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Rustic Italian restaurant succeeds where others failed
Going around town is a buzz on a hot new Italian restaurant located just a few minutes walk from Davis Square on 400 Highland Ave., called Sagra Ristorante, which opened at the end of February.
Robert DeSimone, the master chef, said everyone loves to eat. For him though, cooking food and presenting it appealingly for diners’ pleasure is just plain fun.
Sagra Chef Robert DeSimone
DeSimone is a zesty bachelor with quick, sparkling eyes, flashing a welcoming smile and a sense of humor. For sometime now, he said he burned with a burning desire to open his own restaurant. Especiallly one offering unique recipes that come straight from the Eastern region of Italy; allowing him to introduce what the locals love to eat in mountainous Abruzzo bordering Le Marche.
Jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis, DeSimone said his goal for Sagra is to bring to Davis Square: delicious fine food at an affordable price.
Escalating confrontation erupting between two sisters over the inheritance of a book of rare, priceless stamps is the basis of a highly charged comedy, “Maritius,” a premiering play currently presented by the Huntington Theatre Company at the Stanford Calderwood Pavilion in the Boston Center for the Arts. Noted playwright Theresa Rebeck has local roots. In 1987, she received her M.F.A. in dramatic writing and in 1989, she earned her Ph.D. in English and American Literature, both from Brandeis.
She is active in the Playwright’s Platform, a Boston-based writers group. In 2004, her play, “Bad Dates,” was also a huge hit and enjoyed a highly praised presentation at the Huntington Theatre.
Dennis, the shady stamp buyer, looking at a sheet of stamps
Her plays are produced nationwide, garnering numerous awards and she was honored to have been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
In “Mauritius,” where there is the smell of a big pile of money, unsavory characters with criminal intent are attracted to it like a shark to blood.
Crime is an arena playwright Rebeck is familiar with. She is an accomplished crime writer known for her TV work in “LA Law” and “Third Watch.” She wrote and co-produced “NYPD Blue.”
Mauritius, the title of the play, is the name of the southern African island where the first postage stamp was issued.
The play pivots on two half-sisters, although sharing the same mother, they have grown apart in adulthood.
“The Women” is a most wickedly witty comedy of manners by playwright Clare Boothe Luce; an inquisitive play sampling the curious companionship women offer each other, and on women’s dissimilar treatise on love.
Swirling with impudent gossip, this saucy 1936 satire is now presented with aplomb by The SpeakEasy Stage Company as their 16th season opener at The Boston Center for the Arts. It is said that Luce (1903-1987) completed this two-Act play’s first draft in just three days; its inspiration came directly after she overheard two women dishing dirt on a wealthy friend’s troubled marriage while in the powder room of the El Morocco Club.
Clare Boothe Luce was subjected to frequent societal gossips herself and her own storied-life was as romantically riotous as the play she wrote. People who follow her career and colorful life have dubbed her, “the Hillary Clinton of her era.”
Traveling the world, working as a war correspondent for Life magazine, she filed stories from China, India, Africa and the Middle East; this immersion in world affairs buoyed her passion for politics. Twice she won the 4th Congressional District seat and served as a two-term Republican from Connecticut (1943-1947,) and starting in 1953 she was U.S. Ambassador to Rome for a period of three years.
In 1977, Gore Vidal wrote, “After Eleanor Roosevelt, Clare Boothe Luce was easily the most hated woman of her time,” because “she was too beautiful, too successful in the theatre, in politics and in marriage.” Her envied success was remarkable considering she was an illegitimate child born into poverty.
Luce’s first marriage at 20 was to an alcoholic, wealthy clothing merchant who was 24 years older than her. In divorce, she declared in a letter to her mother, “I’m not living my life for anybody but myself from now on.”
Sept. 2, 1945 was historic like no other day; envoys of the empire of Japan stood solemnly on the deck of the mighty warship U.S.S. Missouri because two weeks prior on Aug.14, VJ Day, Emperor Hirohito had announced Japan’s unconditional acceptance of the Allies’ Potsdam Declaration.
When a day of infamy at Pearl Harbor, in time, became near Armageddon with unfathomable death toll rising from battles throughout the Pacific islands, WWII finally ended.
By so doing, Hirohito, the emperor, considered a god in Japanese culture, had spared his people from prompt and utter destruction. This god’s wisdom came a little late, as both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were already burning, radioactive, decimated by two atom bombs detonated at 1,800 feet above the cities; a grave order from President Harry S. Truman.
A B-29 Super Fortress, “Enola Gay” dropped the first on Aug. 6, at 0245 local time, over Hiroshima then three days later, another B-29 “Bockscar” dropped the second bomb at 1058 over Nagasaki.
