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Fri, March 30, 2012
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T-Rex the Turtle plans to escape from his home at the Garden State Discovery Museum and travel to the Parkway Central Library to lead children on a journey uncovering the world of Dinosaurs! Join us on April 1st for this exciting and informative Sundays on Stage program. The show starts at 2 p.m.!
In the meantime, why not read some dinosaur books to gear up for the program?
Check out Bob Shea’s rip roaring account of a dinosaur that squares off with bedtime, the potty, and the library. Don’t miss Bernard Most’s Dinosaur Questions and How big Were the Dinosaurs?, both non-fiction books for young children. What are your favorite dinosaur books?
-written by Jennifer W.
Tags:
Pre-K,
Sundays on Stage
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Dinosaur Vs. The Library by Bob Shea |
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Dinosaur Questions by Bernard Most |
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Thu, March 29, 2012
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Adrienne Rich, the famed poet, essayist, and public intellectual known for her writings on politics, sexuality, and gender, passed away on Tuesday at her home in Santa Cruz. Her career spanned seven decades and included the 1974 National Book Award for her collection of poems, "Diving into the Wreck," which she accepted while reading a statement she penned with fellow nominees Alice Walker and Audre Lorde that stated that in accepting the award, they were "refusing the terms of patriarchal competition and declaring that we will share the prize among us, to be used as best we can for women." Listen to Rich read "Diving into the Wreck" at poets.org.
To commemorate the brilliant poet's awe-inspiring life, here is her "Art of Translation":
1
To have seen you exactly, once:
red hair over cold cheeks fresh from the freeway
your lingo, your daunting and dauntless
eyes. But then to lift toward home, mile upon mile
back where they'd barely heard your name
--neither as terrorist nor as genius would they detain you--
to wing it back to my country bearing
your war-flecked protocols--
that was a mission, surely: my art's pouch
crammed with your bristling juices
sweet dark drops of your spirit
that streaked the pouch, the shirt I wore
and the bench on which I leaned.
2
It's only a branch like any other
green with the flare of life in it
and if I hold this end, you the other
that means it's broken
broken between us, broken despite us
broken and therefore dying
broken by force, broken by lying
green, with the flare of life in it
3
But say we're crouching on the ground like children
over a mess of marbles, soda caps, foil, old foreign coins
--the first truly precious objects. Rusty hooks, glass.
Say I saw the earring first but you wanted it.
Then you wanted the words I'd found. I'd give you
the earring, crushed lapis if it were,
I would look long at the beach glass and the sharded self
of the lightbulb. Long I'd look into your hand
at the obsolete copper profile, the cat's-eye, the lapis.
Like a thief I would deny the words, deny they ever
existed, were spoken, or could be spoken,
like a thief I'd bury them and remember where.
4
The trade names follow trade
the translators stopped at passport control:
Occupation: no such designation--
Journalist, maybe spy?
That the books are for personal use
only--could I swear it?
That not a word of them
is contraband--how could I prove it?
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The one, the only Adrienne Rich. |
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Wed, March 28, 2012
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Credit: U. Montan, nobelprize.org |
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"We would be worse than we are without the good books we have read, more conformist, not as restless, more submissive, and the critical spirit, the engine of progress, would not even exist. Like writing, reading is a protest against the insufficiencies of life. When we look in fiction for what is missing in life, we are saying, with no need to say it or even to know it, that life as it is does not satisfy our thirst for the absolute – the foundation of the human condition – and should be better. We invent fictions in order to live somehow the many lives we would like to lead when we barely have one at our disposal."
-Mario Vargas Llosa, writer, activist, and Nobel Prize recipient, who celebrates his 75th birthday today.
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Tue, March 27, 2012
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This is serious business. |
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All hail the glorious Wikipedia for revealing heretofore unknown holidays! Not only is today World Whiskey Day (to which I say, drink up, ye of legal drinking age!), it is also World Theatre Day! 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the holiday, which some Wikipedia contributor has taken as inspiration for writing a World Theatre Day entry that focuses on the history of theatre in India. Beyond reading about India's fascinating theatrical history, however, embrace the endless possibilities of World Theatre Day and check out Parkway Central's unparalleled Theatre Collection, which houses amazing materials on the history of Philadelphia and American theatre. You can also check out our "Sundays on Stage" schedule and pencil a performance into your calendar.
And now, a remark from John Malkovich, who was appointed by the International Theatre Institute to be the public figurehead for the holiday's fiftieth anniversary:
May your work be compelling and original. May it be profound, touching, contemplative, and unique. May it help us to reflect on the question of what it means to be human, and may that reflection be blessed with heart, sincerity, candor, and grace. May you overcome adversity, censorship, poverty, and nihilism, as many of you will most certainly be obliged to do. May you be blessed with the talent and rigor to teach us about the beating of the human heart in all its complexity, and the humility and curiosity to make it your life's work. And may the best of you -- for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments -- succeed in framing that most basic of questions, "How do we live?" Godspeed.
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Mon, March 26, 2012
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March 26 is a surprisingly literary day. It was on this day in 1484 that William Caxton published his English-language translation of Aesop's Fables. Tennesee Williams and Robert Frost were born on this day (albeit 37 years apart), and Walt Whitman and Noel Coward both died on March 26ths of different years. To commemorate this momentous day, enjoy a collection of poems and quotations from the many individuals who marked its passage in particularly memorable ways (with the exception of Eazy-E who, although he died on March 26, never managed to write any lyrics that would be appropriate for this particular online venue).
"When I Heard the Learned Astronomer," Walt Whitman
When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." -Robert Frost
"I don't want realism. I want magic!" -Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire
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