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Peggy Ann Bliss and Plácido Domingo look tired but happy at 2 a.m. after an unforgettable night
of arias and popular songs to celebrate the Spanish tenor's 35th anniversary in Puerto Rico. The dinner at the Puerto Rico
Art Museum was followed by Mariachis.
LA CREME DE LA CREME DE LA SOCIEDAD SANJUANERA SE REUNIO PARA DISFRUTAR DE
PLACIDO DOMINGO.
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| Novelista Nereida de la Torre y Evangelina Colon Directora Ejecutiva del Festival Casals |
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| Gloria Waldman and Norman Schwartz |
Friend of Puerto Rico
writes from Spain
The following is an e-mail letter from professor and author Gloria Waldman, of Puerto Rico and New York
. She and her husband Norman Schwartz are spending part of the summer in the small Catalan town of Sabadell about 20 minutes
drive from Barcelona, the artistic capital of Spain, and home to Pablo Casals, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Antonio-Sainz Gil "Keshava" and many others.
Due to technical difficulties, the letter was not published, but here it is for the record. PAB
Dear Peggy and all our friends,
We are “instalados” in this miniature Barcelona of 200,000 inhabitants. Our apartment is a wonderful three-story
“brownstone” near the town’s “Casco Viejo” or old section. Here on these charming tree-lined
streets, we can stroll through the fish shop and the vegetable stands. Here and all over Spain , every
night in July is dedicated to music, dance and theatre in parks and other outdoor venues.
The house has a lots of light, lots of lots of bidets, lots of books, a plasma tv that magically turns Catalan into
English, and a fast computer.
Driving the stick shift SEAT our friends left us is a hoot. Some bronco moves- plenty of hills. Folks give great directions,
unlike on my beloved isla. Norman is trying out his buen provecho , claro and buenos días but misses the particular
Caribbean friendliness of Puerto Rico .
We get back from dinner at 11pm, or later if we go to some event ; watch a movie at 11 or 12 midnight and then I happily
read way into the night and get up late. We offset the heat with lots of siesta and a fabulous public swimming pool as big
as a lake. Some kids asked me to teach them how I swim. After I tried to teach them the strokes of the Australian crawl, remembering
how my brother taught me, they said “We gypsies don’t swim like that.”´ Oh, well.
We are learning Catalán, trying to distinguish between niues – women – and nuis – men – on
the restroom doors
Our friends Regina and Roma are taking us to their sea side town Caldetas, then we’ll go to Dalí’s home
on the sea near Figueras; then on to Girona, the medieval Jewish city; and to Valencia .
From Sabadell, we move to an apartment overlooking the port in Barcelona .
We are learning to cook, paella, Spanish tortilla and cazuela de pescado, fish stew with potatoes and veggies, so I’m
off to shop.
Love to everyone and keep cool and safe and happy! See you back in New York soon.
Gloria and Norman AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2006
Looking for treasure
at MAC
New consumerism exhibit
has nuggets to ponder
By Lorraine Blasor
Like any big metropolitan
city, San Juan is no exception in having treasures right out in the open that most people miss, either
through unfamiliarity or
not having the time to discover them.
One such treasure is the
Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico , better known by its catchy Spanish acronym, MAC.
The museum inhabits the
former Rafael M. Labra School , smack on the corner of Ponce de Leon and Roberto H. Todd Avenues at Stop 18. The red-brick
building is formal yet elegant on the outside; inside, it opens onto a
lovely interior courtyard
that doubles as a sculpture garden. Raise your eyes to admire the arched verandas that run along all sides of the three-story
structure.
For years MAC operated out
of borrowed quarters at Sacred Heart University but that changed in 2003 when it moved to its own headquarters The museum
is still going through growing pains and has a wayto go to catch up with its better endowed colleague, the Museum of Art of
Puerto Rico on De Diego Avenue.
But what MAC lacks in space
and endowments, it makes up in the quality of its collection and exhibits, and its obviously devoted employees, including
attendants and the receptionist who greets everyone seeking access to the galleries.
Each visit to MAC yields
delightful surprises and its current exhibition is no exception.
Devoted to the theme of
consumerism, the exhibit runs until Feb. 11, 2007 and will soon be expanded to include an even larger sample of works by Puerto
Rican artists offering their own distinctive take on the world's
seemingly unlimited hunger
for things material. The new show opens on Sept. 5.
A theme as vast as consumerism
is a tall order, but museum curator Brenda Torres-Figueroa has found a way of neatly packaging the subject matter by focusing
on five interpretive approaches: symbols, icons and signs; the body as consumer object; the island of consumption ( that's
us in Puerto Rico); the cult of consumption; global consumption.
