Audience Experience

Attended the MIT Hackathon about XR, actually called a Reality Hack.  I crafted and scripted the narrative about Desegregation in Miami in 1957-specifically a story about Frank LeGree and how his family had picketers outside his house, threw rocks and eventually erected a cross on his front lawn-all in order to get him out of a neighborhood. The video of the AR experience we created is here:  https://youtu.be/C6w3e4wqwfk Our team would love to do more with AR and explore this and other stories of America's growing pains further. Desegregation of schools, different neighborhoods in large cities i the 1950's. Life for a growing country and how that time period brought forth change that is still unresolved today.  Connect that period with When They See Us-and #OscarsStillSoWhite and you will see how America still exists in black and white for so many people. The best part of the Hackathon was the idea that so many different people could come together to build a new re...

I've been doing some research on Twain's visit to the Azores. He stopped in Horta on his way to Palestine-a series of correspondences that would become his book,  Innocents Abroad. Most of what he wrote about the Azores in that book was not kind, he was trying to create jokes-and also created a cynical sense of the superiority of the American traveler. He made himself the joke of an ugly American-especially viewed from the perspective of today. In the Book about the Dabneys, there is evidence that he was in their house. Below is a quote from one of the female residents. “At 10 the parlor was quite full….One young man had his note-book out all the time and remarked as I gave him some verbena,’I am taking notes as I am a correspondent of a paper’.  ‘Horrors;, writes CPD, “how we may appear in print,’

Having spent Thanksgiving in Provincetown, with all its associated Portuguese heritage, I noticed that there is an Annual Blessing of the Fleet and weekend-long Festival at the end of June (6/25-28/2020) More information can be found here: https://provincetownportuguesefestival.com/ It's never to early to plan your time in this seaside town, especially bc it fills up so quickly in the summertime. See you then!!

Last night, I attended a marvelous reading and discussion with the author Anthony De Sa and Wilfried N'Sonde. Both authors were amazing, and revealed the excellent approaches they took about research and their backgrounds and how they contributed to their work. Both were WRITERS first, their backgrounds were just pieces which informed their writings-not characteristics by which they needed to be pigeonholed. I admit, that I came because De Sa had grown up in the Portuguese neighborhood of Toronto, and I had read Barnacle Love while in the Azores. There aren't enough children of Portuguese immigrants writing fiction today and I loved what I had encountered-feeling as if I was not alone in the experience. De Sa's new book is about Mozambique, Children of the Moon.  In an aside, he revealed that even though his uncles had fought in the wars (including Angola and Guinea), he had never gotten a fuller story out of them.  When I probed further, he mentioned how difficult ...

I was walking to my flight at the Jetblue Terminal and saw a tiny art studio in the lobby area. I stopped and chatted a bit, but was rushing to my flight.  What a funny place for a popup art location, I thought. And then I came through again, and my plane was delayed. Finally I had the proper time. I stayed and spoke to Davi Leventhal, and enchanting man who told me about being raised Brazilian in NYC, something I related to, being raised Azorean in Boston. His art was based on fuxicos-simple circles of fabric, which when combined, make a giant tapestry of color and energy.  Visitors are invited to make one and leave one. I made 3, but one fell apart.  He gifted me one-which I will attach to a blanket my grandmother made me. For more info: https://www.davileventhal.com/about.html https://www.aviationpros.com/airports/buildings-maintenance/press-release/21076449/the-port-authority-of-new-york-new-jersey-local-artist-residency-program-returns-to-laguardia-ai...

Linda Ronstadt, 1974 https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidalm/2019/08/30/review-linda-ronstadt-the-sound-of-my-voice/#13cf14c948c4

I'm happy to report that the performance of Thoreau/Twain: Brothers in the River for the Thoreau Society was a tremendous success. Brent Rinalli, Tammy Rose and Joel Hersh The main performers were Brent Rinalli, who has been in and around Concord giving lectures and historical interpreting as Thoreau for the past few years and Joel Hersh, a local actor known for his varied musical ability-played Twain. The main conceit of the show is that an Academic is trying to summon the spirits of the authors, to have them discuss a major, and underexplored parallel of their lives.  Both of them had a deep relationship with a brother on the river of their childhood, and both of them lost that brother to a sudden event. This happened before either of them began to write-but both found inspiration in their brothers and documented the influences strongly in their writings. The authors -who had never met in real life- get deep into conversation, about their lives, commonaliti...