AGELESS NORTH SHORE » News of the Shore

Happy Father’s Day

Don — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 15:39:03 +0000

Ageless emerges from the bunker to say hello to anybody still out there.

I guess this internet thing is still kind of popular but I have been inter-acting in the so-called real world.

Reggie Watts

I mean I haven’t “tweeted” an execution.

We did see Conan Writer’s Live on Thursday night June 17th.

Reggie Watts is an awesome talent improvising post-ironic jams and mixes. Watts was on Conan’s recent comedy tour. He lives in Brooklyn and is awesome.

I am going to China on business to find more products that you all will buy so that together we save the world economy.

I will take the Shekou ferry to Shenzhen.

Shekou Ferry

“Every song is a picnic.” A benefit for the Rustic Falls Nature Camp

Don — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 12:00:44 +0000

While tromping through the woods in southeast Wisconsin looking for a good place to fish, angler and baritone Warren Fremling heard the pounding of hammers. Fremling, choir director at Congregation Solel in Highland Park and a garrulous soul struck up a conversation with Eric Lentz. Lentz is the co-founder along with his wife Deanna Hallagan of the Rustic Falls Nature Camp, a place where at-risk and special needs kids as well as cancer survivors can get out of town and into nature.

Fremling wanted to help. He organized a concert with some of his pals.

On Sunday, April 18, 2010, 4:00 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church in Deerfield, IL, Rick Neeley, Small Potatoes and Warren Fremling will be presenting a benefit concert for the Rustic Falls Nature Camp.

Rick Neeley has been playing folk music in the area for four decades. His banjo picking and 12 string guitar playing hearkens back to the great old folkie days of the 60′s. Neeley is not only a fine musician but a very engaging performer.

“He has a relaxed rapport with his audience and a pocket full of great songs and stories. And make no mistake when Rick entertains the audience is his.”
. . . The World Folk Music Company

The duo of Jacquie Manning and Rich Prezioso make up Small Potatoes. Manning and Prezioso describe their music as “Celtic to Cowboy” They both sing, they both play guitars and an array of other instruments. They even yodel. “They don’t sound like anybody else. I like that. They lay out a blanket and every song is a picnic.” Warren Nelson Big Top Chautauqua/Tent Show Radio–Wisconsin Public Radio, Bayfield, WI

Small Potatoes

The classically trained Fremling began his career as a folk singer roughly “10,000 years ago.” You can preview Fremling’s CD, Dancin’ With the One Who Brought Me, at cdbaby.com. We wrote at the time of its release, “Listening to Warren Fremling singing folk songs is a pleasant antidote to the harsh screeching of the today’s media. It reminds me that there have always been struggles, tears, joys and love and that we have always been uplifted by our creative spirit.”

Creating a nature camp had long been a dream for Lentz and Hallagan. Here is what Lentz says about the Rustic Falls Nature Camp.

In June of 2005, our lives took an unexpected turn. I was diagnosed with colon cancer. My priorities became my family, my health and working toward a future. Rustic Falls could no longer be a dream. I am determined to make it a reality.

In September of 2006 we were fortunate enough to purchase a portion of an abandoned dairy farm. It is an ideal location for the development of our camp. I have spent the four years clearing and developing this property. We have put in trails that run through a pine forest. The view over the marsh land will be spectacular. We hope Rustic Falls Nature Camp will offer a place that will enrich all who come through its door.

This is a great cause and great bill. Tickets for the benefit are just $20.00 for adults, $15.00 for kids 18 and under. If you can’t be there but would like to contribute, you may contribute to: Rustic Falls Nature Camp, 8044 Karlov Ave., Skokie, IL 60076, Phone: (847) 763-2100, Email: rusticfalls@yahoo.com

If they build it: Lake County Fielders site moved…

Don — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:00:18 +0000

In the film Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner walks through his cornfield and hears someone whisper. “If you build it, he will come.” Costner’s character Ray Kinsella somehow concludes that he should build a baseball field. And, of course, so it came to be.

