CULTURE – HEATHER KING

AUGUST WILSON’S “GEM OF THE OCEAN”

October 12, 2019
by Heather King

AUNT ESTER AND CITIZEN BARLOW
photo: Craig Schwartz

This week’s arts and culture column begins:

Here’s how Pasadena’s A Noise Within Theater pitches its latest production:

Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson unfolds the African American legacy in the first chronological episode of his celebrated “American Century Cycle,” a soaring, mystical tale of a man desperate for redemption in 1904 Pittsburgh.

Aunt Ester, a 285-year-old “soul cleanser,” sends him on a spiritual journey that dissects the nature of freedom amid oppression and spurs him to take up the mantle of justice.

“Two hundred and eighty-five?” was my first thought upon reading the description of “Gem of the Ocean.” “This could go either way.”

But as director Gregg T. Daniel observes, “Memory insists that we go back and claim the past.” And in fact, Veralyn Jones pulls off the part beautifully. With long, white braids, a floor-length patchwork style skirt and a neat weskit, she manages to be both the timeless repository of ancient wisdom and thoroughly of her place and era.

Her feet ache, as they would, but she’s put-together, practical, and while not suffering fools gladly, compassionate. She’s not woo-woo, she doesn’t have a schtick, she doesn’t make lame jokes and stage-wink about her age and her heaping powers. She’s not a stereotype, in other words.

Consequently, you believe her character, the linchpin of the play, and you believe her.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

THE ANCIENT BRISTLECONE PINE FOREST

October 6, 2019
by Heather King

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

I spent mid-August to mid-September at a writer’s residency offered by the good sisters at the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Cottonwood, Idaho, population 923.

It was good to get away. But it also felt really, really good to be heading back to Southern California in my trusty Fiat 500.

En route, down through Boise, then 250 miles of breathtaking desert vistas to Winnemucca, Nevada, then hundreds of more miles the next morning, I made my way to a place I’ve wanted to visit for many years: the Ancient Bristlecone Forest in the Eastern Sierras.

Navigating there required several deserted back roads, the loss of all cell reception, and a 23-mile drive through the eastern portion of CA-168 W to White Mountain Road in what is technically Bishop, at which point there’s still 10-miles more of Inyo National Forest road to go, up, up, and up some more.

I’d already driven close to six hours that day, so I was especially grateful to wheel into the parking lot of the Schulman Grove Visitor’s Center. (Edmund Schulman, Ph.D., 1908-1958, was a University of Arizona dendrochronologist with a background in astronomy who, entirely sensibly to my mind, related cosmic events to the science of tree-ring dating).

At 10,000 feet the warmth of the sun was overlain with the faint chill of early fall and the fresh, dreamy scent of pine.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

ON MARRIAGE: LEAVING BEFORE THE RAINS COME

October 4, 2019
by Heather King

“But most vivid of all in my memory was the encounter with Dad’s friend, the Polish father from the Catholic mission at Old Mkushi. He caught me by the shoulders just as I was making my way into the garden for the photographs, as if he had an urgent message to impart. ‘The first year is hard, and after that it gets worse,’ he said, his mouth so close to my ear that I could smell the red-dust-infused scent of his river-washed, sun-dried clothes. I laughed at him, excusing his sentiment as the meaningless words of a celibate East European was has lived too long in the Zambian bush. ‘No really, it’s true,’ he insisted. ‘I should know. I’ve been married to God for fifty years.’ “

—Alexandra Fuller, from Leaving Before the Rains Come

I’ve just discovered Fuller, started with Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and have read straight on through three more of her memoirs, with Travel Light, Move Fast on hold at the library. A beautiful and train-wreck compelling writer.

FOOLS FOR CHRIST

September 28, 2019
by Heather King

Last week I was talking to my dear friend Greg Camacho, of San Antonio, Texas. During the course of our conversation, he said “I was looking for one of your books the other day and saw the title Fools for Christ. Which looks like it’s hot off the press. Did you bring out a new book and NOT EVEN MENTION IT?”

“Well, kind of. I published my womanhood book, RAVISHED, around the same time, both on amazon’s self-publishing platform, so I thought I’d wait a bit to talk about this one”…

Apparently the time has come. I hired a designer, Rowan Moore-Seifred of DoubleMRanch Design, and the interior layout is every bit as compelling as the cover.

Here’s a description:

“FOLLOWING THE BOX AT THE ASIA PACIFIC MUSEUM”

September 26, 2019September 26, 2019
by Heather King

SUNANDINI BANARJEE,
FROM A SERIES OF 5, UNTITLED,
DIGITAL COLLAGE PRINTED ON ARCHIVAL PAPER

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:

Toward the end of World War II, an unknown U.S. serviceman, stationed in India, took over a hundred black-and-white photographs of the people and life in rural West Bengal.

Decades later, Chicago-based artists Alan Teller and Jerri Zbiral bought an estate-sale shoebox of photos and negatives, a treasure trove that would forever link their destinies to that unknown soldier’s.

Through Jan. 26, 2020, an exhibit called “Following the Box” at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, features 12 contemporary artists, two American and 10 Indian, who have been inspired by the photographs to create works of their own.

Each artist was given digital and/or print copies of the photographs and asked to incorporate, deconstruct, or in some way imaginatively spin off of them.

Disciplines include painting, photography, film, mixed-media, installation, graphic arts, graphic novels, book art and folk art.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

FEMINISM IS IN TROUBLE

September 19, 2019September 22, 2019
by Heather King

WHITE MOUNTAIN ROAD, BISHOP CA
EASTERN SIERRAS/THE ANCIENT BRISTLECONE PINE FOREST.
I STOPPED HERE ON THE WAY BACK TO LA.

