After nearly 20 years of non-involvement in filmmaking, last month I enthusiastically un-retired and worked (really worked!) on A Posthumous Woman, starring Lena Olin and Rosanna Arquette.
Written/directed by my son, Zachary, and his fiancée, Magdalena Zyzak, and filmed at a remote location in the mountains above Silicon Valley, it is Continue reading “A Posthumous Woman”
I very much admire and agree with the comment made by my daughter, Emily Cotler, about a photo taken by her friend, Lisa Boscia Bouillerce.
Wow.
I imagine myself in ancient Athens, or ancient Wales, or some other place thick with polytheistic mythology…
Looking at this, of course that’s a Sun God, or some ominous portent, the story of which will help shape the moral compass of my village.
Sometimes it’s just less rich to live in a post-modern, monotheistic society where something as beautiful as this can be explained in a quick Google search or an unearthed mental fragment from a college class of distant past… Crepuscular rays, every magical aspect of which can be explained by science…
Last week, the official North Korean news agency (KNCA) released a report stating: “Archaeologists of the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences have recently reconfirmed a lair of the unicorn rode by King Tongmyong, founder of the Koguryo Kingdom (B.C. 277-A.D. 668).” The Western press took this as another in the continuing series of North Korea’s inability to stay in touch with reality. Example: in 1994, a state-issued news story reported departed leader Kim Jong Il shot 38 under par on the 7,700-yard Pyongyang Golf Course!
Unicorns are real? Once again the world laughs at North Korea.
I am no apologist for their nonsense. But did the press get the unicorn story right? Was it state-sanctioned prevarication or trigger-happy mistranslation? Continue reading “North Korean Unicorns: Lost in Translation?”
The following essay is taken without alteration from Harvard Magazine’s current issue. I reprint it without comment because its clarity and persuasiveness require none.
Read and reflect.
Porter 
University Professor Helen Vendler, a preeminent poetry critic, has served on Harvard College’s undergraduate admissions committee. Given contemporary admissions processes and pressures, she recalls “wondering how well T.S. Eliot (who had to do a preparatory year at Milton Academy before he could risk admittance, and whose mother was in consultation with Harvard and Milton officials before deciding what to do with him after he finished high school in St. Louis) would have fared, or Wallace Stevens (admitted as a special student to do only three years’ study), or E.E. Cummings (admittedly, a faculty child).” Accordingly, she proposed that alumni interviewers receive some guidance on how to understand, attract, and evaluate applicants whose creative talents might otherwise be overlooked, and wrote this essay, subsequently posted on Harvard’s Office of Admissions website.
Anyone who has seen application folders knows the talents of our potential undergraduates, as well as the difficulties overcome by many of them. And anyone who teaches our undergraduates, as I have done for over 30 years, knows the delight of encountering them. Each of us has responded warmly to many sorts of undergraduates: I’ve encountered the top Eagle Scout in the country, a violinist who Continue reading “Admitting Writers and Artists to Harvard”
The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine, and “an independent literary organization committed to a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture,” has announced the five recipients of Ruth Lilly Fellowships for 2011. My son, Theodore Zachary Cotler, was one of the winners.
Quoting from the Poetry Foundations’s website:
The editors of Poetry magazine selected the winning manuscripts from more than 1,000 submissions. In announcing the winners, Poetry senior editor Don Share said, “Each year the competition grows larger—and stronger. We’re extremely pleased that the 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowships will recognize this diverse and talented group of younger poets.” Editor Christian Wiman added, “The subjects and aesthetics of these writers are as various as their backgrounds, but there are two qualities they all share: excellence and promise. You’ll be hearing a lot from these writers in the years to come.”
Zac…I am awed by your erudition, dedication to art, and discipline.
Congratulations.
Less than a mile from the Pacific, unmanned and open to all, the Sea Ranch Chapel appears to be protected by its own beauty, for vandals neither spray-can nor gouge it. A non-denominational sanctuary for prayer, meditation, and spiritual renewal, it is an architectural wave on a sea of grass just off California’s Route 1, 110 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge and a few miles south of tiny Gualala (“wa-LA-la”), Mendocino County‘s southernmost city.
A gift from locals Robert and Betty Buffum, the chapel was designed by San Diego artist and architect James T. Hubbell and built in 1985.
Among the many beauties of the California coast, the Sea Ranch Chapel is unique.