FIELD OF DREAMS, Ray Liotta, Kevin Costner, 1989, (c) Universal

The Lake County Fielders, the team co-owned by Costner, announced on Friday afternoon, April 9th that construction will begin on their new stadium in Zion, this week. The home opener is scheduled in just about two months.

The surprisingly controversial Lake County Fielders (see the comments on an earlier post) said, “The stadium project is now worthy of a blockbuster major league trade announcement beginning with its new location on a 23-acre site at the NE corner of the Rt. 173 and Green Bay Road, gateway to Trumpet Park and the City of Zion. The “ballpark village” will include a year round multi-use development showcasing retail shops, multi-screen movie theatre, and restaurant.”

The Daily Herald interviewed Lake County Fielders spokeperson, Bernie DiMeo.

“The new site was chosen to speed up construction, Fielders spokesman Bernie DiMeo said.
It is owned by a group of real-estate developers and is leased to Grand Slam Sports & Entertainment, the Fielders’ parent company, said Richard Ehrenreich, the firm’s president. Eventually the site will be leased to the city.
The team may be able to play around the construction project, DiMeo said. Temporary bleachers could be built for fans during the work, he said.
With those concessions in mind, DiMeo said, the team “will certainly have a shot at the original date for the home opener,” a June 11 game against the Gary SouthShore RailCats.”

Click here for the full article.

There is suspicion among some about the announcement.

Here is a portion of an e-mail from a commenter, “Sounds to me like a desperate attempt to keep from having to refund the money they’ve taken in. Released on Friday afternoon to a news service? Not how I’d want to start a legitimate project. No mention of who’s going to pay for what, how much or where the money will come from. The whole “baseball village” angle sounds like some developer fantasy PR. ”

And the posters on the Northern League fan site nlfan.com are not very optimistic. Here are some random comments.

Where did they get the money to do this, then? Interesting Hail Mary they’ve got here.

..It sounds like Zion is about to get fleeced big time. Beerbarrons should be happy…Temporary Bleachers!

And this one really hurts,

That they expected these people to be amazed by a cardboard cutout of a movie star(Costner) and were then proven right is one of the sadder aspects of this. Lot of rubes in Lake County.

Keep watching for the building activity Zion. Baseball restored!

Communist Money Friday: The Cuban Peso

Don — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:50:14 +0000

This is the Cuban Peso. It is currently worth 1.08 US dollars, 7.5 Chinese Yuan, 972.05 North Korean Won.

The fellow on the Peso is Jose Marti. He is best known for his poem Versos Sencillos (Simple Verses), some stanzas of which ended up in the popular song Guantanamera.

Perhaps, you recognize them…

I am a sincere man
from where the palm tree grows;
and before I die I want
to loose my verses from my heart.

I come from everywhere,
and I go everywhere:
I am art among the arts;
in the hills, I am a hill.

I know the strange names
of the grasses and the flowers,
and of mortal deceits
and of sublime griefs.

I have seen in the dark night
rain over my head
the rays of pure fire
of divine beauty.

I saw wings born on the shoulders
of beautiful women,
and butterflies come flying
from the rubbish.

I have seen a man live
with a dagger in his side,
without ever saying the name
of the woman who killed him.

Swift, like a flash,
twice I saw the soul, twice:
when the poor old man died,
when she bade me farewell.

I trembled once-at the grille,
at the entrance to the vineyard-
when the barbarous bee
stung my girl on the forehead.

I was happy once in a way
that I’ve never since been happy:
when
the sentence of my death
was read by the weeping warden.

I hear a sigh across
the lands and the sea,
and it is not a sigh, it is
that my son is going to wake.

If they say: from the jeweler,
take the best jewel,
I take a sincere friend
and put love aside.

I have seen the wounded eagle
fly to the tranquil blue,
and the poisonous viper
die in its lair.

I well know that when the world
yields, livid, to rest,
over the profound silence
the gentle brook murmurs.

I have placed a daring hand,
stiff with horror and jubilation,
upon the extinguished star
that fell in front of my door.

I hide in my wild breast
the sorrow that wounds it:
the son of an enslaved people
lives for it, is silent, and dies.

