Of course, for her fans it is a loss, though I believe she hasn't come out with a highly rated CD in ages. Which makes one question just how great this loss actually is and how much is media-driven hysteria. Nor have we heard her mentioned as having been active in alleviating the poverty of people in the United States or anywhere else in the world. What we have heard about are the sordid details of her involvement with drugs, of the sorry tale of the break-up of her marriage, and about the decline of her career.

     Just as we were given the obscene details of Michael Jackson's life by the media, which allowed the sale of his CDs to shoot up, so no doubt now Miss Houston's CD sales will also enrich her estate. Both funerals were tasteless to the extreme and not worthy of the news attention given to them. Where are our values now? Where are composer/ song writer David Foster's values? He is one of those who over-praised Houston. Is he thinking of the royalties that will come his way now that the singer has died?

     It is time we start to look at ourselves so we can see whom we elevate to lofty heights. Are entertainers really the kind of examples we want our youngsters to emulate? Surely there are more worthy individuals that should make the headlines instead of entertainers who have done little for society, but managed to get attention by constantly grabbing the headlines with drug overdoses, and drunken driving charges, bad behaviour and other obnoxious behaviours. Think Amy Winehouse, Britney Spears, Charley Sheen, Paris Hilton  etc. We have made bad behaviour a virtue, while we ignore good behaviour as being too dull for the news and not worthy of our attention.

     On a personal basis, we here at Lancette Arts Journal have had to come to terms with the loss of a valuable and most necessary member of our "family". We have not yet found a replacement for our editor, who died last July after a short, but fierce, bout with cancer . As we are a magazine that offers ad-free reviews, and so do not pay for services - the CamKohl staff excluded - rendered by writers etc. we have found an unwillingness by volunteers to take on the task. Yet, we are keeping a positive note for 2012 and are certain that by spring a replacement will have been found for Joe Camilleri.

     On the arts side, we have decided to give some space here to stories we haven't uploaded yet to the website, but which have in one form or another been covered in columns in Seniors Review.

     We liked the new Burlington Performing Arts Centre, although we have so far found that the line-up of shows is geared to shows and concerts that are of  little interest to any of us here at Lancette. This might account for the less than stellar ticket sales. Only three shows sold out completely. Since there are only just a little over 700 seats in the main theater that appears to us as being a sad record considering that Burlington has in excess of 170,000 inhabitants. We think that management had better rethink its strategy

     Our J.M. Smith has written two reviews of books of some vintage that will be posted shortly. J.M. likes mysteries and related genre and so has given us reviews that go back in time. Alidë has discovered two new authors she enjoys greatly for their entertainment as well as for their indirect informative nature. These are mystery writer Louise Penny and  Patrick Taylor, who has given us fine stories about an Irish country doctor very much in the vein of A. J. Cronin, who wrote for a different generation about a Scottish country doctor.

     Books that will also be reviewed, albeit late, are the excellent novel The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaaje, and such books as Only Time Will Tell, Half-Blood Blues, Lorna Goodison's short story collection By Love Possessed, and many more.

     There will be reviews of such audio books as The History of English Poetry, Alexander Dumas' The Black Tulip, Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard tales and many more. Naxos has excelled itself in the kind of audio books it has released in 2011.

     We have been amiss in uploading reviews of music CDs and of DVDs of various types. We promise that there will be plenty to read in the upcoming months.

     Out of necessity we have had to stop posting news about upcoming arts events, and we have eliminated the reviewing of children's books. Time and lack of volunteer writers has made it a must that we stick to the main groups that are now listed on our site.

     With all good wishes for a much better your to come, we say adieu to 2011 and look forward to seeing you read our website and this blog in 2012.

     A supposed satire of the "wild" West of the USA and set in Oregon country, it is an in- your-face, cliche-ridden, crude, illogical, error-filled, badly written book that might at best be slapstick, but without the funny pauses and unexpected moments that slapstick implies. Satire it is not.

     The narrator, one of the Sisters brothers (yes, the family name is Sisters) speaks with words a backwoods, semi-illiterate hick would never know. As for research, if the painkilling drug being used in this story had existed in the 1850s, the soldiers wounded in the 1860s American Civil War would have been much happier, and so would their doctors. The sex scenes, as in even more literate works, are at best crude, at worst misogynistic.