“Little boy” and “Fat Man” were twin bombs; each weighing 1,000 kg. and when ignited, each released the equivalent of 20,000 tons of TNT with a blinding flash, a devastating shockwave rolling with a searing heat that tore human skin right off.
What is unique and significant about contemporary art is the up-to-date expression of it; its artistic content is diverse in modes and manners and its metamorphosis indefinable.
Since the concept may encompass anything and everything new, imagine the challenge the architect must face when commissioned by The Institute of Contemporary Art to deliver a state of the art, cutting edge exhibition facility for the public to experience new interactive art forms. This was the dream commission of a lifetime to any architect—it puts to test the very tenet of modern architecture: form follows function.
For this Boston Harbor project, obtaining maximum interior spatial-flexibility was a core functional requirement for architectural design.
The architectural firm selected offers a professional portfolio that was a tailor-fit for this commission; that art and architecture are seen as cultural twins.
This 65,000 sq. ft., scenic waterfront project presents site-specific problems; since the building sits right at sea level thus escalating foundation design issues way beyond a simple slab on grade construction; its foundation piles must reach right down to bedrock.
Sun orientation, prevailing wind pattern, precipitation and proper site drainage at the Boston Harbor were also factors to deal with.
Crucial to the project was structural design for the breath-taking cantilever holding 17,000 sq. ft. of upper level gallery space; more than half of it jutting out in a clear-span over the city’s pubic harbor-walkway some 40 ft. below.
These gallery spaces are designed to be free of load-bearing columns thus delivering an uninterrupted expanse of space, giving ICA the maximum flexibility to curate art installations meeting special visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory demands that pushes radical new art boundaries.
Sixteen-foot high floor-to-ceiling acoustical, movable panel-walls may be tracked and snapped into place to define smaller areas as exhibition requires.
Overhead is an adjustable skylight system capable of filtering natural sunlight evenly downward to the gallery’s polished concrete floors.
Following Independence Day will be months of hot days at the beach, swimming, playing outdoor games as we work on our tan and hope to meet new friends. Summer is here, hedonism will loom large on our minds.
“Roll out those lazy hazy crazy days of summer. Those days of soda and pretzels and beer.” That familiar Nat King Cole tune and lyrics are cinched into our head; the activities will start promptly on July 4th and run, nonstop, straight through September 4th, Labor Day.
From Hippies trapped in a time warp to their X-Gen teenagers, everyone will run around barefoot, licking delicious ice cream cones and guzzle down gallons of chilled beverage. Mustard will be squirted on top of a bed of relish blanketing hot dogs nestled in buns while eyes roam, gawking at more perky buns on scantily dressed women and men strutting about.
Having one’s mind dwelling constantly on sex, can lead to a shortness of breath; so finding time to re-read classics and cool off under the shade of a big oak tree might be a good idea. Recently I had pulled off from my bookshelf Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.”
Thompson’s lead paragraph was more powerful than my recollection served me on just how riveting Gonzo journalism was. It read: We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drug began to take hold. I remember saying something like “I feel a bit lightheaded; maybe you should drive. . .” And suddenly there was a terrible roar around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?”
To lead off a wild summer and as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Hunter S. Thompson, I thought it would be fitting to do a piece titled: Fear and Loathing in Porter Square.
Porter Square has acquired a nervous energy that Davis Square seemed to lack; not unlike comparing a pair of twins: one is slightly demented from glue sniffing and the other is totally predictable thus a little boring.
To begin with, getting to Porter Square on the Red line train means one had to ascend on a steep, growling escalator, escaping from the cavernous belly of the beast. Once on the street level, one is face to face with an inscrutable, flower-selling, Asian lady whom some might think is Korean; perhaps a “Moonie” who may well have married a total stranger back home, along with a thousand other cult-worshipping Korean couples, all arranged by the very peculiar Reverend Sun Yun Moon.
During this long hot summer, the world’s attention will once again turn to actions on the fields of Germany; many nations will meet defeat while others advance in victory as 32 nations, representing six continents, will kick-off the FIFA World Cup Finals on June 9.
billions of diehard soccer fans will travel to the host country and jam into sports stadiums.
An estimated 37 billion worldwide will be riveted to their home television sets to hoot for their country to win, thus moving up to the next round. National pride on display will be predictably feverish.
If past World Cup event’s frenzied behavior, on and off the field, is any guide, then watch tempers flare, shouting become deafening, and scuffles to break out in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Munich, Nuremberg and five other cities as German police calm tumultuous fans in a total of 12 cities where 48 scheduled stadium matches will take place.