The opening salvo of the
exhibition is found in two rooms, each devoted to one artist: the Japanese graphic artist, Shin Matsunaga, and Puerto Rico
's own Migdalia Barens-Vera.
Matsunaga, who has shown
at MAC before, offers strong visual images to pitch some of the consumer objects featured in his beautiful posters. However,
he also tackles other issues, such as AIDS, which may leave some visitors pondering what this has to do with consumerism except
that the show also aims to illustrate design aesthetics and in that regard, Matsunaga's work is masterful. Inventive, playful.
He has a great sense of color as well as delicacy, which is something one tends to associate with the Japanese. The works
on exhibit are part of a collection of 377 works donated to MAC by the artist.
Barens-Vera, whose talents
extend to dancing and photography, offers an arresting vision of scores of gender-neutral cloth mannequins hanging from the
ceiling and bunched up together on the gallery floor, suggesting "the spiritual, emotional and discursive
fragmentation of a collective tethered to consumerism as a dogma of collective wellbeing," as stated in the exhibit notes.
One mannequin, bent over, hangs unceremoniously on one wall while in another part of the room, a sequence of mannequin legs
sticks out of the wall. Again, a pundit might argue what the hell all these mannequins have to do with rampant consumerism.
Still, they do offer a disquieting sense of the masses chaotically searching for something.
Could it be the happiness,
comfort, satisfaction or pleasure that consumer possessions purport to provide?
Art being an open ended
discourse, it doesn't matter if Baren's work does not exactly conform with one's own ideas about consumer society. Her mannequins,
lovingly sewn by hand and set off by red details, do leave us with the impression that we live in an age where it is easy
to feel discombobulated, and not just because of consumerism.
MAC is open Tuesday through
Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Or you can visit on Sunday from 12 to 4 p.m. Admission is free.
Lorraine Blasor, a graphic artist, is also a writer who has worked for The San Juan STAR and Caribbean
Business, and is currently exhibiting in the Galeria sin Nombre.
Mickey
Malaret, a guiding light for thousands
By Peggy Ann
Bliss
Good bye,
dear Mickey. It was a lot of fun singing “King George, He Had a Date”
Herminia Malaret
Ponce de León better known as Mickey Malaret, to the thousands of young students for whom she served as college guidance counselor,
has died, after a three-year battle with Alzheimer’s. She was my dear friend, and we used to go to Saint John’s
to see her daughter Karen Schneck direct plays, and she and I used to sing old camp songs while her dear Vlad Trenka did all
but cover his ears.
We talked
endlessly on the phone about cats, and we spent Christmas at her house in the country in Bayamón, with all her family.
Later I moved
near there and we planned to meet more often, but age and busy-ness crept up on us.
Vlad, whom
she married in the 70s, died in 2001, the same year my dear Guillermo died, but by that time we were both imprisoned in our
own little worlds, me in my mourning and she in her illness.
Her world
shrank to her daughters, her brother, Dr. Hermán Malaret, her longtime companion Edith Szabo who took care of her during her
long illness, and the employees at San Juan de Dios Nursing home where she was tenderly cared for for the last three years.
She missed
being born on the fourth of July by only two days, and I never forgot her birthday.
She was born
July 6, 1925 in Cuba of Puerto Rican parents, Pedro Malaret Tió and Herminia Ponce de León López de Victoria and was proud
of her uncle Augusto Malaret Tió of linguistic fame. She went to school at what was known as the Escuela Modelo and Central
High School . She graduated from high school from the Baldwin School in Pennsylvania . Went on to get her BA in Philosophy
and MA in Literature from Bryn Mawr College .
She
married George Schneck in Philadelphia , and then moved back to Puerto Rico in 1952 where he became General Manager of Caribe
China Corporation. She was a born teacher and began teaching Spanish at Saint John's School . Also taught English at Catholic
University . In the late 1960's became college counselor at Academia Perpetuo Socorro. As you know, she was the godmother
of CCA and the mentor of many college counselors on the island. She established strong ties with colleges in the States, and
taught students in and out of her classroom all her life.
She also was
principal of Saint John's School and Baldwin School at different points of her career, and was College Counselor at Colegio
Rosa Bell at the end of her career.
She is survived
by two daughters: Karen Schneck Malaret, who has two sons: Francisco and José, Enrique Santaella Schneck, and Laura Isabel
Schneck Malaret, married to Sam Azizo, who has two daughters: Kathryn She loved and respected life in all aspects. She fought
for her students,for the environment, and for animals. Her daughters referred to her as the local SPCA because she would take
in any and all dogs and cats, and a few horses as well, who would usually end up giving birth at her house. She would take
them to the vet, take care of them, and try to find a good home for them. But many stayed on with her, her daughter Karen
said.
