I’m reminded today, like so many other days, that there is beauty and suffering in the world.

Richard Parks puts a local, human face on the Gaza-bound flotilla story in the Bay Citizen.

I went to the San Francisco Symphony (for the first time !) last night to see Pink Martini (I will commence to go to the symphony once per month). Highlights included “La Soledad,” sung by NPR White House correspondent Ari Shapiro, and the audience’s great rounds of applause when he noted that we (at Davies Symphony Hall) were just across the street from San Francisco City Hall, where he and his husband were married. Also thrilling was the band’s always exuberant “Brazil.”

Pink Martini carves out a truly unique space for themselves in our popular music lexicon. To me, their versatility echoes the sentiments Charles Isherwood recently made about Nathan Lane and his talents that make him, as Isherwood says “a great stage entertainer.”

I may not eat sushi for a long time, but I may be able to celebrate the ban of plastic grocery store bags with a vegetarian feast. (Boston Globe, SF Gate)

I don’t think Marina Abramovic could have planned a better time to stage The Artist is Present. While I mourn the fact that I will not have sat with her, I’ve found the resultant media from her performance to be a extension of the performance itself, and that meta-performance is one I have enjoyed immensely—in particular, through the eyes of a hero, Arthur C. Danto. What better way could there be to explore the beauty and suffering we all face today.

Some recent sketches of mine: