Archive: Arts & Entertainment

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The Tompkins County Public Library will participate in Downtown Ithaca’s First Friday Gallery Night March 3 from 5:00 to 8:00 PM by offering art and poetry lovers a glimpse into the life and work of Nobel Prize-winning poet Czeslaw Milosz.

The exhibit, presented by the Ithaca City of Asylum, will feature books and photographs recording Milosz’ 1981 return visit to Poland, following 30 years of exile to the United States. Pieces included in the exhibit are on loan from Pawel Bakowski.

SMART TALK

by Dr. Viva Palaver

ALWAYS AND FOREVER: Therapists tell me here at the Center for English as a First Language that patients share an almost universal problem with terms for time. This fascinates me as the center's psychologist.

The therapists tend to treat the problem with logic: always and forever each expresses temporal infinity. Therefore, they're absolute terms, allowing neither addition nor subtraction. Always and forever means infinity times two, which simply makes no sense.

They make the same argument against forever and ever, which is to say that merely forever is somehow too short.

For all eternity invites sarcastic questions from therapists such as Dr. Weiss N. Heimer, who quite logically asks, "All eternity?" So how long is just half of eternity? If I try to be good, can I be punished for maybe ten percent of eternity? How long might that be, exactly?"

Sarcastic or not, logic doesn't always get through to patients. Some need to see me to work through very basic concepts of time, life spans, and history. Sometimes, a fear of death gets in their way. They me still cling to their early childhood belief that forever means ever since their birth, and that time obligingly ceases upon their death, which will probably never happen.

Once we get past their denial of this fact of life, patients see the deeper meaning of always and stop sounding redundant about it.

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Fresh off its smash hit run of Hairspray in January, Running to Places Theatre Company (R2P) continues its 2012 season with Oliver at the Hangar Theatre, February 24-26. This classic musical is based on the story by Charles Dickens and is part of Ithaca College’s “Dickens in Ithaca” celebration of his 200th birthday.

“We are delighted to be part of this series,” says R2P Co-Artistic Director Gail Belokur. “What better way to introduce a new generation to the works of this great writer than through a musical adaptation of a favorite Dickens story—and one that features several memorable characters close in age to the students portraying them!”

Aurora, New York— The Wells College Arts and Lecture Series proudly welcomes the renowned Elisa Monte Dance Company for a campus residency and formal performance of their work. The performance will be held at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 1, in Phipps Auditorium of Macmillan Hall on the Wells College Campus. Elisa Monte Dance will also work with students in a pair of modern dance master classes and hold a brown bag lunch discussion.

With support from an Ithaca Public Education Initiative (IPEI) Community Collaboration Grant, the Hangar Theatre offered special matinee performances of “It’s a Wonderful Life: A Live Radio Play” to more than 700 Ithaca City School District (ICSD) students on December 14th and December 16th, 2011.  Community Collaboration Grants are awarded to nonprofit community organizations to initiate curricular-enhancing programs with the ICSD.

“Given the demands on funds in our schools, this special opportunity would not have been possible without IPEI,” said Christopher Carey, Boynton Middle School teacher.  “Their support of our students, year after year, is needed, appreciated, and most gratefully accepted.”

SMART TALK

by Dr. Winton "Windy" Prolix

SNOW SHOWER: KBUL, The Voice of Bedspring Tech, consistently commits the usage error. But this news outlet, down the road in Los Libidos, Texas, has an excuse: The staff changes almost every semester. Students doing the weather just don't get around to reading the notice we send every year from the Center for English as a First Language.

A shower is, by default, liquid. When you take a shower, you expect water, not snow, to come out of the showerhead. Therefore, rain shower is redundant. Sure, we can have meteor showers, but the word shower makes us think of water falling from either the plumbing or the clouds.

Snow shower is nothing but verbiage invented by weather forecasters trying to sound more important, like an official officiously saying high rate of speed instead of fast.

Snow shower has actually caused climate change, not meteorologically but verbally. Remember flurries? We seldom have flurries any more. This spares us from hearing about snow flurries, but the redundancy makes more sense than the oxymoronic snow showers.

Imagine how clear and elegant weather reports and forecasts would look and sound with showers and flurries. Seasoned professionals have no excuse for saying rain showers, especially in summer, or snow showers instead of flurries.

One more thought: What comes down when we have a so-called rain shower? And when we have a snow shower? And what falls during a meteor shower? So what falls during a baby shower?

Just asking.

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Adam Rapp’s Pulitzer Prize nominated Red Light Winter lays bare the passions of three young people caught in a love triangle so dangerous and obsessive that it pushes them to the brink. Red Light Winter previews at the Kitchen Theatre Company on February 22, 23, and 24 and opens on Saturday, February 25.  It runs for three weeks, closing March 11, 2012.

The story begins in the seductive city of Amsterdam. It is winter. Davis, an up-and-coming young editor, riding high after a recent editorial success, and his college-buddy Matt, a struggling playwright, have come to partake in all the tantalizing freedoms the city allows.  Both 30, both on the cusp of all that is possible in their lives, their dream-like experience peaks when Davis purchases the services of Christina, a mysterious prostitute from the Red Light District, as a gift to Matt. Their Red Light Winter changes all three lives forever.

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The Tompkins County Public Library has announced the release of its first community cookbook, “The Library Table:  Recipes from Readers, Food for the Mind.”

Spearheaded by Librarian Debbie Collier, the spiral-bound cookbook includes nearly 180 recipes from more than 100 community members and provides a glimpse into the kitchens of library patrons, employees and trustees.