“One
look and she fell in love with them.” She was a special person who spread much love and planted
Salzburg Festival and the Nazis:
A Disputed Film History
A British documentary,
“The Salzburg Festival:
A Short History,” by Tony Palmer, has created dissonance at the festival this summer, because of what they say is a
distortion of the relationship between the festival and the Nazis.
The three-hour film was to be shown during the festival, which ends Aug. 31. However,
when the festival disavowed it, the American Friends of the Salzburg
Festival showed it in movie theaters.
The film shows conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler shaking hands with Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s
minister of propaganda, after a performance of Beethoven’s “Ninth Symphony” in a Salzburg Festival concert hall festooned with Nazi banners. The performance actually took
place in Berlin.
The film also includes scenes of Hitler and German troops sweeping into Salzburg in 1938, as cheering throngs wave flags emblazoned with swastikas. The truth is that Hitler attended the festival only once, preferring the festival
in Bayreuth, Germany,
at Wagner’s opera house.
The film makes candid reference to anti-Semitism in Salzburg, which was founded as an independent ecclesiastical state run by the Roman Catholic
archbishop.
Beginning with the founding of the festival in 1920, the film includes interviews
with past luminaries, including Richard Strauss, a pillar of the project, which was a magnet for European artists and intellectuals.
The great Arturo Toscanini moved to Salzburg in 1933,
after refusing to perform at Bayreuth when Hitler came to
power. The conductor stayed in Salzburg for five years.
In the film Furtwängler’s widow, Elisabeth, now in her 90’s, says that
her husband was inwardly appalled by the Nazis. When he heard that Goebbels, who had a vested interest in German orchestras,
intended to disband the Vienna Philharmonic and send its members into the army, Furtwängler went to Hitler and threatened
to leave Germany if the plan were carried out, according to Furtwangler’s widow. Hitler relented, she said, “saving
the Vienna Philharmonic.” PAB AUGUST 2006
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| Sexy and beautiful Maxine |
SINGING HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR FAVORITE AMERICAN SINGER
Maxine Brown, one of the most long lasting, charismatic and musical popular singers, celebrated her Aug.18 birthday
playing golf. A longtime friend of Pure Bliss, she is remembered fondly here for two pictures I took of her on a trip to Fajardo
in 1973. Now, she's traveling the world, and a big hit in Japan. She has a new record out, with a lot of songs she composed
herself, all of which we'll tell you about in future issues. Congratulations, Maxine, for a super career, making millions
of people happy.
Hottest lesbian star
Tammy Lynn Michaels, the lover of pop singer Melissa Etheridge has been voted hottest lesbian star by Internet voters.
She received 48 percent of the vote in a slate that included Melissa Eldridge, Ellen DeGeneres, and two others.
The Indiana native traveled to New York City to study theater, but not before considering suicide because of her homosexuality.
After her mother dropped her off at school and drove away, the young actress said, ‘Okay, I’m going to
be gay now.’”
Unfortunately, at one of her first attempts to be out, she had the Hollywood closet
door slammed in her face. She continued to live in the closet, tending bar at a lesbian hangout, working for Popular, the
sitcom, and living life in the open.
With a little push from a bar customer, she went on auditions, at Law and Order and did a lot of commercials.
Although Popular dealt with gay issues, she took the advice not to be out, , especially since
it came from a lesbian agent who seemed to know the score. Having grown up poor, Tammy wasn’t willing to risk her career
and she had a girl friend who didn’t want to come out either. She was only 21.
She knew in first grade that she wanted to marry her female teacher, but later she suppressed
the notion. Finally she got a crush on her female softball coach. Gym teachers have been the salvation of many gay girls who
are not willing to come to terms with their sexuality, she said in an interview with Kathy Belge, from “Curve.”
At the time she hadn’t heard of Melissa Etheridge, or k.d. lang or any of the other
stars who were to become her idols. But now, as she does her own thing and travels with Melissa, her life has become very
different. PAB AUGUST
The influence of butterflies on Vladimir Nabokov
The butterfly collection of famed novelist Vladimir Nabokov, which just closed in Russia, may move to the
states in the near future.
Born in 1899, Nabokov was catching butterflies long before WWI.
Lepidopterology,
as the study of moths and butterflies is called, became a lifelong passion for the writer of Lolita and other books.
