Family business: Recapping the week

Adrian Piper, "Alice down the Rabbit Hole," Wikimedia

Arts Dispatch went down a couple of rabbit holes, found itself distracted by shiny objects in the grass, met a bevy of interesting people (thanks to all of you!), started to put some deals together, reconsidered everything and tried to reassemble the pieces in a shapely fashion and pretty much did everything it could think of except write posts. We wrote a post about not writing posts, but I'm not sure that counts.

We did talk about a few things, though.

Christopher Alexander and Portland arts facilities: I can't explain what this post is about succinctly, which tells you something right there. Basically, I read Alexander's "The Oregon Experiment" and wanted to try his design principles, which couldn't be more democratic and anti-expert (and therefore "radical), on an appropriate topic. So, I used him to try to sort out how the city should proceed to repair old and design new arts facilities, but I'll be using his insights to talk about other stuff down the road.


"Long Day's Journey Into Night" arriveth: We are one week closer to opening night of the Sydney Theatre Company/Artists Repertory Theatre co-presentation of Eugene O'Neill's thickly cut meditation of addiction. But then we recapped some other pertinent theater news, too.  We actually short items. Honest.


Donald Rosenberg loseth: The Cleveland Plain Dealer critic lost his lawsuit against the paper that removed him from his beat and the orchestra that helped, um, orchestrate that removal. A dark day, really. I re-posted something I'd written at Portland Arts Watch several weeks ago, because I still thought the same way about it, oddly enough.

We also did some redesigning of the site, adding our Twitter feed (and we have a standing invitation to one and all to join us in those precincts, not to mention Facebook) and a Google arts feed, which isn't working out so well. We might have to drop that one. Anything else you would like to see on the site? Just let me know.

Finally, Arts Dispatch salutes the life and career of historian Tony Judt. We couldn't hold him in higher regard as a researcher, thinker and writer. We are poorer for not having him around to sort things out for us.