ArtsCulture

In late August, President Donald Trump said this to American Jews: “If you want to vote Democrat, you are being very disloyal to Jewish people and very disloyal to Israel.”

“It chilled my blood to hear it,” said Keller in response to what President Trump said to American Jews. “I grew up in an era where I felt full opportunity for Jews and I know that there has been anti-semitism throughout my life, that’s not a question, but the forms that it took were in some ways superficial.”

Keller describes the anti-Semitic trope being used by Trump of the disloyal Jew. “And yes, it was one of the battle cries of Nazi Germany,” Keller said. Although Keller finds it ironic that Trump meant the phrase in a different way, saying that Jews who are democrats are disloyal to other Jews and to the state of Israel, Keller said Trump was also implying a disloyalty to himself. 

But Keller said our loyalties should not be to any president, political party or political issue. Our loyalties have to be bigger and higher than that. 

He goes on to chant the poem to the “melody of righteous anger and pursuit of justice.” The poem is called Oath of Disloyalty. 

After having shared this poem and speaking out, Keller said he is feeling more vulnerable.
“I think it is important for us to hold and support people that speak out that are trying to speak truth, even if we don’t fully agree with them.”

So what is Keller’s loyalty? 

“We’re living in a moment where we’re told both by Trump and America and the Israeli government that if you disagree with us, you’re a traitor,” said Keller. “But in fact, it is my loyalty that makes it imperative for me to disagree with you. I care enough about Israel, I care enough about the Jews who ended up there, I care enough about the Israeli future and the Jewish future to say it has to be a future of democracy and justice, it cannot be a future of bulldozers, it cannot be a future of walls. And I will speak up about that and to me that is a piece of my loyalty to the state of Israel.” 

Earlier in the week we heard from Sheriff Rob Giordano – but now let’s listen to the music and poetry that brought the audience of several hundred to tears… and to their feet repeatedly on a crystal clear and warm fall day. You’ll hear MC Pat Kerrigan of KSRO and young poet Vicente Reyes of Mark West Charter School. Tenor Mark Kratz and soprano Linnea Hill started things off with the National Anthem.

Local performers from Transcendence Theater Company, which sang so movingly at the event, are heading up a "Sonoma Strong Benefit Concert for California Fire Recovery" with a stellar group of Broadway artists. The benefit is 7 p.m. EST on Sunday, Nov. 5, and will stream live on the Transcendence Facebook page at 4 p.m. PST.

Original Source

Art exhibits, film and literary events, classes in drawing, painting and ceramics and even piano lessons now share the Sebastopol Veteran's building with the local VFW chapter. And everybody's happy with the new arrangement.

Sebastopol Center for the Arts Board President Robert Brent and Executive Director Linda Galletta, outside the Center’s new home at the Sebastopol Veterans Memorial Building. The local VFW chapter will also continue to call the facility home, sharing the space with the arts group. Above, the new, flexible gallery exhibit space in the building’s former auditorium. (KRCB photos)The announcement that the Sebastopol Center for the Arts would move into and take over management of the Sebastopol Veteran's Building came as a surprise to many. But Executive Director Linda Galletta says it was the culmination of a lengthy series of conversations that wound up benefitting all the parties involved.

    The Wells Fargo Center for the Arts is installing a new sculpture garden, initially featuring works by local artist Bruce Johnson.

 

{audio}http://cpa.ds.npr.org/krcb/audio/2015/05/nbr_5-8-15_sculpure_garden.mp3{/audio}

 

 

3:22

  Sculptor Bruce Johnson has been working primarily with large masses of redwood roots and hammered copper to create his distinctive works. While the size of these giant pieces may be one of the first things to catch a viewer’s attention, Johnson says it’s the textures within them that he finds most interesting.

 

{audio}http://cpa.ds.npr.org/krcb/audio/2015/05/textures.mp3{/audio}

 

 

0:27

Original Source

Artist Lisa R. Fredenthal-Lee has quest for the bounty of newspaper! She finds what she needs from her friends and family! In the studio Lisa invents techniques for making art with newspaper! A HA! Lisa gets ideas! How unlike her! Lisa shares her techniques with her young artists who proceed to make great art of their own!

On the next broadcast of the Santa Rosa Symphony, coming Sunday May 24 at 3 pm, we'll return to 2018, with a November concert featuring works that should get you dancing.

• Zoltán Kodály, Dances of Galánta
• Heitor Villa Lobos, Guitar Concerto, with soloist Sharon Isbin
• Franz Liszt, Mephisto Waltz No. 1
• Leonard Bernstein, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story

{gallery}Rob Rogers{/gallery} Political cartoonist Rob Rogers was fired from his job at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last year after being told to stop drawing unflattering cartoons of Donald Trump. His termination made national headlines and sparked debate about freedom of the press and political censorship. Roger’s book about the experience, titled “Enemy of the People,” comes out in July. KRCB reporter Adia White spoke with him about it at his book signing at the Charles Schulz Museum last week. 

(Image Right: Cartoonist Rob Rogers. Courtesy of the subject.)

(Image Left: Click for a slide show of Rogers' cartoons.)

Forrest Gander is the winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He was born in California, has lived in Mexico, and taught at Brown University in Rhode Island. But he's always wanted to come home to California. Now, he's a full time resident of Petaluma, enjoying the beautiful setting of his home and the diversity of his neighbors.

Gander believes that interest in poetry is cyclical, and that we're living in a time of increasing attention to it, especially among young people, and despite society's fixation on "spectacle." 

