In his latest article for The New Yorker, Dr. Atul Gawande compares the current health care reform initiative to another in America’s history: agriculture.
There are, in human affairs, two kinds of problems: those which are amenable to a technical solution and those which are not. Universal health-care coverage belongs to the first category: you can pick one of several possible solutions, pass a bill, and (allowing for some tinkering around the edges) it will happen. Problems of the second kind, by contrast, are never solved, exactly; they are managed. Reforming the agricultural system so that it serves the country’s needs has been a process, involving millions of farmers pursuing their individual interests. This could not happen by fiat. There was no one-time fix. The same goes for reforming the health-care system so that it serves the country’s needs. No nation has escaped the cost problem: the expenditure curves have outpaced inflation around the world. Nobody has found a master switch that you can flip to make the problem go away. If we want to start solving it, we first need to recognize that there is no technical solution.
Join Gawande on Jan 5 when he returns to 92Y for a discussion on his just published book, The Checklist Manifesto, where he reveals the surprising power of an ordinary checklist that can save lives and improve the way in which we behave.
92Y Podcast: From the Poetry Center Archive: Richard Wilbur: Sweet Excess
“Some winters, taking leave, deal us a last hard blow,” writes Richard Wilbur in the poem “A Storm in April.” Mr. Wilbur’s poem praises a late blizzard which delays the Spring:
But the bright, milling snow
Which throngs the air today—
It is a way of leaving
So as to stay.
Here at the front-end of a new winter, we offer the poetry of Richard Wilbur—so full of grace and gratitude and good-will—as today’s featured post, recorded in May 1985.
Mr. Wilbur, who first read at the Poetry Center in 1950 and most recently this past May, is now eighty-eight, and yet he shows no signs of slowing. His new collection, Leavings, will be published in 2010.
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. For access to other recordings, please click here. For more information about upcoming Poetry Center events, 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. [30 MB]
[Right-click and select "Save Target As:" or equivalent to download.]
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92Y Video: James Madison High School Student MJ - Dear You
James Madison High School student MJ performs her original composition, Dear You, at 92Y High School Guitar Day this past spring. That is 92Y faculty Ann Klein who joined MJ on guitar.
To learn more about the 92nd Street Y School of Music, including the Guitar Institute, High School Guitar Day and more, we invite you attend an Open House on Sun, Jan 24. It is a free event from 1-4pm, where you can meet our faculty, and find out anything you wanted to know about everything the School of Music does.
In the video clip above, Amitav Ghosh reads from his book, Sea of Poppies, a work of astonishing ambition that was short-listed for the Man Booker Prize.
Check out many more videos of past readings at our YouTube page in this handy playlist.
In a certain sense Metropolitan is arguably a more interesting film now than it was in 1989/90. Because it shows more than ever that Stillman is Wes Anderson’s uncle. (Or older brother, older cousin or whatever.) Because they both make/have made films about brilliant, curiously charismatic people who breathe rarified air and live on their own clouds. Stillman is a little more in the UHBs (urban haute bourgeoisie) than Anderson, but it’s a similar line of country.
Stillman and Anderson are also somewhat similar in the sense that they shoot with an exacting visual aesthetic. (Anderson a little more so). Plus they both dress nicely and have both lived in Paris (Stillman previously, Anderson currently) and probably share several other similarities. And yet they’ve never met, Stillman told me last night. Weird. (Hey, Wes? If you’re reading this get in touch and I’ll hook you guys up.)
We wonder if anyone told Stillman or Wells that Wes Anderson was in the same building only a few weeks ago!
Make sure you don’t miss any upcoming film events at 92YTribeca by bookmarking their film page, following 92YTribeca Film on Facebook, or join their eNews. You’ll be the first to know about new events, late-breaking news and exclusive offers.
Coming up at 92YTribeca: Chinese and a Movie: Mel Brooks Double Feature on Dec 25, and The Iron Mule Short Comedy Film Festival on Jan 2.
His hero is a thoroughly callow youngster, descendant of a formidable line of small-time braggarts and show-offs, who gets himself a job as an apprentice train dispatcher at a country station somewhere west of Prague, evidently with no greater ambition than to become another uniform-wearing stuffed shirt.
Awesomely and enviously, he watches the nonchalance and dexterity with which his immediate superior, the dispatcher Hubieka, tosses off his modest duties of waving on the trains that come roaring through the station, tending the switches and telegraph instruments, and especially the skill with which he manages to enjoy himself with available members of the opposite sex.
Nervously, our young hero tries to emulate the older man, particularly with a pretty woman train conductor who passes through from time to time. But things don’t work out for him as nicely as he realizes they should; he fails at a delicate moment of crisis, and is thrown into a mood of despair. In the end, however, through the interest of his friends and a series of taut events, he is able to meet not one crisis but two and thoroughly prove himself a man.
Upcoming Film events at 92YTribeca include: Chinese and a Movie: Mel Brooks Double Feature (Dec 25), Owning the Weather (Jan 7), and Bill Plympton and Signe Baumane Present Animated Short Films on (Jan 13).
