Arts & Events

FRIDAY, MARCH 9 -more-

UC PERFORMING ARTS’ ‘DOLLY’S WEST KITCHEN’ -more-

San-Francisco-born, Los Angeles-based poet and translator Paul Vangelisti will give a rare East Bay reading from his new book, Days Shadows Pass (Green Integer 129, Los Angeles), and share the rostrum with “multimedia fiction” writer Debra Di Blasi and her The Jiri Chronicles (FC2 Books/U. Alabama Press), part of her sprawling “transmedia” project of over 400 individual works taking many forms, 7:30 p.m. Monday at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Ave. Admission is free. -more-

The San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra will present a panoply of music by Bay Area composers Katrina Wreede, Lisa Scola Prosek, Alexis Alrich, Loren Jones, Erling Wold, and Chris Carrasco, this Saturday at Old First Church in San Francisco. -more-

When, in her final column, Molly Ivins called for the people to get out in the streets, bang pots and pans and raise hell, lefties all over the country responded with tributes and clarion calls to heed her message. Meanwhile, for more than six years, many of these same self-described liberals have excoriated the most accomplished and tenacious hell-raiser of them all, Public Pot-and-Pan-Banger Number One, Ralph Nader. -more-

Some films carry with them the burden of their own achievements, their reputations so ingrained in the public consciousness that often those who have never seem them convince themselves they have. And when they finally do see those films the expectations can be almost insurmountable, rendering the experience underwhelming. Try explaining to the uninitiated the allure of Casablanca, or the innovation and genius of Citizen Kane. For many younger viewers these films are merely overhyped relics from a pitiful, technologically challenged era. -more-

It really annoys me when I see a real estate listing with a picture of a bungalow which announces something like “fabulous Victorian”—you would think there are enough bungalows around here that agents would get a clue, but apparently not. So herewith I shall answer the question “What is a Bungalow?” -more-

Lately I have been known to make outbursts over my Sunday morning cup of tea. It’s usually because I’m reading an article in a local paper purporting to give an update of our real estate market. Some of the articles come from wire services and describe a totally irrelevant national picture. Other times the article is describing the “local market,” but what they’re really discussing is the entire East Bay, from Hayward through Hercules. -more-

Okay Matt, I have been thinking about this for a while. There is a design feature I’ve noticed while looking at open houses these past years. -more-

Are you ready to make personal contact with your wild neighbors? Ready to go eye-to-eye with the swiveling head of a great horned owl, outstare a magnificent Bald Eagle, chuckle at an opossum burrowed head-deep into a cereal box, count the leaves being pulled out of a Trader Joe’s Indian Fare carton by a California ground squirrel? -more-

FRIDAY, MARCH 9 -more-

-more-

TUESDAY, MARCH 6 -more-

Celebrating both the richness of Jewish musical traditions and new innovations that spring from them, Berkeley’s 22nd annual Jewish Music Festival will explore the diversity and beauty of Jewish music from the world over for the next two weeks. With major artists from Argentina, Italy, Israel and the United States, “in some ways it’s the richest festival we’ve ever had, because it’s so eclectic,” says Festival Director Ellie Shapiro. “There’s everything from Italian Renaissance music to a poetry slam, cutting edge to Israeli pop.” -more-

A peripheral quality of action and inaction pervades the stage set of Berkeley Rep’s very interesting staging of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. The sensory world juts out and curves through the playing space, projections of flights of birds, enormous raindrops, swirling seas seen from above move on the screens, music and recorded natural sounds pour through, the beacon flashes—and the cast of characters, drawn from Woolf’s memories of family summers on the Isle of Skye, meet at the intersections of social politeness and private thoughts and feelings. -more-

I’ve been birding in California long enough that new species are hard to come by. Every couple of years, something exotic may blow in from Siberia, but I’ve met just about all the natives and regular visitors. There are still surprises, though. Familiar birds—birds you think you know reasonably well—keep doing unexpected things. -more-

TUESDAY, MARCH 6 -more-