I just learned the Yiddish word beschert- "meant to be for some purpose ( Read more... )

Acting Up Stage Toronto had a recent run of "Caroline, or Change," written by Tony Kushner. The Globe and Mail gave it 4 stars and a number of blurbs said it's the best theater of the last year. Last year New York Magazine called it one of the "greatest musicals of all time", the only so chosen of the 21st century to appear on every panelists' ( Read more... )

Last Friday morning I responded to a Globe and Mail New Media column on Facebook being full of phonies. In the author's response he quoted me by name.

Daniel Allen wrote to say that on the same morning as he read the piece, “one friend changed his status to say he is ‘not a failure, he just looks like one most of the time,' ” prompting other ( Read more... )

[also sent to Globe and Mail's Letters to the Editor]

Re: "Who's kidding whom? On Facebook, we're all a bunch of phoniesYour article today that Facebook is all flash and no substance comes ( Read more... )

We drove into Toronto for Soundstreams' "An Unfinished Life", a concert with Renaissance music by the Hillard Ensemble, and a world premiere of a piece about a young Dutch woman whose diaries were recovered after she died in Aucshwitz ( Read more... )

What a fun day. How odd it is, that having just concluded I was probably an introvert, in a conversation in frankie_ecap's journal, that I had such an energizing day being unabashedly extroverted ( Read more... )

Blame America... and oh yeah, the Jews is a review in this week's Globe and Mail Books section, of a new book, Uncouth Nation: Why Europe Dislikes America by Andrei Markovits. The book sounds challenging: how opinion of the US in Europe has been prejudicially negative (giving a number of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" examples, such as ( Read more... )

This afternoon I went to a talk on The Great Transformation, the latest book by Karen Armstrong. It was an OK talk, though quite short. She started talking at 2pm, started taking questions at 2:30; and finished up for book-signing at 3pm. I think perhaps it was the shortest talk I've ever paid money to go to. It's a shame because it would've ( Read more... )