Colleen and I met at the Orange County performing arts center to enjoy the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Franz Welser-Most who is their musical director. He is an Upper Austrian who is also director of the States Opera in Vienna. The Orchestra is the pride of Cleveland for good reason. They are clearly one of the top 10 orchestras in the world. They beautifully played Mendelssohn's Third Symphony ("Scottish") that the reviewer, Mark Swed, described as "gorgeously refined and gorgeously grand." Next was Kaija Saaraho's "Orion" with an amazing blend of strings, woods, percussion and the house pipe organ. Shostakovich's Sixth Symphony was grand with full strings.
The Segerstrom Concert Hall is modern and glitzy and is a part of a complex with a huge auditorium and a theater that is home to the South Coast Rep. The event was preceded by a reception for Case Western Reserve University alumni where Colleen earned her MSW and PhD.
On Saturday April 21st, Colleen and I attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at USC. I was a beautiful day with 100,000 people all gathered to see and hear their favorite authors and meet new ones.
The first panel I attended was about Memoirs with four recently published authors of memoirs: Benjamin Busch, Claire Smith, Alexandra Styson, and Mark Whitaker. They all wrote after deaths of their parents and other family members, so their work was partly their healing from the loss. One said that the loss of parents means the loss of their childhood...the loss of ones who shared that precious time. The writing is revisiting their childhood and the relationships with their parents....the good and bad times. We often define ourselves by our parents....as wanting to be the same or the opposite. Memoirs help to appreciate and understand our parents and to see them as the people they were. Some wrote their memoirs to their parents.
Benjamin Busch described how his depression fueled his creativity....but it can also paralyze. I am reading his book, "Dust to Dust" as I was moved by his words. His father was a writer and he served two tours of duty in Iraq, being wounded the second time. He also has been on the T.V. series "The Wire" and "The West Wing" among others. He begins the book describing how he has fully embraced his mortality. I am just getting in to his book.
Another panel was on Disasters. Amy Wilentz wrote "Haiti: Tragedy and Hope". She described the disorder and lack of trust in the government before the earthquake and the ineffectiveness of the aid efforts. For example, the donation of rice killed the rice market and the farmers flooded to the broken cities for aid. She also described "disaster pornography" where people want to see gory and tragic pictures and hear these stories.
Robert Sheer talked about the disaster of the economic collapse and our government's response. He said that he was probably put on this panel because he complained that there was not a panel on the economy. He said he supports the book fair even though he was fired from the L.A. Times. He and his wife helped to start it 17 years ago. He is also pleased that it was moved to USC which is in the central of LA from the West Side UCLA.
Robert went on to described the his betrayal by Clinton and others that has led to the disaster of poverty. He described how the deregulation under the Clinton administration has led to a telecommunications reform that has contributed to the bankruptcy of the L.A. Times and others. The banking rules change led to the mortgage disaster. The best and brightest have led us to disaster with the compromised media as their cheerleaders. Sheer talked about how greed and the buying of influence and changing laws that removed regulations has been the root of it all. He says the media is complacent. These were scams to rob the people blind. We need public accountability. He is hoping the Internet can breath life into the free press. He publishes http://www.truthdig.com/
Joel Auchenbach wrote on the gulf oil spill disaster. He described how it took a long time for the people to know what was going on and that the futile attempts to stop the spill were not well planned. He said the government monitoring agency was complacent. He predicts that these kind of disasters will occur more often.
I had time to roam and receive a free Quran and McDonalds frappe thing and to talk to students from Crenshaw High School who were selling a book on their last trip to visit the President...they didn't meet him...in order to raise money for another trip this year. They inspired me.
In the afternoon we enjoyed an interview with Joseph Wambaugh who has written books about the LAPD where he once worked. His new novel is called "Harbor Nochtern" about the harbor district. We also enjoyed a performance of the writer T.C. Boyle. He read one of his compelling stories and took questions from the audience.
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