I first came to Berlin in 2003, just after the great Claudio Abbado, who has died this week in Bologna, had passed the baton to Simon Rattle after more than a dozen years at the helm of the Berlin Philharmonic. While living in Berlin, I had the chance to hear Abbado only once in what turned out to be his penultimate visit as guest conductor to the Philharmonie, one of the world’s greatest concert halls of any era, and proof that warmly welcoming and imaginative public buildings could be created in the harsh climate of the Cold War and, almost literally, in the shadow of the Iron Curtain.
Posts published in January 2014
You have probably heard the provocative news that the New York Times recently declared the village of Mendocino and the surrounding scenic coastline to be the Third Best Travel Destination in the World. Not the best place to visit in America or in the Western Hemisphere, but in the entire world.
Will Parrish’s attorney, Omar Figueroa of Sebastopol, made the following remarks last Thursday on the Ukiah Courthouse steps after the onerous charges against AVA reporter Will Parrish were reduced in a settlement between District Attorney David Eyster, the Court, and defendant Parrish.
You may have noticed that most of the newer vineyards going in these days are what can be called “wall-to-wall” vineyards. Every plantable patch of vineyard dirt has vines on it. Sometimes the vines are even on the vineyard’s boundary fence.
When I was 18 years old a bookseller in Valencia clandestinely offered me, under the counter, a red-covered copy of Camus’s book Summer, which had been printed in Argentina. It came wrapped in brown paper and I read it in a hammock surrounded by the sound of cicadas and the odor of pine needles, sweltering in the summer heat.
Rosanne Cash’s last CD was called The List; an album of covers released in 2009 and drawn from a list given to her by her father of his one hundred essential country songs. The Man…
Tributes have poured in honoring American troubadour, folk music singer and activist Pete Seeger, who has died in New York aged 94. Musicians, fans, campaigners and activists paid tribute to the singer of Where Have All The Flowers Gone and Turn, Turn, Turn, honouring his dedication to fighting for environmental and anti-capitalist issues.