92Y Video: MindCapsules™ - One Life, One Lesson, One Minute with Anthony DeCurtis
Anthony DeCurtis sits in front of the camera for the 92Y MindCapsules™ video series, and offers one life lesson learned that is very helpful: “Don’t take it personally.”
I think that when I was younger certainly, that was something that tripped me up a lot. I mean, I tended to kind of respond in a very personal way to situations that was either, innapropriate, or beside the point. You know, I think the more you can distant yourself, and have a little bit of perspective...”
Wise, wise words from a wise, wise man. This brings back so many cringe-inducing memories when we did not practice this advice. View previous MindCapsules™ with Malcolm Gladwell and Lewis Black.
Upcoming events at 92Y:
Gail Collins with Nora Ephron: Women Come of Age: Jan 12
Covington is doing good work through his I Am My Brother’s Keeper ministry, using the church to provide food, clothing and shelter to the city’s homeless — more than 100 on some nights. At the same time, Covington isn’t able to heat the expansive old building or repair the hole in the roof that allows wind, rain and snow to enter the 1,200-seat sanctuary.
Albom learns of Covington’s plight and writes about it in his column in the Detroit Free Press. He donates time and money to get the heat turned back on in time for Christmas Eve services last year.
“That was just disgusting,” Albom says one recent night while visiting the church. “It’s unforgivable. I know this is a poor city, but nobody needs to be that poor if they’re trying to be faithful.”
We would like to extend a special offer for our blog readers who would like to attend Albom’s event Nov 4. Purchase tickets for Mitch Albom and use code MCF9 at checkout to receive 50% off the ticket price.
New York Times Looks at “Exotic Bets” in Financial Markets
“When the global markets plummeted after Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy in September last year,” the New York Times reports, “a handful of alternative investments remained stable or even made money for investors.” Among that handful were managed futures.
David M. Darst, chief investment strategist of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, calls managed futures “financial Tylenol.” “Managed futures tend to do well during periods of great market volatility,” he said.
By way of example, Mr. Darst pointed to the period from the beginning of 2000 until the end of 2002, when the technology bubble burst and the economy was last in a recession. During that three-year period, managed futures gained about 22 percent on average, while the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell roughly 38 percent, he said.
More recently, from September 2007 until the present, managed futures have gained around 20 percent on average, while the S.& P. 500 index has lost about 30 percent, according to Lipper, the fund tracking firm.
Mr. Darst said that one advantage managed futures had over hedge funds was liquidity. Some managed futures funds allow investors to take their money out monthly, while hedge funds typically have quarterly or annual redemptions. Mr. Darst said that managed futures funds could do this because the futures traded on public exchanges, while hedge funds often owned illiquid assets.
92Y Video: Alan Dershowitz vs. Dennis Prager: The Left, the Right and Judaism in America, Part 2
We previously posted a clip from the debate on October 8 at the 92nd Street Y with Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz and talk radio host Dennis Prager on “The Left, the Right and Judaism in America.” Above is another where they assess the current threat to Israel, thoughts on George W. Bush (as well as his father), and how the Middle East conflict is represented on American campuses.
You can watch Deborah Reed, ceramics student at the 92nd Street Y, talk about her love of clay. Or see “talented young jewelry artist,” Nathan Bergelson, as he creates a bangle bracelet under the guidance of jewelry instructor Amy Haskins.
Martha is a 78-year-old native New Yorker, who “happens to have a handsome husband at home.” They have lived in the Mill Rock apartments on the Upper East Side for 32 years. She tells us that rent was once $450.00 a month and is now $1,300.00+. She has seven children, fourteen grandchildren, and eight great-grandchildren. Watch the whole video above.
As part of the 92Y Street Fest, we offered a coupon good for a 10% discount on classes and events. We would like to extend that offer to our blog readers through Oct 30, 2009. Use discount code FALL when ordering event tickets online or by phone. Please note: When purchasing classes, you must order by phone: 212.415.5500, to utilize the discount code. We can not accept the discount code for classes online.
Regular prices vary. Discount cannot be combined with any other offers and does not apply to prior sales. Not Applicable toward Health & Fitness memberships. Restrictions apply. Offer valid through 10.30.09. Discount is valid for first time enrollment only for the following 92nd Street Y programs: Noar Afterschool, Connect Jewish Afterschool, Private Music Instruction, 60+ membership or Parent Center Membership.
