Arts & Events

FRIDAY, FEB. 22 -more-

Jovelyn Richards of Oakland is a born storyteller. When she was little, her mother would have visitors by for coffee “and I heard things that weren’t said; I put language to their secrets. After they left, I told my mother their story. She knew the truth from them and would say, ‘Where did you get that?’ I was putting language to their secrets. I didn’t know how to decode that for her.” -more-

A clerk at a Florida resort hotel during the 1920s property boom leaps out from behind his desk and joins in a lively production number. The villainess in an engagement con on a wealthy mother and daughter leads a line of dancers doing the Charleston. -more-

Of all the architects who resided in Berkeley during the first four decades of the 20th century, the one who received the most coverage in the local press was not John Galen Howard or Bernard Maybeck but William Hatch Wharff. And only occasionally was the press coverage related to his profession. -more-

“Music will be an Old Time Music Jam, bring yer fiddle,” is what Terri Compost, the exquisitely named point person of the Bay Area Seed Interchange Library (acronym’ed, equally exquisitely, “BASIL”) replied to my query. I wanted to know who would be playing the music promised for BASIL’s Ninth Annual Seed Swap tomorrow, Saturday February 23, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Ecology Center. Dang, I don’t have a fiddle. Guess I’ll just send the cat. -more-

I was inspecting a house out beyond the Naugahyde Curtain the other day (Walnut Creek, if memory serves; landing strip for white flight). The house was unillustrious but amongst the artifacts that brought me sufficient intrigue to set the day aglow was a brand new fireplace. -more-

FRIDAY, FEB. 22 -more-

TUESDAY, FEB. 19 -more-

A Korean-American architect and her African-American husband move with their baby daughter into a fixer-upper Brooklyn brownstone—holes in the plaster, boxes everywhere, a makeshift architect’s office—when a black neighbor, who seems to have been the original kid-on-the-corner, drops by repeatedly offering one deal after another, and the husband’s ne’er-do-well adoptive brother blows in from an Asian getaway, wanting to move in and start a business with his bro’—and the new Korean nanny inadvertently starts pushing a new mother’s buttons. Then a brick comes crashing through the window. -more-

Never mind that it’s caught me unarmed and ill-prepared, as usual; I love this sample of early spring we’re getting. We didn’t have it quite the same way last year, I guess. As happened, I was ‘way out of town and in another climate for most of last February on a most urgent and unfortunate errand, so I’m only guessing. -more-

TUESDAY, FEB. 19 -more-

From my sixth-floor living room window I have a glorious panoramaic view of the Berkeley and Oakland hills. I never tire of this view, gazing out at the Campanile, International House, the Claremont Hotel and numerous campus buildings. When I pull my drapes apart in the early morning, it’s almost as though I were opening curtains to a stage. This comparison may sound a bit fanciful, but is it really? -more-