     Slapstick might be one way to describe this book, but slapstick implies pauses and unexpected moments that lead to laughter. Satire has meaning, this book has none. Call me ignorant, if you want, but this book did not deserve any prizes, maybe even deserve to failing being picked up by a publisher. Just where, the heck, were the judges coming from to give this book so much attention?

As for the Giller Prize, Half-Blood Blues is a deserving choice. This book has everything a winner should have. Of course, I had a personal favor here, The Cat's Table, but I can't say the Half-Blood Blues is undeserving. Congratulation to the winner.

A.K.

Note: this blog entry should have been uploaded long ago. Apologies for the delay.

     Take this writer's view of current theater, especially director-driven theater or opera. What is being done to many works by ambitious directors and production companies stinks to high heaven. Is there really an excuse for the American Repertory Theatre's director Diane Paulus to produce a rewritten Porky and Bess? What makes the her and her writers (dialog and music) think it's alright to take a masterpiece and change it into mush? Of course, the re-write may well be driven by greed on the part of the Gershwin and Heyward estates that have authorized this new version. It's supposed to be more accessible to 21st century audiences. How sad that writing down, adding a happy ending and changing that beloved song, Summertime to a different key is better than the original. Is I have plenty of nothin' really racist and so needs a new set-up for it to be suitable for today's audience.

     Let's go back a few years to the terrible re-write of Showboat by Garth Drabinsky in Toronto before taking it south to Broadway. By giving in to local, mostly Jamaican, pressure groups he homogenized it to appease those coming from the Caribbean who had no direct connection to the history of the Broadway musical. Blacks living along the Mississippi in years preceding World War II were not the middle class that paraded along the pier in Toronto's show. Blacks then were dirt poor, just as they were in the period in which Porky and Bess is set.

     One is truly tired of directors talking down to audiences, from claiming that anyone from Shakespeare to Gershwin has to be clarified to the audience. What's wrong with the audience using its noggin to understand what the original revealed about its time and how it relates to our own?

     When it comes to art, much of what is being created by today's generation is not really art. It is propaganda in which artists claim to know better than their audience.. What gives them the right to inflict installations onto the public that cost huge sums but that are not permanent and have nothing to say to generations that will follow? While there is no opposition to self-expression or freedom of speech, one is disgusted by what is touted as art. Is a light show projected  onto a building or wall entertainment, art or is it propaganda? What makes artists think that the general public is stupid? What are the life experiences of these artists to allow them to make social commentary disguised as poor art? Since many artists are young, one has to say: "None."

     But, let's not blame the so-called artists alone. Let's blame art institutions and funding groups that want to be with it and so foster this kind of art. The same applies to those who fund bad theater, opera and music. For example, hip hop and rap are not music; their attached cultural phenomena are exploitations of a young audience that doesn't know better. Fye on so-called sociology profs who call rap art. It stinks and has fostered destructive behaviour. We only need to look at the way the young and their parents fail to know when to dress up and when to dress down. We have lost decorum and civility. Being nice is no longer an asset. Well, this writer herewith has stopped being nice - at least for the moment.

A.K.

     Joe was one of those rare men who loved the arts, yet worked in a very different field. He was most at home in the investment field, advising clients about stocks and bonds, and how to wisely invest hard earned money. He was not a gambler and never took chances with his clients' investments.

     By nature he was shy, yet also capable of being full of hijinks. When we met we knew very soon that we had kindred spirits. We loved opera, concert music, theater, art, and shared a never-ending love of books. While our tastes at times diverged this never caused any conflict. If anything, it enhanced our relationship because it offered us a chance to discuss the whys and wherefores of our differing tastes.

     Death's sting is particularly potent when it contains incurable cancer and robs a seemingly healthy man of life within five months of diagnosis. Joe was not a careless man. He always had his health check-ups, including the all-important PSA, yet somehow cancer bloomed somewhere within him without being seen. When it was discovered, it was too late. So, while we can do everything right, we have to admit that medicine is still as inexact a science as it was in my father's time. I can still hear him tell me over and over again that his powers as a doctor were limited by a multitude of circumstances. That hasn't changed and so I do not ask why fate chose to let the loving, kind, inquisitive, witty, determined Joe be cut down by death. But I do wish it had not been that way.

