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Current Affairs – Page 4 – Ennis Smith

Current Affairs

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Art, Criticals, Current Affairs, Gay, History, Museums/Galleries, Photography, Short Cuts

The Friends of Frank

January 28, 2012

On recent sleepless nights I’ve been haunted by an image of a person I’ve come to know well. The man has the face of a pugilist; tall and long-limbed, he stands with his hands behind his head wearing nothing but a pair of boots and a taunting, defiant stare. This portrait of Frank O’Hara, by…

Art, Current Affairs, Gay, Museums/Galleries, New York, Politics

Too much to see dept…

January 19, 2012

From Gayletter: Above: Charles Demuth (American, 1883–1935). Dancing Sailors, 1917 Slideshow: Keith Haring (American, 1958–1990). Unfinished Painting, 1989.

Criticals, Current Affairs, Film, Politics, Short Cuts, Theater

Shortcuts: Coriolanus

January 13, 2012

Fiennes, with Vanessa Redgrave Was it accidental, or did Ralph Fiennes anticipate the cries of the rabble? At the beginning of Coriolanus, Fiennes’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s parabolic tale of a war hero who, prodded by minions and his politic/duty-bound matriarch (Vanessa Redgrave, better than ever, if that’s possible) loses the courage of his convictions…

Current Affairs, Gay, History, Politics, Vespers

Suffering indignities in order to simply be

October 13, 2011

Here’s an interesting bit from Chapter 11 of The Gay and Lesbian Almanac: …in 1962, the president of the District of Columbia’s Mattachine Society, Dr. Franklin Kameny, appeared on local television for 90 seconds to talk about his organization. Such appearance was so rare and daring that the interview was preceded by a five-minute apology…

Current Affairs, Technology, Vespers

Steve Jobs, Apple Titan, 1955-2011

October 5, 2011

Current Affairs, Dance, New York, Theater

Mourning Songs for a Theater, in a City Still Reeling

September 14, 2011

This week in Manhattan, Ground Zero isn’t the only repository of grief and longing. At the Marriott Marquis Theater in midtown, you’ll find a different kind of mourning going on. Before the curtain rises on the current revival of Follies, Stephen Sondheim’s 1971 elegiac musical, the audience is treated to a scene familiar to that…

Architecture, Current Affairs, New York, Politics, Religion

At war with woe

September 11, 2011

Last night from the fire escape of our apartment my partner and I gazed downtown to take in the Manhattan skyline. There were our skyscrapers—the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, Citicorp, Time Warner and the still rising One World Trade Center—dotting the horizon, their spires lit up like an early Christmas. Suddenly two large…

Current Affairs, Music, My back pages, Vespers

Jerry Leiber 1933-2011, Nick Ashford 1942-2011

August 23, 2011

Both were members of song writing teams that shifted the landscape of American popular music. The titles say it all: try to imagine a world without the Leiber-Stoller penned Jailhouse Rock, Hound Dog, Stand by Me, Yakety Yak, Kansas City, Is that All There Is? Everyone from Peggy Lee to Steely Dan’s Donald Fagen (check…

Art, Current Affairs, Gay, My back pages, Politics, Travel, Writing

Another Page

July 2, 2011

Live from New York: this morning as a family of starlings chirped me into cognizance, I thought, the past is present again. Funny—it remembered the first day of my Woodstock residency almost a month ago, less evocative of home than a clue to the sheer volume and diversity of bird stock in that neck of…

Art, Current Affairs, Museums/Galleries, My back pages, Photography, Short Cuts

Regular People Picking Pictures

May 21, 2011

The leaving is the hardest part. Call me complacent, or merely a homebody—whether departing for Rome, Beijing or even upstate New York, a mourning state comes over me whenever I must leave Manhattan. Maybe it’s always hard because I can’t forget that this was where my life truly began, which means that all its signposts—its…