Starting on June 6, nations’ teams will challenge each other in eight groups designated from A to H. Four teams will compete within each group. The 48th match is scheduled in Berlin on June 23. Geared for worldwide broadcasts, game-starting time shall vary from three in the afternoon to a late nine in the evening in the host country.
Six previous cup-winning countries’ team will grace the field; all hoping to recapture their past glory. The year 2006 defending champion of the 17th title-match is Brazil who has won the World Cup a record five times.
Brazil last snatched the cup in 2002. The final score was two goals scored against Germany who was held at zero, played in the International Stadium in Yokahama, Japan.
In the 16 World Cup tournament’s history, there has been shocking upsets: one was in 1990, when team Cameroon defeated team Argentine; the golden-trophy cup holder was eliminated in the opening match.
So why do people consider soccer (called football everywhere else, except in north America) as the quintessential global sport?
The exact cause triggering the start of war is often spurious, yet at war’s end for those who survived it, sobbing with joy, one would jump to celebrate as millions did on V-E Day: May 8.
This day commemorates Allies victory in Europe as Hitler’s Nazi war machine finally surrendered, halting German bloodlust in 1945.
The Third Reich’s unconditional surrender stopped mounting death and destruction but misery continues in the aftermath of war.
Few leaders of nations, who exercise the awesome power to wage war and who do it for the wrong reasons, are branded in history as pure evil as was Adolph Hitler for his role in WWII.
Yet, this uber-powerful monster was taking down by the millions of ordinary brave men, the GI’s.
Hitler perpetuated a war that dwarfed all wars in mankind’s history; fifty-six nations shed her blood in protracted savagery worldwide lasting six years, ending with the most fearsome atom bomb detonated twice over civilian population.
Those maimed and survived faced a world stripped of humanity as shocking, horrific details of the Holocaust billowed out in years to follow.
While war raged, the nation’s prolonged call for duty went out to ordinary Americans in all walks of life hailing from all 50 states.
In his coffee table opus, “The Greatest Generation,” retired “NBC Nightly News” anchor, Tom Brokaw recorded for eternity the compelling accounts about the men and the women who put their lives on hold at home while numerous headed straight to the frontline to fight in uniform, knowing chances are that they would never return.
These reflections give us a broader picture of the true dimensions of war beyond the instruments of war: guns, bayonets, grenades, landmines, tanks, submarines, aircrafts on sorties runs from carriers at sea; all deployed with strategic precision.
“The Greatest Generation,” with its current-day look back perspective, is the perfect bookend to the work of another Midwesterner.
Unlike most of his colleagues, one journalist from Indiana, avoided the the Generals and the strategy arguments around the flagpoles, he filed war stories straight from the enlisted men’s eyes; he was Ernest Taylor Pyle.
Ernie Pyle won the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for his syndicated war columns, written from all over the European Theatre.
Ernie Pyle
On a visit home, Pyle was invited to the White House, where First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt begged him to cover the Pacific war.
Tired of war, he demurred.
But then, restless at home, he flew west.
At age 45, he was killed by a Japanese machine gunner, who had hidden while American troops advanced past him in the battle for Ie Shima Island April 18, 1945; just 20 days shy of V-E Day to see the war end in Europe.
The soldiers loved Pyle because he told the readers back home the truth about their lives:
“The last of the comforts are gone. From now on you sleep in bedrolls under little tents. You wash whenever and wherever you can. You carry your food on your back when you are fighting.
“You see men washing their mess kits and clothing in five-gallon gasoline
cans, heated over an open fire made from sticks and pieces of packing cases. They strip naked and take sponge baths in the heat of the day. In the quick cold of night they cuddled up in their bedrolls.”
Pyle wrote that every moment at the front line is life in crisis with not a moment to spare; day after day as fatigue and weariness escalated:
“Planes pass constantly, eastbound. New detachments of troops wait for order to move on. Old detachments tell you the story of their first battle, and conjecture about the next one. People you’ve only recently met hand you slips of paper with their home address and say, ‘You know, in case something happens, would you mind writing…’ ”
Around the corner is Saint Patrick’s Day; a day to show emerald pride as Irish everywhere gather with merriment to commemorate the patron saint of Ireland.
March 17, the day of celebration, falls on the day he died 1,545 years ago in A.D. 461 when he was 76 years old.
Saint Patrick was among the first missionary introducing Christianity into Ireland in A.D. 432. He was credited as the one who singularly exerted entrenched Catholicism into the Emerald Isle.
Ireland is sanguine with ancient stories of sword and song. Rich with history, it was a land where kerne marched, while gallows were erected over fields shimmering with shamrock.