It’s not in trouble here. I have hit the ground running upon returning from my month in Idaho and week-long road trip on either end, have fallen in love with LA all over again, and am obsessed with migrating (eventually) to a new website. The light in September! Every day I am torn, and from about three pm on, would easily simply sit on my balcony and drink it all in till the sun goes down.

THE WILLIAM S. HART RANCH AND MUSEUM

September 8, 2019September 17, 2019
by Heather King

Here’s how this week’s arts and culture piece begins:

William S. “Two-Gun Bill” Hart (1864-1946) was a silent film star. Wildly popular in their time, his movies tended to follow the same arc — he started out bad and ended up good.

Born in upstate New York, Hart began his career as a Shakespearean stage actor. His breakout film, “The Bargain,” opened in 1914, when he was 50 years old. In 1915 and 1916, he was voted the biggest money-making star in the U.S.

He built his retirement home in Newhall, near what is now the confluence of the 5 and the 114 freeways: “La Loma de los Vientos” — “The Hill of the Winds” — he called it. The architect was Arthur R. Kelly, whose other designs included the Wilshire Country Club in Hancock Park and what we now know as the Playboy Mansion. He specialized in the Spanish Colonial Revival style and completed the Newhall project around 1925.

When Hart died, he left all 265 acres to Los Angeles County, with the proviso that the house be converted into a museum, open to the public for free.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

GAUDÍ ON TECHNOLOGY

September 5, 2019September 17, 2019
by Heather King

LA SAGRADA FAMILIA,
GAUDÍ’S MASTERPIECE
BARCELONA, SPAIN

I am winding down my intense month of work, silence, solitude, and prayer here at the Monastery of St. Gertrude.

Much of my time was spent refining and editing a little ms. I’ve been working up over the past couple of years: HARROWED: Misadventures in an Urban Garden. (Come on, who would not want to buy that!?)

Then, this past week, I was seized with the borderline manic, obsessive thought that I should revamp my entire website/blog. I’ve done many fine tunes, but the fact is that I’ve been maintaining this Blogger site for almost ten years!

And for about the last five, have been thinking of migrating over to WordPress, which has way fancier templates, widgets, gadgets, graphics et cetera.

As soon as I started investigating, I entered a vortex of possibilities, explorations, frustrations, excitement and fears. I’ll definitely need to hire someone to help me.

Read more “GAUDÍ ON TECHNOLOGY” →

VOICES FROM CHERNOBYL

August 29, 2019September 17, 2019
by Heather King

GRAFFITI ADORNS A WALL IN THE GHOST CITY OF PRIPYAT NEAR THE
FOURTH NUCLEAR REACTOR (BACKGROUND) AT THE FORMER CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, SITE OF THE WORLD’S WORST NUCLEAR DISASTER. (SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/GETTY
IMAGES)

In this month of the anniversary of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

MONOLOGUE ABOUT A SONG WITHOUT WORDS

“I’ll get down on my knees to beg you—please, find our Anna Sushko. She lived in our village. In Kozhushki. Her name is Anna Sushko. I’ll tell you how she looked, and you’ll type it up. She has a hump, and she was mute from birth. She lived by herself. She was sixty. During the time of the transfer they put her in an ambulance and drove her off somewhere. She never learned how to read, so we never got any letters from her. The lonely and the sick were put in special places. They hid them. But no one knows where. Write this down . . .

The whole village took care of her, like she was a little girl. Someone would chop wood for her, someone else would bring milk. Someone would sit in the house with her for an evening, heat the stove. Two years we all lived in other places, then we came back to our houses. Tell her that her house is still there.

The roof is still there, the windows. Everything that’s broken or been stolen, we can fix. If you just tell us her address, where she’s living and suffering, we’ll go there and bring her back. So that she won’t die of sorrow. I beg you. An innocent spirit is suffering among strangers.

There’s one other thing about her, I forgot. When some thing hurts, she sings this song. There aren’t any words, it’s just her voice. She can’t talk. When something hurts, she just sings: A-a-a. It makes you feel sad.”

–Svetlana Alexievich. Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Alexievich won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature, “for her polyphonic Writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time.”

DANCING AT THE VATICAN

August 24, 2019September 16, 2019
by Heather King

BRENDA LARA
From Buenos Aires. At 15 years of age, Brendae suffers from Juvenile Huntington’s (JHD). She lost her Father to HD on her last birthday after her Mother had left, unable to cope. She’s been cared for by her aunt Norma Lara ever since.

The subject of this week’s arts and culture column is a documentary that addresses an especially cruel illness: Huntington’s Disease.

Here’s how the piece begins:

“Dancing at the Vatican,” a 38-minute documentary directed by Brian Moore and produced by Amanda Spencer, showcases the plight of those suffering from Huntington’s disease (HD), a progressive neurological disorder. A parent with HD has a 50/50 chance of passing it on to his or her offspring.

The film is narrated by Emmy award-winning former NBC-TV foreign correspondent Charles Sabine, an asymptomatic HD carrier whose two beautiful young daughters accompany him to Rome.

HD causes progressive degeneration of nerve cells in the brain. Its symptoms include uncontrolled movements (the accompanying jerking and twitching is known as chorea), emotional problems, and loss of cognition. The disorder is genetic and it is fatal.

HD can strike anyone and anywhere: Folk singer Woody Guthrie purportedly died of it. But in an even crueler twist of fate, it concentrates in certain places around the globe, and they are mostly poor.

Barranquitas, Venezuela, in the Lake Maracaibo region, is one such place. Chile and Peru also have dense clusters of HD. Dilia Oviedo Guillén, from a village in Colombia, watched her husband and five children die of the disease. She now devotes her life, 24 hours a day, to nursing four more adult children who suffer from HD.

READ THE WHOLE PIECE HERE.

Category: CULTURE