Offer is not valid for subscription tickets nor is it valid for Summer Camp, Flying Dolphins Swim Team or Gymnastics Team registrations.
10% discount not valid for online class registrations.
Left to right: Alexandra Wilder (winner), Libby Burton (winner), Genevieve Burger-Weiser (winner), Paula Trachtman (sponsor of the award in honor of her daughter Amy Rothholz), K.D. Henley (winner).
Poets & Writers is pleased to announce that Genevieve Burger-Weiser, Lisabeth Burton, K.D. Henley, and Alexandra Wilder are the winners of the 2009 Amy Award.
The 14th Annual Amy Awards featured winners reading from their work as well as a guest poet. It happens that past and present individuals associated with 92Y were well represented.
Alexandra Wilder, Managing Director of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center, was an award winner, as was Libby Burton, 92Y Poetry Center intern last year. The featured poet, Grace Schulman, was a former Director of the Poetry Center. Lastly, Galen Williams, also a former Director of the Poetry Center and founder of Poets & Writers, was in attendance.
That’s a lot of 92Y representation, and well deserved! You can read more work from students and faculty of the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center in Podium, a literary journal produced by the Poetry Center. The Center also has a Facebook, where you can keep up to date on events, get new content and podcasts, special deals, and more!
92Y School of Music faculty member Rupert Boyd was a finalist in this year’s Concert Artist Guild competition—a prestigious competition for ensembles, instrumentalists and vocalists. In its nearly 60 year history, very few guitarists have won the competition. Notable examples are Manuel Barrueco, (here on Dec 5) The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet (here on Nov 11) & The Brasil Guitar Duo.
With regard to the competition, Rupert told us via email:
I am just so honoured and consider it a great achievement to have made it as far as I did in such a prestigious competition. Out of over 350 contestants, I was one of only 12 (and the only guitarist) to be chosen for the finals. I shared the stage with some extremely talented musicians, including the current principle flutist of the Metropolitan Opera, pianists and violinists who have performed concerti with orchestras around the world, a vocal quintet from Germany and a chamber ensemble from Israel.”
We were going to write a little blurb about what went down at Kevin Geeks Out About...Vincent Price, but then we read Kevin’s own recap. It became clear that adding anything more would be futile and redundant. Kevin has written the greatest blog post about one of the greatest Kevin Geeks Out About... and we don;t think that is hyperbole. Allow us to show you, as we recap his recap in bullet points:
Lisa Beebe served TWO kinds of Vincent Price cupcakes (portrait cupcakes as well as “fly” cupcakes with a plastic fly caught in a web of icing).
Writer Eric Drysdale (The Colbert Report) edited down footage from the promotional film for Sears’ Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art, followed by clips from a Price-hosted instructional VHS tape that came with the Nishika 3D Camera. (At the end of the segment, an audience member won said camera!)
...we heard a first-hand account of a teenage boy writing a fan letter to Vincent Price (promising him a role in a horror movie)
92Y Podcast: From the Poetry Center Archive: A.S. Byatt: “Your Own Poet’s Voice”
A.S. Byatt first appeared at the 92Y Poetry Center in October of 1991, for a reading from Possession, which had won the Booker Prize the year before. This Thursday, some 18 years later, Ms. Byatt returns to the Poetry Center to read from The Children’s Book, a finalist for this year’s Booker. (Hilary Mantel, this year’s winner, was one of the judges who awarded Ms. Byatt the prize in 1990.)
The Sunday Times of London has called The Children’s Book “easily the best thing Byatt has written since her Booker-winning masterpiece Possession...[It] superlatively displays both enormous reach and tremendous grip.” Like Possession, The Children’s Book is a teeming, polyphonic novel.
“I started writing in other voices really when I wrote Possession, partly because I was somehow dissatisfied with the ‘voice’ of realist prose about people’s feelings,” Ms. Byatt said in a recent interview with Bookforum. “That is only one way to write. So I wrote parodies of scholarly analysis, biographical musings, Victorian love letters and poems, and I think this makes the ordinary ‘storytelling’ voice in turn more surprising and problematic. When people ask me why I write, I say it’s because I love the language and what it can do. I think I’m not very interested in self-expression.” Read her interview on Feministing for more insight.
