Dec 31, 2017

She is New York City’s health commissioner, and she sees her work as part of a broader fight for social justice, not surprising given her family history: her parents are lifelong activists who met at a demonstration against a segregated restaurant, my idea of a love story. We spoke at the Van Alen Institute about...

Dec 17, 2017

It is the best work that lasts, says this fine musician who’s created plenty, and history determines what that is: “Time will tell,” he says. I demur: “Time won’t tell.” It may be that only good work endures, but just a tiny portion of it will be enjoyed 100 years from now, and that selection is...

Dec 10, 2017

The local host of NPR’s All Things Considered on WNYC, journalist Jami Floyd was biracial before that term existed: “I was very very lonely as a child because I was a biracial kid…[but] there was no biracial.” A conversation about race, refugees, and a Raggedy Ann turned Raggedy Andy - not a metaphor - at JCC...

Dec 3, 2017

During his 45 years producing the concert series Highlights in Jazz, he has gotten to know many brilliant musicians. Dizzy Gillespie once came by the house and played for his cat. But is jazz, if not dead then relegated to a museum piece? The future of an art form: at BMCC-Tribeca Performing Arts Center with music...

Nov 26, 2017

Observe the world with “the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist,” urges the writer and environmental advocate Miriam Horn, citing Nabokov. She is describing not just how to see but how to be. Her other philosophical advice: live like the Ponderosa pine. Is this metaphor or pantheism? A...