About 200 miles from my hometown, this was the furthest west I travelled while enrolled in college (I didn’t even make it to Syracuse or the fairgrounds). I was here to pick up posters for the Glimmerglass Festival. Most of what I saw of East Syracuse was an office park and railyard. Driving to and […]
Communication
“I feel that if a person can’t communicate the very least he can do is to shut up!” – Tom Lehrer
Bowker Auditorium
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts As a theater professional, and even as a kid, what strikes me most about Bowker Auditorium is its use of windows inside the space. These have to be constantly covered by curtains during performances, but even on a matinee you still can tell that there is daylight outside. I went […]
Home on the Range and Trying to Stifle Everyone‘s Freedom of Speech!
Ah Charles Schulz’ classic comic strip Peanuts and its various television and stage derivatives. There’s nothing like seeing allegories for real-world problems acted by children, particularly ones that are pertinent to current events. In this case I’m particularly struck by the song “Glee Club Rehearsal” from the musical You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown. “Glee […]
Upper Rio Grande River
Colorado Without the upper part of the Rio Grande, Creede would not exist. As a practical matter this section of the river and its tributaries carved the valley that Creede nestles in. For me exploring the many streams near town flowing down the mountains to feed the Rio Grande including Bellows, Farmers and Willow Creeks […]
Leitha/Lajta River
Austria and Hungary My first day trip while studying abroad in Vienna was to a town called Eisenstadt. Along the way the train there made a stop at a down called Bruck an der Leitha (literally Bridge on the Leitha River). As with the Susquehanna I’ve viewed this river in several distinct locations. I’ve seen […]
Susquehanna River
New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland I’ve seen the Susquehanna River in three different locations. The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY, where I interned in the summer of 2017, lies on the north end of Otsego Lake, which is the source of the river; a bridge 8 miles south in downtown Cooperstown touts itself as the […]
Binary Sunset (alternate)
This is a weirdly misadvertised 17 minute track on the Star Wars original soundtrack 2004 release. While the track does start with a grimly prophetic alternate version of the music to the famous binary sunset scene (the use of the dies irae hints at the deaths of Luke’s aunt and uncle, a scene where that […]
Latvijas Nacionālā bibliotēka
National Library of LatviaRiga, LatviaJuly 2018 Riga in contrast to Bucharest has a lovely old town that did not suffer during the Soviet era (instead it got itself UNESCO listed). The library lies on the other side of the Daugava River. I got a view of the building while waiting a few minutes across the […]
Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei
National Library of RomaniaBucharest, RomaniaApril 2018 Bucharest is a town that’s rather stuck with the Communist architecture of the 80s, yet, if you’re willing to navigate its various side streets you can sometimes find gems of a past era. When I was there I had the good fortune to glimpse the Mănăstirea Antim, a monastery […]