It was St. Patrick who seized upon the idea of using the three-leaf clover in a clear analogy illustrating of the dogma of the Trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. In time, Ireland even adapted the shamrock as her beloved national emblem.
As green as any field can be, this bucolic isle in the ocean is likened to a precious jewel. Located west of the United Kingdom, separated from it by St. George’s Channel and the Irish Sea. Resembling a basin rimmed with low Mountains; Ireland is half the size of Arkansas.
After St. Patrick laid the religious groundwork, Ireland is now over 92 percent Roman Catholic with a current estimated population nearing six million.
Romans who occupied nearby England for 400 years, inexplicably never sailed across the channel to conquer Ireland.
On Feb. 14, St. Valentine’s Day, many will pine for two hearts to beat as one; the heart is, after all, considered the seat of love and affection.
So why does love remain such a mystery and how does one find it?
Don’t ask Mark and Roberta Griswold of Allen Park, Mich.
Oh yes, they know. But, these two lovebirds may have no time to tell us. They are listed in the latest Guinness Book of Records for kissing nonstop for 29 hours, starting from March 24, 1998 ending the next day.
This uninterrupted mushy smooch required them to remain standing all the time while cameras whirled next to a Guinness official staring at his stopwatch.
In the 21st century, everyone accepts our world as a grain of sand in an infinite universe, still we stubbornly cling to a mundane reality defined by seeing is believing.
Has our lush blue planet-earth photographed by NASA astronauts from outer space, ever been visited by extraterrestrial aliens in
UFOs? Are we really alone?
Those are enduring and inviting questions for mankind to ponder.
Breaking with tradition in a 1982 block-buster film, director Steven Spielberg introduced E.T. (The adorable, friendly extraterrestrial) to us. In 2005, he has reverted back to promoting a starkly opposite version of extraterrestrial aliens in “The War of the Worlds.”
The entertainment media has consistently echoed the typical notion of loathsome aliens.
We have gained an expectation that they are of superior intelligence utilizing advance technology. These aliens have come to earth to enslave us, to interbreed with us for their own specie’s survival, and most frightening of all, to devour us as food.
Alewife illustration by Franklin W. Liu
Many say this is pure rubbish.
We’re unnerved and why not? It’s credible. We daily devour other species for food, and fashion their skin into hats, belts, shoes and coats.
There is a joke saying, perhaps, we’ll taste just like chicken to extraterrestrial aliens.
Like our ancient savage ancestors, fear of the unknown drives survival. We have not changed much; we still fear the unknown with passion as we tremble on our knees in prayer to God for protection from all things in heaven and on earth.
A much talked-about 1947 watershed Roswell incident in New Mexico where an Unidentified Flying Object has purportedly fallen from the sky and crashed with a fatally injured alien.
Government press-releases contradict newspaper accounts of the day, claiming the wreckage as a downed weather balloon, denying the Army has salvaged any flying-saucer fragments. Stories of subsequent intimidations of eye-witnesses and later, their sudden deaths coupled with additional government censorship sparked lively debates on aliens and UFOs.
The Roswell incident is still shrouded in as much mystery as that of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination; the truth is out there but it may
never be revealed.
Conspiracy theorists salivate as government moved quickly to denounce them as idiots who will step forward to champion any confounding idea.
Although no one doubts that governments do keep classified secrets from their citizenry.
Government claims it’s for the greater good to solely curb mass panic, to prevent civil disobedience that can cause societal breakdown triggered by fear of the unknown. The government is there to protect us after all.
Hell, the government has a point here; we even see pumped-up sports fans on a rampage, rioting upon their team winning the league-championship.
Can ordinary citizens be trusted to behave in dire emergencies?
Irrefutable proof of aliens and UFO existence is scarce.
Partly due to the public’s insistence after the Roswell incident and other subsequent sightings, the United States Air Force began conducting highly classified investigations
called: Project Blue Book.
It formally commenced in 1952.
This official investigation of UFOs lasted for nearly 20 years with public discourse and press interest viewed as a direct threat to national security.
The government officially said that Project Blue Book’s UFO tracking investigations were terminated in December 1970.
A total of 12,816 reports of UFO sighting were investigated and gathered. Most were judged to be erroneous sightings, explainable by natural weather phenomena and others were hasty, unreliable assertions with nearly two percent logged as fabrications by hoaxers and crack-pots seeking publicity.
Going around town is a buzz on a hot new Italian restaurant located just a few minutes walk from Davis Square on 400 Highland Ave., called Sagra Ristorante, which opened at the end of February.
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