The There There Letter: Yelling, A New Friend, and Reading Aloud
Three things from DAH.
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I write, organize, plan, produce, manage, direct, act, sing, promote, and make change (not the coin kind).
First up this week, the yelling essay.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-year-in-yelling-catastrophe-marriage-story-moonstruck/
I read this because it was about Moonstruck, "the best movie ever made about yelling" (as the author states in this essay). I love Moonstruck, and I love the work of John Patrick Shanley. He wrote the Moonstruck screenplay. Shanley is also responsible for the movie Joe vs The Volcano, which I find delightful while others don't. And he wrote Doubt, winner of Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. This essay, "The Year in Yelling," is a piece by Phillip Maciak in the Los Angeles Review of Books (30-Dec-2020). I think Maciak's observations about Moonstruck help explain Shanley's work: Often on a hot knife-edge between surprising, profound honesty and melodramatic claptrap. I like that Shanley takes risks, which sometimes reward and just as often fail. Austin Kleon drew my attention to this essay in his e-newsletter today. You should check him out if you don't already know his work: https://austinkleon.com/ He always gives me something new to think about or investigate.
Second up this week, my new winemaker friend.
I participated in a benchmark tasting of Oregon Pinot Noir wines yesterday, with my old friend Rusty Eddy and my new friend Adam Lee. A benchmark tasting is usually convened by a winery owner to make sure the winery's team hasn't succumbed to a house palate (meaning they can easily identify their wines in a blind tasting, and always think they are the best, even if others disagree). Yesterday we three tasted 25 wines blind (we didn't know which wineries made which wines), discussing them and ranking them. A similar tasting was taking place with different participants in Oregon. But I'm not here to write about benchmark tastings (although this one was very interesting). Adam Lee, whom I knew of but had never met, was delightful. Founder and winemaker at Siduri Wines, which is now owned by Jackson Family Wines, Adam Lee is friendly, interesting, and down-to-earth. Plus, he studied playwriting in college! In addition to various consulting gigs, he has his own small Pinot Noir winery named Clarice, after his teetotal grandmother. The winery has a most unusual subscription model, with its capacity based upon the 4 acres from which Adam draws his fruit. https://claricewinecompany.com/
Third up this week, why you should read aloud.
Or listen to others reading aloud. If you do a web-search for "reading aloud" you'll find lots of information about adults, parents, reading aloud to their children. Like here: http://www.readaloud.org/why.html
"Your child may learn to read better, think better, imagine more richly, and become a passionate and lifelong reader. More than these long-term benefits, however, are some more immediate: The pleasures of spending time with your child and sharing the enjoyment of a good book."
I don't have children to whom I read aloud. Instead, my wife and I read aloud to each other almost every day. We used to do this, stopped for some years, and started again in the past few months. It's an interesting way to share a book together, and I suspect that we read better, think better, and imagine more richly while spending time together sharing the enjoyment of a good book. "Listening to someone read out loud is like that experiment where you stare into another person’s eyes for four minutes and by the end, you’re in love with that person. It’s too intimate an experience to share with someone you dislike" -- from this essay you should check out: https://themillions.com/2017/03/comfort-food-the-importance-of-reading-aloud-as-adults.html
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem "Sometimes," remember this:
DAH is me, David Anthony Hance. I write, organize, plan, produce, manage, direct, act, sing, promote, and make change (not the coin kind).
First up this week, the yelling essay.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-year-in-yelling-catastrophe-marriage-story-moonstruck/
I read this because it was about Moonstruck, "the best movie ever made about yelling" (as the author states in this essay). I love Moonstruck, and I love the work of John Patrick Shanley. He wrote the Moonstruck screenplay. Shanley is also responsible for the movie Joe vs The Volcano, which I find delightful while others don't. And he wrote Doubt, winner of Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize. This essay, "The Year in Yelling," is a piece by Phillip Maciak in the Los Angeles Review of Books (30-Dec-2020). I think Maciak's observations about Moonstruck help explain Shanley's work: Often on a hot knife-edge between surprising, profound honesty and melodramatic claptrap. I like that Shanley takes risks, which sometimes reward and just as often fail. Austin Kleon drew my attention to this essay in his e-newsletter today. You should check him out if you don't already know his work: https://austinkleon.com/ He always gives me something new to think about or investigate.
Second up this week, my new winemaker friend.
I participated in a benchmark tasting of Oregon Pinot Noir wines yesterday, with my old friend Rusty Eddy and my new friend Adam Lee. A benchmark tasting is usually convened by a winery owner to make sure the winery's team hasn't succumbed to a house palate (meaning they can easily identify their wines in a blind tasting, and always think they are the best, even if others disagree). Yesterday we three tasted 25 wines blind (we didn't know which wineries made which wines), discussing them and ranking them. A similar tasting was taking place with different participants in Oregon. But I'm not here to write about benchmark tastings (although this one was very interesting). Adam Lee, whom I knew of but had never met, was delightful. Founder and winemaker at Siduri Wines, which is now owned by Jackson Family Wines, Adam Lee is friendly, interesting, and down-to-earth. Plus, he studied playwriting in college! In addition to various consulting gigs, he has his own small Pinot Noir winery named Clarice, after his teetotal grandmother. The winery has a most unusual subscription model, with its capacity based upon the 4 acres from which Adam draws his fruit. https://claricewinecompany.com/
Third up this week, why you should read aloud.
Or listen to others reading aloud. If you do a web-search for "reading aloud" you'll find lots of information about adults, parents, reading aloud to their children. Like here: http://www.readaloud.org/why.html
"Your child may learn to read better, think better, imagine more richly, and become a passionate and lifelong reader. More than these long-term benefits, however, are some more immediate: The pleasures of spending time with your child and sharing the enjoyment of a good book."
I don't have children to whom I read aloud. Instead, my wife and I read aloud to each other almost every day. We used to do this, stopped for some years, and started again in the past few months. It's an interesting way to share a book together, and I suspect that we read better, think better, and imagine more richly while spending time together sharing the enjoyment of a good book. "Listening to someone read out loud is like that experiment where you stare into another person’s eyes for four minutes and by the end, you’re in love with that person. It’s too intimate an experience to share with someone you dislike" -- from this essay you should check out: https://themillions.com/2017/03/comfort-food-the-importance-of-reading-aloud-as-adults.html
That's all for this week.
From Mary Oliver's poem "Sometimes," remember this:
Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
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