    Joe was born in Malta and came to Canada in 1957. He never looked back, returning to Malta for visits only four times, the last one in 1991. At that time he said it would be his last as he felt a stranger on that lovely island nation. Instead, he connected deeply with the Canadian spirit, infused in him by his grandfather and parents, who had lived in Canada for decades prior to WWII. In Malta, Joe grew up always knowing that the day would come when he made the return journey for his family to Canada. And so it was. Soon other members of the clan returned here, including his mother. But it was Joe's spirit of adventure, his determination that made it possible.

     Death's sting is lessened somewhat by knowing that he left behind an indomitable spirit that inspires me to carry on, and by the knowledge that he had a very positive impact in the lives of many around him. Joe, you will not be forgotten. You will live on in not only my mind, but in that of many others who knew you to be a very special man. Yet, I have to say: Your are sorely missed.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/jan-june11/macneil_05-13.html gave a great farewell speech for his long-time friend. Among other things, MacNeil quoted Lehrer as having recently told members of the Washington Press Club that news is not entertainment.  He said many more things of importance in that speech, but it is this that grabbed me the most because of what one witnesses on network news hours these days.

     The desire to grab viewers is leading news editors down a very slippery slope. One is aghast at CTV's nightly National News. Not only are there frequent errors in the reportage or the most important aspect is omitted, but the emphasis is on "entertainment." Leading stories are often associated with sport, especially hockey. Please, can't that be given to the sports anchors at the local level? Is Canada really a banana republic? CTV certainly makes it seem so at times. Then there are the entertainers who are given far too much space on the National News. Is Lady Gaga really worthy of being made a headline story? I don't think so.

     While Lisa Laflamme is a pleasant looking anchor, she seems the wrong choice to replace Lloyd Roberts, who is somewhat past the "sell-by date". Sorry Lloyd, but while none of us like to retire, you should have done so a couple of years ago. As for Lisa, one can't really take her very seriously. She is not impartial, which she should be as an anchor, and as a reporter. Her prejudices come to the fore far too often.  It will be a long time before she reaches the authority that ABC News' Diane Sawyer inspires to give an example.

     I am very much on the side of Jim Lehrer. News should be news, not entertainment. It should inform, and it should also teach us something about who we are and how we see the world. One does not get that feeling when watching CTV National News.

A.K.

     The outspoken 53-year-old artist, who left China in 1981 and lived in New York until he returned to his country in 1993 because of the illness of his father, is not only internationally recognized, with many exhibits of his works world-wide, but also one of the most outspoken critics of the current regime. He particularly angered the Chinese government for speaking out about the lack of support for the victims of the earthquake in Sichuan. He had accused the political officials for financial corruption that resulted in the structural faults of schools, resulting in the death of many children. He even made a documentary on the subject.

    Ai had been esteemed enough to be asked to assist the architects of the famous Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing, created for the 2008 Olympics. Alas, such fame did not serve him when he pushed too far, it seems, as far as the government is concerned.  His real trouble began when he denounced the Olympics as a feel-good whitewash of  China's repressive, market-hungry government. When thousands of children died in the earthquake because of shoddy school buildings, he became a confirmed antiestablishment activist.

     He had been invited to attend the Noble Prize ceremony for fellow countryman Liu Xiaobo in Oslo, but was prevented from leaving the country as well. The award had angered Chinese officials, who had attempted to threaten the Nobel Prize Committee and the Norwegian government with reprisals, apparently unable to understand that Norway is not responsible for a prize being handed out by a private charitable organization. After this event, he had his studio in Shanghai demolished on the grounds that he had not obtained the proper permits for it. Most recently, his studio in Beijing had been searched several times. On Sunday, police took computers and documents from his studio and questioned his assistants, several of whom are westerners.

     Ai is not the only intellectual arrested in recent months. Most have not been charged and like Ai, their whereabouts are not known. Some say this escalation of reining in outspoken intellectuals of all stripes and kinds is the result of China's unease about the current situation in the Middle East. Yet, the persecution of such individuals began long before the unrest in Tunisia, Libya, etc. As always, China cannot seem to make up its mind what it wants to be. It allows a certain period in which free speech appears to be tolerated - to a point - and then the clampdown happens.

