Some years back Sarah Cahill, now an accomplished Bay Area pianist, was writing an article for a local paper on elegant and not-so-elegant public restrooms in the Bay Area. She wandered into the Chapel of Chimes, designed in 1926 by Julia Morgan, one of the...
Here's a link to my quick look at the roots of the literature of social justice, published in the excellent online magazine Terrain.org: A Journal of the Built + Natural Environments: http://terrain.org/2014/reviews-reads/recommended-reads-literature-social-justice/ In autumn 2014 I'll be teaching a graduate craft of literature course through the University...
About Dallas Buyers’ Club: Outside Matthew McConaughey’s performance as Ron Woodruff as alternative therapies peddler, the film was pretty thin – a response that’s not surprising from one who lived through those times. Screenwriters Melisa Wallick and Craig Borten take as their template the stock 1950s...
A bass is by disposition and nature a heavy lifter. Think of a jazz trio – there’s always a moment when the pianist and the drummer stand back and let the bass have its solo, but the audience listens politely and waits for it to...
OK, here’s a chance to get more people to read about Larry Rose, and fold in another great San Francisco tip. Recently psychologist Harriet Lerner, author of The Dance of Anger and, most recently, Marriage Rules: A Manual for the Married and the Coupled Up,...
Remarks delivered at the Associated Writing Programs 2012 Conference, Chicago, Illinois, 3 March. Read remarks in PDF format. Life is research; thus, the memoir. Research deepens and enriches memory. I search for prompts, which in turn direct the research, which in its turn sparks memory. I take issue...
Mozart's Last Joke Learning Mozart’s Requiem -- the centerpiece of the University of Arizona Community Chorus spring concert, April 29, 3 pm, FYI – is an intense and wonderful experience. I know the piece well, and have said on previous occasion that its Kyrie is the...
Discussant remarks, First Friday presentations, Department of English, University of Arizona 12/2/11 Introduction: Dr. Tilly Warnock, professor emerita, University of Arizona Speakers: Dr. Ron Grant, director, University of Arizona Medical Humanities Program Dr. Rishi Goyal, Ph.D. Professor Fenton Johnson, discussant Recent years have witnessed the rise of scientists writing as Renaissance...
June 2011 The second afternoon of an eight-day silent Zen Buddhist retreat on an island in Puget Sound, I was dive-bombed by a bald eagle. Here are the facts: The retreat center (a rented Christian summer camp, more about that later) has a labyrinth, where the...
Here's a link to my latest op-ed, this in the Los Angeles Times of 5 June 2011. I have preserved the original title. In the editing -- possibly a telling comment in itself? -- "love" was dropped. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-johnson-aids-20110605,0,4195576.story ...