An Italian-American Writer & Poet with a Yankee Outsider Perspective
Crime and Punishment in Chernobyl – Svetlana Alexievich’s “Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster” I bought a copy of Voices from Chernobyl when I read that the author, Svetlana Alexievich had won the Nobel Prize in Literature. But eventually, even … Continued
Dear Mayor Coleman, a bevy of city workers met me at the cottonwood tree this afternoon – if bevy is quite the word to include a burly Public Works guy. There they all were, kind, and informative. What seemed to … Continued
Dear Music Lovers, the Twin Cities now has two dueling orchestras back on stage. Well, not exactly dueling, but at least playing at each other across the river. I could not be happier, though I rarely cross the great divide … Continued
Margotlog: Orchestras on the Slide: A Tale of Two Cities “The Twin Cities were separate at birth and far from identical,” I wrote in a novel called Falling for Botticelli (not yet published). Yet sometimes these separate cities suffer similar … Continued
‘Tis the season to be taken to account. The US federal government has just averted a financial cliff of cuts and ups that would have, according to financial experts, thrown the country into a downward spiral. This is not news. … Continued
Carol Bly, one of Minnesota’s finest essayists, published an essay with this title in her collection, Letters from the Country. It’s probably my favorite, written when she lived in a small prairie community in the 1970s. She advised us, in … Continued
Dear Saint Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, and beloved musicians of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Imagine Dickens’ A Christmas Carol without Tiny Tim, the Fezziwigs’ Christmas party, and Scrooge’s redemption! That’s what the cacellation of all SPCO concerts for … Continued
No offense, Senor Tuba, but you mostly don’t belong in a symphony orchestra. Like your overgrown business compatriot–the contemporary “business model”–your music is too raucous, too lumbering, too prone to go awry in favor of swagger and ump-pa-pa. Good for … Continued
The process of creating an orchestra is like working a manuscript through a thousand drafts, each adjustment, adding and subtracting, listening and blending, heightening and subduing finally produces a glorious resonance of refinement and depth. It’s simply not possible to … Continued
It’s difficult to love a huge aggregate. But the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is small by orchestra standards: thirty-some versus over a hundred (I’m guessing) for the Minnesota Orchestra. Saturday night’s concert at the Ordway was for me a love … Continued