Obama made an appearance at the Apollo last night for a fundraiser, also attended by Al Green. Channeling the Reverend, the President sang a few lines of Let’s Stay Together. It reminded me why I liked Obama so much four years ago.
Category Archives: Politics
The Living Ruins of the Uranian Phalanstery
October 20, 2011 – 2:43 pm
The current vogue for “ruin porn” – the sensationalized and aestheticized images of dereliction and decay – was on our minds when Salome Oggenfuss and I visited the Uranian Phalanstery on a hot and humid day last September. Salome had heard from a colleague about two decrepit old interconnected brownstones on East 4th St, between [...]
Midnight Weddings
July 24, 2011 – 9:39 am
Just after midnight Sunday, when the legalization of same-sex marriage took effect, several couples were married in New York. The above photo is Cheryle Rudd and Kitty Lambert, two grandmothers, who were married in front of Niagara Falls by the mayor. Many of their five children and twelve grandchildren were there. The photograph is of Harold Lohner [...]
Lobsang Sangay and Tibet’s Future
July 21, 2011 – 6:20 pm
When Lobsang Sangay took the stage at New York’s Asia Society this past Tuesday, he asked his interviewer and Harvard Law School classmate Jamie Metzl whether the discussion would be “in the Anderson Cooper format or the Oprah one?” Charming, extremely intelligent (a former Fulbright scholar), absolutely dedicated (he led the Tibetan Youth Congress) and [...]
A Really Happy Pride Weekend for New York
June 25, 2011 – 7:09 am
When I got married a few years ago, we had to go to City Hall to apply for a license. There was a gay couple sitting on the next bench, applying for domestic partnership, and I felt so sad and so embarrassed that what they were filing for was different than what I was. Just [...]
!Women Art Revolution
June 16, 2011 – 11:56 am
Directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and scored by Sleater-Kinney’s Carrie Brownstein, !Women Art Revolution traces the history and influence of modern feminist art as a collective movement, from its incubation in the 1960s to its artistic and political evolution in the following decades. Featuring interviews with and works by seminal artists, historians, curators and critics [...]
Thug Life
May 22, 2011 – 12:03 pm
I’ve watched Vice TV a few times and I am always impressed by the topics taken on by a magazine made famous for Dos and Don’ts. Right now they have an amazing video up about the Holy Thug Saints of Caracas, Venezuela. In a city where more than 100 murders are logged each weekend (14,000 [...]
1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei
April 15, 2011 – 4:09 pm
Artist and activist Ai Weiwei was arrested on April 3 in Beijing and has been missing since. Anne Pasternak of Creative Time posted a question on Facebook about what the arts community could do to support him, and in response curator Steven Holmes suggested a reenactment of Ai Weiwei’s project Fairytale: 1,001 Qing Dynasty Wooden Chairs. [...]
NYC Goes Vegan
March 11, 2011 – 1:22 pm
My friend Karliin Mann is the craziest animal activist I have ever met. She has stories of freeing donkeys in Guatemala and flying dogs up from Louisiana after the hurricane. Her apartment is always filled with at least three foster dogs and two cats and she has three perma-dogs. I’m actually not exaggerating. Think zoo [...]