His prize-winning collection, Be With, is a book of elegies, a public mourning of recent losses. One set of verses is a loving portrait of his mother, who has Alzheimer's Disease. He read some of that for us:

 (Image: Forrest Gander. Credit: ForrestGander.com)

Return to Paradise is an exhibition in Marijke’s Grove celebrating Walter Byck and Marijke Byck-Hoenselaars’ thirty year legacy of visionary leadership and community engagement through art and sculpture.

• Roger Berry

• Riis Burwell

• Karen Cusolito

• Catherine Daley

• Briona Hendren

• Robert Hudson

• Bruce Johnson

• Monty Monty

• Jann Nunn

• Moto Ohtake

• John Pashilk

• John Toki

• Doug Unkrey

For more than 50 years, one of the pleasures of summer life in the Bay Area has been the outdoor performances of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. This summer, of course, the season is cancelled. And so the Mime Troupe brings its progressive politics and guerilla theater to the radio, as lyricist/composer Daniel Savio told KRCB news director Steve Mencher.

We wanted to have Daniel Savio remind us about the importance to Bay Area history of his father, Mario Savio, so we asked him about his dad.

Everything you need to know about Tales of the Resistance and the Mime Troupe.

The Santa Rosa Symphony's new music director and conductor, Francesco Lecce-Chong, will lead his first full season beginning this fall. This is the first time he will be able to put his stamp on the orchestra, with a repertoire that reflects his own tastes and vision for the group.

Among the new initiatives this year, he's embarking on an ambitious commissioning project with the Eugene Symphony Orchestra, which he also leads.

KRCB news director Steve Mencher spoke with Lecce-Chong during a rehearsal at the Green Music Center earlier this year, to learn more about his background and his hopes for the symphony.

In the second part of this interview, Steve Mencher talked with Lecce-Chong about how the symphony will change under his leadership.

The Santa Rosa Symphony is playing a free community concert on July 28 at the Green Music Center. Although hall and table seating is sold out, lawn seating will continue to be available up until the show starts at 7 pm. 

(Image: Composer Francesco Lecce-Chong. Credit: Santa Rosa Symphony.)

On the program recorded the weekend of January 11 through 13, we’ll be hearing a work written in 2013 by Missy Mazzoli called Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres). Missy Mazzoli is in her second season as composer in residence at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. 

We’ll also hear the Symphony Number Two by Johannes Brahms and the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Jean Sibelius with soloist Simone Porter.

Santa Rosa Symphony music director Francesco Lecce-Chong has known Simone Porter since she was 17. Six years later, he loves listening to the musician she's become. 

The second half of the program features the Brahms Second Symphony. 

In the preconcert talk, music director Francesco Lecce-Chong said that Brahms is his favorite composer. He loves the elegance and richness of the composer’s music, and the interplay of instruments that makes him one of the great orchestrators.

The difficult birth of the composer’s First Symphony is often contrasted with the seeming painlessness of the Second Symphony’s creation. The Symphony Number 1 had taken two decades to complete – by the composer’s account. The second was the work of one summer.

Join us at 3 pm on Sunday, February 2 for the broadcast, hosted by KRCB News Director Steve Mencher.

Paying your library fines might not seem like a big deal. It usually adds up to spare change. But earlier this month, the Sonoma County Library decided to remove that burden from its patrons in the name of fairness. 

Rushing quietly into the Sonoma County Library, a mother heaves a bag filled with children’s books onto the returns desk. 

She may not know it, but she won’t be penalized if the books are overdue. The library has decided that fines are a financial burden and prevent patrons from borrowing more materials. 

Ann Hammond, Sonoma County Library director, says it’s a social equity issue. “In our research, we found that about 30 percent of our library patrons, or approximately 42,000 people in this county, were blocked from using their library. And that’s because they had a minimum of $10 of overdue fines. $10, if it’s 25 cents per day per item and you’ve, you know, got several children who check out two dozen books each, you could rack up $10 in fines in no time at all.” 

The Sonoma County Library follows in the steps of a number of libraries across the country, particularly in California, by eliminating all library fines. The only fee library goers are charged from now on is for the replacement of an item that’s lost or damaged. If a lost book isn’t returned within 62 days of its due date, the library patron will be charged for the cost of the book. But for those who end up finding that lost book under a couch cushion or car seat, the late fee will be removed. 

“Oh, I think it’s going to bring in more customers,” says library goer Sarah Hazen. “There’s always of course the worry that people will not bring books back. But it’s a kind of generous, open-hearted way of operating, so I like it.”

The revenue accrued by the library from fines was $200,000 per year. But this is only about one percent of the library’s total operating revenue, which Hammond says isn’t anything they can’t absorb. In fact, she says it was costing the library more in staff time to process the fines than they were getting back in revenue. According to Hammond, this new policy also relieves some stress from staff and creates a happier environment for both staff and patrons.  

“Oh I think it’s a disaster,” says library goer George Shalimoff. “I can’t find circulating books sometimes, I can only find the reference books. And if I can find them circulating, they’re usually out. But the library should be the greatest function of any city or town.” 

Hammond responds to this concern that without fines, people won’t return their books. “The research has shown that charging library fines does not really encourage people to bring back items on time. If they’re going to bring it back on time, they’re going to bring it back on time. What it really does effectively is punish people for the simple mistake of not returning an item on time. And that punishment is unfairly distributed.” 

Children misplace books, parents don’t have time in their busy workday to return a book by its due date, people are traveling or have economic or personal issues that prevent them from paying library fines.

So far, says Hammond, the response to the new policy has been overwhelmingly positive.

Visit the website of the Sonoma County Library.

See a list of the Sonoma County Library’s locations.

Read about other local libraries that have adopted a no-fine system:

• Why California libraries are ditching fines on overdue materials
• San Francisco goes fine-free
• Oakland goes fine-free
• San Mateo County goes fine-free
• Contra Costa County goes fine-free