fletcher’s blog

San Francisco Theater Festival

Yesterday, Barbara and I went to the San Francisco Theater Festival, a free event held at Yerba Buena Gardens. The festival was created to bring community attention to the Bay Area’s live theater scene. Over a hundred solo performers and groups participate in the one day festival. With 14 stages, and each performance lasting from 15-30 minutes, we were only able to see a handful of the many presentations.

One of the performances that we enjoyed was the improv group, Blue Blanket Improv, out of Half Moon Bay. The photograph above is of the founder of the group, Marc Samuels.

The Eastside Arts Alliance presented an excerpt from The Sisyphus Syndrome, a jazz opera by Amiri Baraka, music composed by , David Murray. The actors were excellent. They had very interesting sets, a dramatic story, and good music. All in all, a wonderful performance.

Though we saw small pieces of other groups productions, the only other presentation we saw in its entirety was the SF Buffoons‘, The Hasheesh Eater. We thoroughly enjoyed this irreverent play for adults only, billed as a psychedelic Victorian drama in late-night San Francisco 1863.

To see more photos from yesterday’s festivities, go to my Flickr page, click on Events, and then go to the SF Theater Fest sets.

Events | No Comments »

Portraits from our road trip

I took a lot of photos on our recent road trip, including many portraits.

This is Evan Guthrie, in Shoshone, Idaho. He’s a cowboy wearing his hunting cap on his way to the town senior center. His son told him that he’s a distant relative of the singer, Arlo Guthrie. He didn’t really know who Arlo was, and had never heard of Woody.

I don’t know that she has a name. She’s not so vain that she can’t have a little smudge of dirt on her face and imperfectly applied lipstick. This beauty lives in the dining room of the Gooding, Idaho, Gooding Hotel Bed and Breakfast, which is on the national historic register, and owned by a descendant of the founder of the town. Gooding is about 75 miles from the Craters of the Moon National Monument, a place well worth visiting.

Gary Keene, along with his wife, Cathy, is the proprietor of Ancient Ways, the only privately owned shop in the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming. This is a wonderful place, with a great deal of native American art, and lots of examples of Gary’s taxidermy lining the walls. “Ancient Ways is a family business. As Cathy says, she’s probably related to half the people on the reservation.”

I took this photo of Tiffany Dunton, my daughter-in-law, at the Crazy Horse Memorial, in Custer, S.D. Sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski and Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear officially started Crazy Horse Memorial June 3, 1948. The sculptor died in 1982, and his family has been carrying on the work ever since. I can’t help but compare this epic project with another close by, Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore was developed as a means to promote tourism, whereas the Crazy Horse Memorial’s “mission is to honor the culture, tradition, and living heritage of North American Indians.”

Art, Travel | No Comments »

Sniff, Sf Mime Troupe, and more

It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted last. I’m on Summer break, so I’m not having to teach classes right now. However, my days seem to get filled up very quickly. I’ve been working on my photos from our road trip, taking more pictures, going to the gym some, loafing around more than a little, and doing lots of other stuff.

We went to an opening of art work by SNIFF at Eclectix in El Cerrito last Friday. Three of the artists that created so much great art at the Bulb are still at it, creating some very strong images that are reminiscent of German Expressionism

On Sunday, we saw this Summer’s SF Mime Troupe play, called Red State. The story is about Bluebird, Kansas, where “due to an Electoral College tie, the entire Presidential Election comes down to the one tiny town. Suddenly, the ignored, disregarded Bluebird, Kansas, is the most important town in America. ” This is the Mime Troupe’s 49th year. As usual, it is great theater, politics, acting, writing, sets, and music, not to mention comedy

Yesterday, Barbara and I went to the SFMOMA. Big show of Frida Kahlo work. Great work by an exceptional artist. The trouble with these big shows are the crowds – it’s really hard to see the work, it’s like going to an opening. The other really interesting exhibit was Contemporary Chinese Art, from about 1949 to current time. I especially liked the work of Hung Liu. Almost across the street is the Contemporary Jewish Museum, in its new digs. We spent some time there, thouroughly enjoying From The New Yorker to Shrek: The Art of William Steig.

Above’s a photo from the cemetery at Lead, South Dakota, just over the hill from Deadwood. Lead, pronounce “leed”, a mining term meaning a ledge or outcrop of ore, is the home of the Homestake Mine. The stake was discovered in 1876, bought by George Hearst in 1877. He expanded the original claim by any means necessary, fair or foul. Until it closed in 2002, it was the largest and deepest gold mine in North America, producing more than $1 billion in gold.

from today’s Democracy Now with Amy Goodman:

House Panel to Take Up Bush Impeachment

The House Judiciary Committee is set to hold a hearing Friday on Congress member Dennis Kucinich’s measure to impeach President Bush. The single article of impeachment accuses Bush of deceiving Congress to authorize the invasion of Iraq. In an online video, Kucinich thanked the scores of Americans who had written in to support his efforts.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich: “We’re in danger of losing our country to a war based on lies, to destruction of our civil liberties, but it’s your commitment and your willingness to stand up and speak out that has enabled me to take a stand and to say not only are we going to save what’s right and save what’s dear to us, but we’re going to hold this administration accountable so that it never happens again.”

The House Judiciary Committee is expected to hear from both opponents and backers of the impeachment measure

Art, Politics, The Bulb | No Comments »

We made it – Road Trip 2008

We made it home last Thursday. Getting home is always so anti-climatic. We were on the road for 3 1/2 weeks – a pretty short time to cover the 5800+ miles that we covered, and a long time to be gone from home. Luckily, we had purchased a Toyota Prius in March, and we were able to make this trip with a relatively small carbon footprint. We got close to 50 m.p.g. for the entire trip. Both Barbara and I took umpteen million photos. I’ll be putting them up here and on my flickr page as well. Check out flickr; I’ve got a lot of photos posted there, with more to come.

This photo was taken on the roadside in Idaho on rte. 26, near Craters of the Moon National Monument..

It was a big surprise to come up this huge cone at Craters of the Moon Monument and find this wind swept tree.

Travel | No Comments »