The New York Times on Patti Smith and Dream of Life, a documentary on her life filmed over 11 years by fashion photographer Steven Sebring:
“It begins with her goodbye to the house in Detroit where, in a retreat from fame into a new role as a mother, she lived for 16 years beginning in the early 1980s. From there the film documents Ms. Smith’s return to New York and to performing a decade ago, after a trio of unexpected deaths that affected her deeply — of her husband, the guitarist Fred Smith; of her brother, Todd; and of her longtime pianist, Richard Sohl.
“I had to leave Detroit,” Ms. Smith said in the interview, which took place in August, when PBS was promoting the film to television journalists. “I don’t drive, and I didn’t want to live in Detroit alone, and so I brought my children back to the East Coast.”
“But I had to get a job, to take care of them, and to send them to school,” she added. “You know it’s a lot more expensive to live in New York City than in Detroit. And so I went back to performing.”
She was encouraged by a few close friends: Bob Dylan, who drafted Ms. Smith to tour on the East Coast with him in 1995, and Allen Ginsberg and Michael Stipe, the R.E.M. frontman.
Those men are present, at least spiritually, in the film, as is Sam Shepard, who drops by her apartment for a tranquil jam session. But as the film critic Manohla Dargis wrote in reviewing “Dream of Life” in The New York Times in 2008, “If you want to know about punk, what it was like to play CBGB when it mattered (or on its final night, as Ms. Smith did in 2006), look elsewhere.” What the film presents is instead a dreamy atmosphere that, as Ms. Dargis wrote, “feels less like a documentary and more like an act of rapturous devotion.”
On Jan 21, join Sam Shepard and Patti Smith, close friends since the early 1970s, when they read from their newly published books at the Unterberg Poetry Center for the first time. Purchase your tickets here.
Join Annette Insdorf, Professor in the Graduate Film Division of Columbia University’s School of the Arts, for the latest Reel Pieces event on Tue, Dec 22. Joining Insdorf will be actor William Hurt, for a screening of his film The Yellow Handkerchief, directed by Udayan Prasad and co-starring Kristen Stewart, Eddie Redmayne and Maria Bello, set in post-Katrina New Orleans.
This Thu, Dec 24, David Broza, one of Israel’s most enduring and energizing artists, returns for his annual concert. He will be joined by G.E. Smith on guitar, Jay Beckenstein on saxophone, Julio Fernandez on guitar, Emedin Rivera on percussion, and Francisco Centeno on bass.
And on Fri, Dec 25, beginning at 3pm will be the 92Y/JDate® Christmas Day Chinese Food and Comedy. This special event for Jewish single will feature a Chinese Buffet and a line-up of comics. The event is open to anyone aged 35 or older.
As former New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee recently explained on video, there is a tradition of Jews eating out at Chinese restaurants over the Christmas Holiday. The A.V. Club knows this as well, and thinks that Chinese and a Movie at 92YTribeca on Christmas day sounds like a perfect plan:
Neither party really wants to make much fuss over the holiday, so what better than to purchase and prepare, respectively, spring rolls and beef lo mein? 92YTribeca understands this, and here it has combined an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet with a couple of faux-Westerns from director Mel Brooks.
That’s right, a Chinese buffet and two Mel Brooks movies. The doors open at 2pm, with Blazing Saddles starting at 2:30pm, Spaceballs at 4pm, and all the Chinese food you can eat ‘till it’s gone! Even better, the Village Voice is currently running a promotion, offering two free tickets to the event.
And 92YTribeca has you covered on Christmas Eve too. Head down there at 9pm for Comedy Below Canal™: The Twelfth Night of Chanukah with Sean Patton, Janeane Garofalo, Joe Mande, Jon Glaser, Todd Barry, Jon Benjamin and Rob Paravonian.
This Week’s Chosen Recipe from the International Jewish Cookbook: Moroccan Eggplant Salad
Today we are sharing a recipe for Moroccan Eggplant Salad, from the Kosher Gourmet Book, by the 92nd Street Y Kosher Cooking School. Starting today, every week we will be blogging a recipe taken from the book, relating to a different Jewish community. For more information on diverse Jewish communities please visit Resource Center for Jewish Diversity at 92Y.
Here is the first recipe, and it’s an easy one. If any of you use the recipe and make your own at home, take a photo or video and let us know! We’ll share your photos or video online, on our blog and Facebook page.
Moroccan Eggplant Salad
Makes 8 servings
1 medium eggplant
2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely minced
2 tablespoons paprika
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper, or to taste
¼ cup vegetable oil
Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon round cumin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
1. Preheat oven to 450 °F. Place eggplant in nonmetal baking dish and bake about 1 hour, or until completely soft. Let cool until easy to handle.
2. Peel eggplant and place over colander to drain. In medium bowl, mash eggplant flesh. Stir in remaining ingredients and let stand for flavors to blend and until mixture reaches room temperature.
We hope you enjoy this easy recipe, and we are looking forward to seeing the results!