The
passion was not a pose, as some have suggested, but a serious part of his persona. From 1941 to 1948 he was a part-time research
fellow at the Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Harvard, reorganizing its butterfly collection and publishing several well-received
scientific papers.
The exhibit in the Vladimir
Nabokov Museum the house where
the writer lived until being forced into exile by the Bolshevik Revolution, explores the links between art and science. The
show poses the hypothesis that Nabokov’s meticulous, masterly prose style grew out of his love of science.
Nabokov’s reputation in the rarefied world
of lepidopterology recently got a boost. His work at Harvard, reclassifying the Lycaeides genus, earned him a mention in Alexander
B. Klots’s 1951 “Field Guide to the Butterflies of North America,” an achievement
that reportedly delighted Nabokov.
One author of the 1999 book Nabokov’s Blues: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius,
Kurt Johnson a lepidopterist, spent five seasons trapping butterflies in a rain forest in the Dominican Republic; as he tried
to put them in a taxonomic framework, he realized that Nabokov had already done the job in a paper published in 1945. He and
his colleagues named several new species after Nabokov’s characters, including a Peruvian butterfly that was christened
“Madeleinea lolita.” PAB AUGUST 2006
Take
a trip to Bliss
Want
to spend some time in Pure Bliss? Try Bliss, Idaho, about 25 miles east of Glenn’s Ferry in Gooding
County.
Never
heard of any of these landmarks? Don’t fret, neither had we, but we did want to know where we could get away for some
bliss.
Bliss
was named for David B. Bliss, one of the early settlers of the area.
The Amber Inn
sounds like a nice place, but you’d have to check that out.
For a real power vacation, try a tour of the Bliss Power Plant Reservoir, and if you feel like swearing,
even in Bliss, go to the Bliss Dam, with one “n,” of course.
For a blissful day, try Malad Gorge State Park. There’s also the Anniversary
Inn, which sounds romantic.
Packing
the laptop with the suntan oil
Going
on vacation without their laptop is inconceivable for almost half of U.S.
office workers, according to a new survey.
The poll
says the number of Americans who work on vacation has nearly doubled in the last decade.
According
to a poll conducted for Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Steelcase Inc., a designer and maker of office furniture, 43 percent
take their office with them, compared to only 23 in 1995.
And what
used to be the most popular getaway tool – the cell phone – is now the computer.
The number
of Americans who work during their vacations has nearly doubled in the last decade, with the laptop computer replacing the
cellular phone as the most useful tool for working on holiday.
There’s
the good reason – being able to be with the kids – and the bad reason – being a workaholic – according
to psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, author of "Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap!,"
If working
is the only way people can amuse themselves, they have a problem, says Hallowell.
"These
tools [ laptop, cell phone, blackberry and personal computer] can be very freeing," Hallowell said. "They can allow you to
go away, but they can also be enslaving. It's all a matter of how you use them."
Opinion
Research Corp. interviewed 640 randomly selected full- or part-time workers by telephone. They also found that only 61 percent
of Americans use all their allotted vacation time. PAB JULY AUGUST 2006
Orange, Honey, Ginger-Soy Marinade Recipe
Hungry for something different, healthful and easy to make? This marinade looks like a winner. Yum. Add it to your chicken, tofu, pork, beef or vegetables, and things
look better already. Two tablespoons of this has 21 calories, 0 grams of fat and 267 grams of sodium.
This recipe seasons:
4 chicken breasts, fish fillets, or pork chops
Preparation time:
10 minutes
Ingredients
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon finely minced, fresh ginger root
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tablespoon honey
Cooking Instructions
1. Whisk all the ingredients together in a bowl. Marinate in the refrigerator for
at least 30 minutes or overnight. PAB JULY AUGUST 2006
This is one of several paintings by local artist and writer Lorraine Blasor now showing at Galeria Sin Titulo at
157 Calle Luna Old San Juan.
A
half century watching over the artists and their public.
After all these years of Bellas Artes,
some of the faces never change. One cheerful smile for all these years has come from;Madeleine Cotti Zengotita, general supervisor
of the ushers;a perennial sight at the door;and Maribel Muniz, general;supervisor, who seems to be everywhere. The glamorous
and cheerful Lourdes López, supervisor of sales and programming, is ubiquitous, in the office and at special events, and the
cheerful face of Milagros Monclova is a sight for sore eyes when buying a ticket at the last minute. These are just some of
the employees who signed on when Bellas Artes opened and have withstood the many changes over the years. Thanks and congratulations
to them for their consistency, amiability and responsibility to those of us from the press who are usually in a hurry.
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