Want to see what other brilliant screenings (lowbrow or otherwise) are coming up at 92YTribeca? The February film calendar is right here.
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Travel writer Pico Iyer first read at 92nd Street Y’s Unterberg Poetry Center in 2005. Today’s featured recording is an excerpt from that appearance. In this video he describes a recent journey to India and the mystifying experience of attempting to decipher the strange English street-signs he encountered all around him.
“Last Wednesday found me sitting in the shadow of the Himalayas, surrounded by snowcaps and red-robed monks. Last Thursday I was in Singapore. Last Friday I was in Los Angeles. Now I don’t have a clue where I am,” he said from stage that night, having been introduced, by Caryl Phillips, as “the most global of souls—sensitive and curious about everything. A shining example of how one might live in this brave, new, hybrid world as both a writer and a thinker.”
Iyer’s new book, The Man Within My Head, focuses on his obsession with Graham Greene while also featuring passages of memoir about his family and dispatches from faraway places. He’ll be at 92Y on February 9th for a reading from this book.
What gives the book its distinction is “the range of [Iyer’s] sympathies—for a diversity of cultures, for varieties of religious belief, for opposed political positions—and his luminous intelligence,” wrote The Wall Street Journal. Iyer’s reading partner on February 9th will be Rebecca Solnit, whose own work is well known for its range of sympathies and luminous intelligence. Her new book, From the Faraway Nearby, comes out in 2013, and we hope she’ll read some passages from it.
Pico Iyer and Rebecca Solnit are here on February 9.
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Coming up at 92Y Poetry: Jean Strouse and Colm Toibin on Alice James on February 26.
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Unterberg Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings. For access to other recordings, please click here.
Unterberg Poetry Center webcasts and access to our archive are made possible in part by the generous support of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation.
Posted in Humanities All topics of 92nd Street Y at 12:14pm | Link to this item |
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Do you have questions about Judaism, faith and family, life, or any other concerns?
You can ask Rabbi David Kalb tomorrow, February 1, on the 92Y Facebook page. He’ll be hanging out there periodically all day, ready to answer any questions you have!
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The book consists mainly of interviews with seniors — ages 70 and up from all walks of life. Some, like TV host Hugh Downs, age 88, are well known. Among Downs’ comments is this: “It’s really hard for a young person to understand, when they see a senior citizen, that the older person, inside, is just as vital and just as interested in things as anybody else.”
The forward by author Marianne Williamson mentions “It took my own mother’s death’ to reveal to me the level of indifference bordering on criminal neglect that permeates our social, medical and personal attitudes toward the elderly in America today. Death is inevitable but unkindness and lack of understanding are not.”
Dr. Ruth Westheimer is quoted in the book as well. “Older age doesn’t mean the end of desire and excitement,” she said. “gOLD demonstrates beautifully how new adventures continue to unfold in later life and this is certainly good news for the baby boomers.”
Speaking of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, she’ll be at 92Y on January 30 to launch her 37th book, in a free event: Sexually Speaking: What Every Women Needs to Know about Sexual Health. Joining her will be two senior physicians from NY Presbyterian, Amos Grunebaum, MD, and Frank Chervenack, MD.
Related: Here’s Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s Poppy Seed Hamantaschen recipe for Purim, the holiday on which we read the Book of Esther (also called the Megillah), a salacious story of seduction, sexual manipulation and feasting!
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Here Comes the Moon, Here Comes the Sun – Bo
By Rabbi David Kalb
Rabbi David Kalb, Director of Jewish Education for the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at 92nd Street Y, continues his series of guest blogs below, with another post on the weekly Torah portion.
This week’s Parshah (Torah Portion), Parshat Bo, mentions the Mitzvah (Commandment) of Kidush Hachodesh, the Mitzvah of sanctifying the month according to the Sefer Hachinuch Mitzvah 4. It can be found in the Torah in Shemot (Exodus) Chapter 12 lines 1 and 2. The mitzvah of Kidush Hachodesh results in us having the Jewish holiday of Rosh Chodesh which marks the first day of the new Hebrew month. The first day of the new month is based on when the new moon comes. All of this forms the basis for the entire Jewish calendar, which all of the Jewish holidays are dependent on.
To truly understand the importance of the holiday of Rosh Chodesh, we need to examine the story of the creation of the moon and the sun in the Torah. The story can be found in Bereishit (Genesis) Chapter 1, lines 14 and 15: God creates two lights that appear to be equal in strength and are responsible for separating day and night, as well as for marking the holidays, days, and years. Though the Torah does not name these lights, we can assume that the light of the night is the moon and the light of the day is the sun. In line 16, the Torah does make a distinction between the lights: God pronounces the light of the day (the sun) to be the greater light and the light of the night (the moon) to be the lesser light.
What causes the change from the apparent equality of the sun and the moon in lines 14-15 to the dominance of the sun in line 16? In Judaism, the moon plays a more dominant role in marking holidays and determining the calendar. Why, then, does God pronounce the sun to be dominant over the moon?
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Walter Isaacson, author of a new Steve Jobs biography, spoke with TIME‘s Rick Stengel on January 24 at 92Y about the significance of Jobs’s contributions to the business world and industries he revolutionized.
As compiled on our Storify page, audience members shared their observations and reports on Twitter during the talk. One noted that Stengel asked Isaacson: Could Jobs have been “nicer”? “Maybe his reactions were instinctive,” Isaacson responded, “but when I asked him, he said ‘This is who I am.’”
Here’s what Nick Carbone wrote in TIME Business:
Could a “nicer” Jobs have been as successful? “Could he have put that filter in place and said, ‘I’m going to be just as effective as I am now, but I’m also going to bite my tongue and stop myself’?” [Isaacson] wondered. “That is a fundamental question in life.” If he didn’t quite offer an answer, Isaacson did point to the company’s unusually high retention rate, and suggested that, contrary to conventional wisdom, it was Apple’s culture – not its products – that ultimately set it apart. “Creating a great product isn’t the hard part,” Isaacson said. “The hard part is creating a great company that will continue to create a great product that will be at the intersection of creativity and technology.”
Another interesting piece of information shared that evening: Isaacson informed his next biography might be of Ada Lovelace. Read more reports from audience members on our Storify page.
Related: Google’s Marissa Mayer joins Normal Pearlstine at 92Y on March 27. Get your tickets now.
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