Today’s featured recording is Ms. Byatt’s October 28, 1991 reading from Possession. In this excerpt, which comes from Chapter 8 of the novel, Ms. Byatt conjures the voices of all four of her main characters—two modern-day researchers (Roland and Maud) and two Victorian poets (Randolph Henry Ash and Christabel LaMotte).
In an ongoing effort to share with our readers some of the great literary moments which the Poetry Center has presented across the decades, this blog has begun to feature regular postings of archival recordings by some of the best writers of our time—many of whom, like Ms. Byatt, are returning this season. To purchase tickets to Ms. Byatt’s reading, please click here. For more information about the rest of the upcoming season, please click here. And for access to other recordings from the Poetry Center archive, 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.
You can also download the MP3. [12 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
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92Y Video: Vivian Gussin Paley at 92Y Wonderplay Conference 2008
In the video clip above, early childhood education researcher and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Vivian Gussin Paley speaks at last years Wonderplay Early Childhood Learning Conference, an all-day conference for early childhood educators. She touches on the importance of imagination and play in childrens’ development, as well as suggesting the most important aspect between a teacher and child:
You, one on one, can be kind to each child. You need no permission from anyone to look every child in the eye and make the child understand how you respect him and her and how you want to carry on this conversation, and how much you love the child’s play and talk, and everything about the child…
...You will never do a more important thing in your life. This is the great gift we give to each child everyday.”
“Hey, I’m your host: DJ Sufjan. Thanks for coming,” he says, trying to stir the audience.
It will be a night of art — but exactly how, or what kind of art, no one is certain.
Stevens speaks for a brief moment and introduces the first act, singer/songwriter DM Smith. Unlike most folk singers, Smith is backed by six other musicians: a percussionist, a bassist, a cellist, two violinists and a viola player. The classical backing only serves to assist his enchanting howl, which channels Eastern rhythms. His short set is defined by simple, delicate arrangements, like an appetizer before the main course.
A few moments pass, and Stevens climbs the stage once more. This time, he explains that his second album, “Enjoy Your Rabbit,” was an electronic experiment that no one seemed to understand. As a result, he had the songs rewritten for the string quartet Osso, a group of classically trained women who perform interpretations of Stevens’ songs. Stevens’ experimental computer distortion transforms into high notes. The audience, formerly busy in conversation, is respectably silent. Dreamy sequences approach and linger as each song reaches a close. It is, most definitely, a non-traditional take on a classical medium.
Talks: On Stage with Next to Normal: Join us for an evening of music from the Tony-winning Broadway musical Next to Normal, featuring members of the cast and creative team in this one-night only event.
For this month’s Fiction Podcast in The New Yorker with fiction editor Deborah Treisman, novelist Orhan Pamuk reads from Vladimir Nabokov’s My Russian Education. We found the podcast quite interesting, particularly Pamuk’s choice to read Nabokov.
Pamuk will make his first appearance at 92Y on Nov 9, when he reads from his novel, The Museum of Innocence. And on Nov 16, the Poetry Center presents: A Celebration of Vladimir Nabokov with Martin Amis, Brian Boyd, Chip Kidd and others. This will be a notable event where The Original of Laura is read and discussed, which only exists because the manuscript was saved against Nabokov’s dying wishes.
Do you follow us on Twitter? If not, we would invite you to do so. We have a good time over there. For instance, as seen in the screengrab above, we are soliciting questions from our Twitter audience for the Mitch Albom event on Nov 4.
Head over to Twitter, @reply us with your question for Mitch, and if used in the Q&A that evening you will win tickets to an upcoming lecture of your choice, subject to availability.
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David M. Darst, chief investment strategist of Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, calls managed futures “financial Tylenol.” “Managed futures tend to do well during periods of great market volatility,” he said.
Unlike most folk singers, Smith is backed by six other musicians: a percussionist, a bassist, a cellist, two violinists and a viola player. The classical backing only serves to assist his enchanting howl, which channels Eastern rhythms. His short set is defined by simple, delicate arrangements, like an appetizer before the main course.
