Download this month's Calendar
Download Past Calendars
Recent News:
Two new groups related to the ongoing Climate Crisis will be starting up in February. On Sunday, February 12, 6:30-8:30 p.m. (and on succeeding second Sundays), Contemporary Issues will be discussing "Republicans for Revolution," downloadable from New York Review of Books website. 1/12/12 issue.
On Monday, February 27, 6:30-8:30 p.m. (and on succeeding fourth Mondays, a forum on Climate & Violence will be discussing parts 1 & 2 of Tropic of Chaos, by Michael Parenti (check Amazon). For more information, call Ken at 734-9076 or email at bengershon@aol.com.
Why We Fight
"Our youngest TOS board member, Will Welch, recently did a local television interview to publicize some of our upcoming events, the main one being Will's own baby, the new Other Voices at The Other Side, which kicks off on February 3rd. Expecting first to be asked some basic questions about what our venue is and the sorts of events we host, Will was thrown for a loop when the reporter began by asking, "Why are you doing this? Who would come to this sort of thing?" Her incredulity was certainly understandable given the "cultural" context of local TV news. What FCC Chairman Newton Minnow labeled a "vast wasteland" a half-century ago now seems high art in comparison to current programming. Yet, like the McDonald's drive- thru at the corner of the Parkway and Genny, they do not lack for customers. So why do we insist on swimming against such a strong current? Why do we do this sort of thing? And, who do we expect to come? Why are we doing 19th Century programming in an American Idol world?
I wish that the simple Domenico family answer that "a man's gotta do, what a man's gotta do," would suffice, but I've got to say just a bit more. We believe that just as efforts to build a local food system to replace the corporate factory food system are essential, so are efforts to build a local, genuine culture to replace the corporate commodified, faux culture of television and other mass entertainment. Who we expect to come are those of you who know that your soul is longing for something a bit more nourishing than reality TV. Please check out our programming at The Other Side and - better yet - imagine an event that you might produce. We are open to ideas."
Orin Domenico, Chairman of the TOS Board
Early February Highlights:
Wednesday, February 1, 6:30-8:30 p.m. Herbal Study Group. This month's focus is on simple home remedies, affordable and uncomplicated, for common ailments and injuries. To pre-register, call Lisa Ferguson at 315-845-1562 or email at lisa@hawthornehillherbs.com. There is a suggested donation of $10-15; 10% of all proceeds will be donated to United Plant Savers, a non-profit organization. Bring tea mug, notebook and questions! Upcoming: in March, the Herbal Study Group will focus on Women's healthcare and will feature special guest Kate Gilday, a nationally acknowledged authority in the field of herbal medicine.
Friday, February 3, 7:30 p.m. Other Voices at The Other Side, a new series bringing artists, writers and scholars to The Other Side, gets launched with a very special reading by 2 talented area writers.
Poet Gary Leising, Associate Professor of English at Utica College, will read from his collection Fastened to a Dying Animal. Leising's poetry runs the gauntlet of human experience. With subtlety he brings to light expressions from deep within our collective subconscious. At times touching, at others, deeply meditative, his work is compellingly thoughtful.
Author Melissa Febos, Assistant Professor of English at Utica College, will read from her 2010 memoir, Whip Smart. A personal narrative of Febos's time as a dominatrix in New York City, Whip Smart chronicles the story of a young woman navigating through a downward spiral of drug addiction and self-destruction to emerge illuminated by strange and powerful truths.
The reading is free; donations for The Other Side will be gratefully accepted.
And the following week, the not-to-miss events continue:
Wednesday, February 8, 7:30 p.m. The Imagining America series presents A Journey Upstream: The Past and Presence of An "Extinct" People, a talk by Nathan Goodale, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, and Alissa Naumann, Visiting Professor of Anthropology.
In 1956 the Arrow Lakes Indian Band, known as the Sinixt First Nation, was declared extinct by the Government of Canada despite being recognized as part of the Colville Confederated Tribes in the United States. In October 2010, the Sinixt Nation asserted their sovereignty, initiating the Sinixt Slhu7kin Protection Camp on their ancestral lands in British Columbia, establishing a Wilderness Preserve at Perry Ridge and halting all commercial logging in the area. In this talk we will examine the Sinixt struggle for recognized “existence” not only from the government, but also from other First Nation and local communities.
This talk is free, donations welcome.
Thursday, February 9 (7:30 p.m.) -Sunday, February 12, (2:00 p.m.) Outcast Theater presents Copenhagen,a Tony-award winning play by Michael Frayn, directed by Thom Capozella. Starring Peter Loftus, Dug Bartell and Leslie Reilly. Buy tickets in advance at www.outcasttheater.com.
The play speculates on what might have transpired during a meeting between Nobel laureates Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in Copenhagen in September 1941, at the height of the German advance into Russia and just three months before America’s entry into the war. The power of National Socialist Germany was at its pinnacle, and the Germans had just been made aware, through Swedish sources, of U.S. plans to build an atomic bomb.
The action of the play encompasses the initial meeting of the two physicists in Copenhagen in 1941, another encounter in 1947, and finally an imagined meeting that takes place after all three characters have died. Margrethe, Bohr’s wife, is present in all scenes as interlocutor and commentator. Even after death they are unable to ascertain with certainty (thus, the uncertainty principle in human life) precisely what was said in Copenhagen in 1941, what was implied, and what was inferred. Did Bohr understand what Heisenberg intended to convey? Did Bohr misinform — intentionally or unwittingly — the Western Allies of Germany’s wartime plans?
As Frayn notes (Copenhagen, p. 96), dialogue plays an important role in Heisenberg’s own memoirs, because he wanted “to demonstrate that science is rooted in conversations.” (from a review by Daniel A. Michaels, for the Institute for Historical Review, 2000)
Kim's note:We think that this play provides an exceptional opportunity to see serious live theater in Utica. Orin and I got to preview a small scene from Copenhagen this summer, on a Utica Monday Nite at Players' Theater, and were sold on it.