three Cellos and Piano, Part 2

Brahms Piano Trio in B Major, performed by Tony (violin), Diliana (cello) and Larry (piano)
Allegro con brio, Part 1
Allegro con brio, Part 2
Allegro con brio, Part 3
Allegro

People Who Have Been Married For Too Long

If you don't know who these people are, I'm sure you can figure it out. I sent them to Palm Beach for a week so they could have some quality time together.

Miami Holiday



Did you see Mr Clucky in the video?

I went down to visit my cousin over the holidays. We're a generation apart (she's actually my dad's first cousin) but we're cut from the same cloth and we have way too much fun together. She runs a very popular outcall (not alcohol) massage business. If you're ever in the area give her a call and she'll give you the whole wrap.




We went to the theatre to see Walk Hard.

Carole (to the ticket lady): Yeah, one senior ticket, please.

Ticket Lady: For what movie?

Carole: How the hell should I know? I'm a senior. I want to see the one about the guy with the hair.

Ticket Lady: Walk Hard?

Carole: Yeah, man. Thanks



January 20, 2008

West Bank

West Bank refugee camp, December 1990

My first minute on the ground in Israel, a taxi driver slammed the car door on my hand. That pretty much colored my temperment for the rest of the trip. It was Christmas week and it was really cold in Jerusalem. It actually snowed once. I went to - I think it was a U.N. office - and they hooked me up with a Palestinian journalist who had lived in San Jose, CA. We visited a nearby refugee camp (Palestinians found it humorous that they could be called refugees on their own land) and met several families who discussed their situations while the journalist translated. During this time, the U.S. media had done an excellent job of portraying Palestinians as Muslim extremists and I think people forgot that all of the Christians of the Holy Land were, in fact, Palestinian and that Bethlehem, for example, was (is) a Christian Palestinian village. I even found one elderly Jewish Palestinian who eloquently described how everyone had once co-existed peacefully, how Jewish and Arab (arab is an ethnicity by the way, not a religion) neighbors lived side-by-side without issue. I guess this would have been before the British Mandate of Palestine after WWI - or at least a long, long time ago.

Things have changed a lot since I visited the the West Bank 16 years ago. Issues that have been allowed to fester have increased in intensity ten-fold. There has been too much suffering on all sides. I don't think there will be any peace in the Middle East until the Palestinians and Isreaelis are at peace, and I have felt for some time that the key to resolving this situation is a very small matter that will have an enormous impact and the world will wonder why it took so long.

I, unfortunately, lost my journal for this trip so I have no recollection of where most of these photos were taken. If anyone has any info, kindly email me.




The awful thing about the refugee camps was that they were surrounded by barbed wire and gun towers with Israeli soldiers and machine guns. I was too afraid to try to photograph them. It didn't foster any kind of nurturing environment, and for these kids, it was the only life they knew. Thank God kids are resilient.





In 1990 I believe it was illegal to fly the Palestinian flag and even to wear the colors of the flag meant serious harrassment by the military.

A bulldozed home - an Israeli military specialty. Families could be given as little as 15 minutes or as much as 24 hours notice to evaculate before a bulldozing. There were lots of justifications for this action, including your child being caught throwing rocks at soldiers.




A military barricade designed to make life less convenient

The home of a man who was missing. It was typical for men to be arrested and held without charge or trial. They could be held for years at a time.


I am really sorry that I don't know what city this was. It was fairly large. There was intense military activity on this road, which their jeeps had blocked, so I walked down the sidewalk to see what I could. It ended up being a roundup of men. Someone had likely thrown a molotov cocktail. I went up into an office building across the street to get a better picture.

On a more positive note, upper and middle-class Palestinians did manage to eek out a more "normal" existance. I visited the family of a friend in Ramallah.





As it may still be, Israeli teenagers were required to join the military when they turned 18, for three years. So the entire country was full of teenagers carrying automatic rifles.





The one thing that has exacterbated this conflict more than anything, I think, are the illegal settlements. These are massive communities that have been built in the Occupied Territories in violation of the U.N. Security Council. Palestinian villages are destroyed to make way for settlements to be populated with Jewish immigrants. The life of an immigrant in Occupied Territory is quite different to that of the average Palestinian refugee.

An illegal settlement - you can see that it is substantial in size and not going anywhere soon

A illegal settlement school


A tree-line street of an illegal settlement


A settlement resident


This woman's village was next in line to be demolished for a new settlement. Again, I'm really sorry that I cannot come up with it's name, but the plight of this village had gained international notariaty and there were numerous Israeli activist groups attempting to save the village from destruction.

I'll close with some parting shots taken in Jerusalem (I had the same camera issue that I experienced in Egypt, that had to do with my light meter, so only the photos taken in dark alleys came out well).












 
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