All is beautiful and constant,
all is music and reason,
and all, like the diamond,
before it is light is coal.

I know that the fool is buried
with great luxury
and great weeping,
and that there is no
fruit on earth
like that of the burial ground.

I am silent, and I understand,
and I doff
the pomp of the rhymer;
I hang from a withered tree
my doctor’s hood.

Source: Translation by
Donald Walsh in
The Borzoi Anthology of
Latin American Literature. Vol. I.
Ed. Rodriguez Monegal.
NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977. Quoted
at the website “Guantanamera”:

http://www.nmu.edu/www-edgar/

language/Martin/guantamera.html

Matisse being Matisse: The Exhibit at Chicago’s Art Institute

Peggy — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Today’s post is written by Don Shearn

I just wanted to clarify that I am not the visual artist/painter at Ageless North Shore. So my opinion about the Matisse exhibit is purely from the entertainment angle.

Bathers by a River, March 1909–10, May–November 1913, and summer 1916–17

To wit, is it worth it to spend $18.00 ($12.00 if you’re over 65, a student or a child) at Chicago’s Art Institute to see the 120 paintings, prints, drawings, and prints that Henri Matisse created between 1913 and 1917?

Let’s start with what I knew about Henri Matisse. Next to nothing. Matisse was the cutout guy. The guy who cut out colored paper and stuck them on paper or canvas or boards. And then years after Matisse died (31 December 1869 – 3 November 1954), Museum Stores sold reproductions of Matisse cutouts on note cards.

Set of Matisse Cutout Notecards ($12.95 from SFMOMA)

It turns out that Matisse did not start the cutouts until 1941 after being diagnosed with cancer and following surgery. Matisse called his last fourteen years, “Une seconde vie”, a second life.

Matisse had been making a pretty good living since 1910 primarily through his association with the Russian textile merchant and art collector Sergei Shchukin. Shchukin used the paintings by Matisse to “decorate” his mansion in Moscow.

Shchukin drawing by Henri Matisse

Shchukin also collected Monet, Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso. He had an eye for the avante garde. Unfortunately for Shchukin so did the Russian Revolution whose government in 1917 appropriated his collection, while Shchukin escaped to Paris, where he died in 1936.

The exhibit follows Matisse in his mid-forties as he works to find new forms of expression. Matisse feels the artistic heat from Pablo Picasso as the leader of the artistic pack in Paris. In addition, the exhibit shows the influence of WWI on Matisse and his work. Although forty four at the time of the war, Matisse volunteered but was turned down due to health reasons.

Within a few weeks in August 1914, France was mobilized, the artist’s childhood in Bohain-en-Vermandois in the north was occupied and his house in Issy (a suburb of Paris) was requisitioned by the French military.

Matisse did a series of prints entitled Civil Prisoners of Bohain-en-Vermandois. These prints of residents of the occupied Northern French city were sold to assist those displaced by WW I. The prints are part of the exhibit.

I strongly recommend renting the audio guide. This gives you a sense of connection with the paintings and the thinking of the curators. For those few Ageless readers who are not totally conversant with Matisse, post-impressionism, print-making and sculpture, the audio guide fills in some important gaps.

Goldfish and Palette 1914-1915

Rachel Wolff wrote about this exhibit in the Daily Beast. Here is what she says,

There are few delicate floral arrangements, bright interiors, and lush color palettes for which the early modernist is so typically known. Instead, we see backgrounds invading foregrounds, abstracted objects, vast color fields, Cubist portraits, skewed perspectives, lots of black, lots of gray, and the painter himself letting his freak flag fly….

I, for one, love when museums showcase a crowd-pleasing artist’s darker, stranger, and uglier side (visually speaking, of course).

Click here for the full review on Daily Beast

My conclusion.

This is a pretty esoteric exhibit to my mind. It is a study of the artistic process and a narrow slice of Matisse’s work. It is fascinating to trace a subject like “The Bathers” through sketch, painting, sculpture and print.

And since we are members of the Art Institute, not only was the exhibit free…so was the coffee in the member’s lounge.