Passport NYC is the 92nd Street Y’s Jewish values driven, specialty-based residential summer camp. For three weeks, teens entering grades 9-11 and from all over the world will live at 92Y to engage in one of five specialty areas: Film (with IFC Center), Fashion (with FIT), Culinary Arts (with the Greenmarket), the Music Industry (with Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music) or Baseball (with the Mets minor league team, the Brooklyn Cyclones).
At Passport NYC we believe that no matter what your passion, you can use it to help make the world a better place—what we call Tikkun Olam. Engage with the top talent New York has to offer and make new friends. Celebrate your creativity and live Jewish values as you experience the best in New York culture. Stop dreaming and start packing!
For more information, please visit Passport NYC online, and fill out an application today. And become a fan of Passport NYC on Facebook, where you can talk to others in the program, share information, or and ask questions. Or you can just post to our wall, like Kacey Reynolds just has: “Accepted to film! Anyone else?!?! I seriously cannot wait!”
Project Trio and Sweet Plantain played at 92YTribeca last Friday, and will be remembered by at least one couple, forever. 92YTribeca informs:
We had what I believe to be our first marriage proposal at the venue on Friday night. A couple who happened to be friends of the band Sweet Plantain were seated at a table up front. At one point, the band invited the gentleman onstage to introduce a song and he popped the question...and she accepted!
We’ve scoured the internets, (Twitter, Tumblr, Google) for mentions of this elsewhere, hoping to find some photos or video, and came up empty! Can you believe that?? Did people really see bands play—and a marriage proposal—without holding their lighters up cameras aloft to document it?
If you know of any photos or video of the proposal floating around online, please let us know. And congratulations to the newly engaged couple!
For those counting, we’ve now had marriage proposals at BOTH 92YTribeca and 92Y this year. In the last five months to be exact. If you are waiting for your significant other to pop the big question, maybe take them to a show at 92YTribeca, and see what happens?
Francine Segan on Italian Desserts and the History of Nutella
Sweets at Francine Segan’s La Dolce Vita: Italian Desserts Tasting & History / Credit
The Black Dress Traveler attended Francine Segan’s latest food talk from her World of Tasting series at the 92nd Street Y. She writes:
Francine kept the audience captivated with sugary treats, sophisticated libations like Limoncello, and tasty historic tidbits. As we munched on rich Italian chocolates, torrone, panforte and panettone; we learned that Columbus introduced chocolate to the New World, a woman invented the popular BACI chocolates, and everyone’s favorite creamy chocolate and hazelnut spread, Nutella, is the result of cocoa rationing during WWII. Even spices get the sugary treatment in Italy: have you ever tasted candied cinnamon or fennel?
For those who are curious about the history of Nutella: Pietro Ferrero, a pastry maker and founder of the Ferrero company which makes Nutella, began using hazelnuts to extend his chocolate supply when chocolate became scarce due to rationing during WWII. And Nutella was born.
If you did not attend, but wished they had, we have a number of similar talks coming up this spring. A Chocolate Factory Tour (Mar 12), Chocolate Fest: A Walk-Around Tasting (Mar 14), and a SoHo Chocolate Tour (April 28).
Dance Teacher Magazine has a great article in this month’s issue about one teacher’s effort to incorporate technology and the web in her dance classes. They spoke with Kathleen Isaac, a New York City elementary school dance teacher and Dance Education Laboratory instructor at the 92nd Street Y:
Enter Doug Fox, a technology expert who helps dancers create websites and marketing campaigns using sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Together, Fox and Isaac created Kids Make Dance, a program that uses digital technologies and social media to support and enhance dance education. The goal is to incorporate up-to-the-minute technology, something kids already use and enjoy, to get them excited about dance and inspire new depths of creativity.
“We’re exploring ways to create new types of dance educational programs with a focus on kid-centered dancemaking and creativity, and also integrate technology into that mix so that kids are empowered in new ways,” explains Fox.
Last July, Isaac and Fox tested their model with a pilot program called Kids Make Hip Hop. Thirteen children ages 6 to 17 spent a week learning hip-hop technique and history and used that to expand their own creativity. They documented the process on camera and shared their work online. And that’s just the beginning. Fox and Isaac designed Kids Make Dance to be a multifaceted program that can be applied to any genre—ballet, jazz, modern—and used in a variety of settings, including dance studios, community centers and dance companies.
The program covers standards prescribed by the New York City Department of Education Blueprint for Teaching and Learning in Dance, of which Isaac was a contributing author. Dance Education Laboratory at 92Y follows the same dance education curricula, and next July, you can find Isaac at 92Y teaching kinds the same lessons in her class: Dancing with Technology—Integrating the Internet and New Media into the Dance Curriculum. We suggest getting familiar with your video camera, and turning it on yourself. Come July, it will be your videos we will be sharing on our blog!
On Feb 9th of this year, novelists Jayne Anne Phillips and T.C. Boyle read from their work at the 92nd Street Y. Phillips read first in the video above, and Boyle begins his reading at the 3:18 mark.
Check out many more videos of past readings at our YouTube page in this handy playlist.
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The New York Times on Patti Smith and Dream of Life, a documentary on her life filmed over 11 years by fashion photographer Steven Sebring:
Moroccan Eggplant Salad