     We can only hope that Ai and his like-wise missing colleague, Wen Tao, will not end up serving hard labor as Mr. Liu is presently doing. Ai's "arrest", the word has not yet been used officially, has sparked international outrage. The US, Britain and Germany have all officially protested his taking into custody. This may be the reason why that brief note appeared in Xinhua.

April 7, 2011- for an update on this story go to

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=46350

     Tomorrow night the Canadian version will be offered up on CBC in a one-hour-long broadcast. We do not seem to believe in mounting our award shows on a weekend night, nor do we care for making a long, drawn-out affair. The host will be erstwhile Canadian William Shatner, who will turn 80 on March 22. Yes, the guy is no chicken! The former Capt. Kirk better make this a worthwhile show, especially since it is on a network paid for by the Canadian taxpayers. It will take place at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. One hopes that there will be less hot air in this production that we get up on Parliament Hill!

     All the usual categories apply that one finds at the Oscars, from best actor and actress to best scripts of various origins, technical awards, best director etc. etc. Some of the performers slated to appear are Melissa Etheridge, Johnny Reid,  Serena Ryder, Karkwa and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. Well, good luck to all.

    While I am talking about actors, let me say, give Charlie Sheen a rest. The guy is obviously ill and the jokes about him are no longer funny. Mental illness, whether self-induced through drugs or imposed by genes is not a subject for jokes. If the guy is full of himself, which one gathers he was even before he crashed, blame daddy Martin Sheen. That guy is so arrogant and full of himself that one should not be surprised that at least one of the Estevan off-springs follows in his footsteps. Enough said.

A.K.

Please note: correction made - changing network from CTV to CBC

     The events displayed in the John Adams opera, Nixon in China, brought about great changes on the world stage. Anna Nicole brought about only notoriety and surely a sad legacy for the small child she left behind when she died of an overdose at age 39.

      So, what is the moral dilemma here? In both cases there are people still alive who are featured in these operas. In Nixon in China, there is Henry Kissinger, his National Security Advisor and also Secretary of State, and a Nobel Peace Price winner for having smoothed the path for Nixon and Mao to meet. And then there are the children and grandchildren of Nixon who have to suffer the rather strange depiction of events that have little to do with reality. What bothers one about Nixon in China is not only the living associated with this work but that the libretto is rather soft on the murderous Mao and his vicious wife, Chiang Ch'ing, while being harsh on Kissinger, Nixon and his wife, Pat.

     In Anna Nicole, composed by Mark-Anthony Turnage with a libretto by Richard Thomas, we are given a "tragic" heroine. Her daughter is alive, so is the sordid court case surrounding the fortune of Anna Nicole's dead husband, George Marshall II, who had been 60 years her senior when they married. The child is not by him and to bring the sad history of that child's early life on stage now is surely despicable.

     The question then is why do opera houses put these operas on stage? Nixon in China has recently been staged at the Met in New York and the COC in Toronto  and Anna Nicole premiered this past Thursday (Feb. 17, 2011) at the Royal Opera House in London. Shakespeare, I believe, said at least one hundred years should pass before writing about a historical figure. That was a good measure during his age, but people live much longer today. It would seem to me that at least 150 years should pass before attempting such a work. We all know that plays and operas do not stick to the facts, so to speak. They are not biographies. History and historical figures are fashioned to suit the imagination of the writer and composer. That's okay when there is no one around who can challenge the events, but that does not apply when people are still alive who were connected in one way or another with the historical figures in such works. 

     The answer to the question asked above is surely, "sensationalism". It brings in an audience to opera houses that would otherwise not step across their doorsteps. These works are aimed at those who live by the sensational, who are titillated by sordid events, who want to appear to others and themselves as being 'with it',  and to the cynical. Such an audience offers itself up as a cash cow for the opera companies. Surely, those who come to see and hear these operas will not necessarily become opera loves in the traditonal sense. The whole thing, therefore, is rather sad, purposeless, and leaves one to wonder what happened to the morals of our society.

     A.K.

     The same can be said about many other TV shows. Why are Canadians watching American Idol more than they do Canadian Idol? Notice, we are here talking strictly "man-in-the-street" type of culture. But, let's be honest, when it comes to high-end stuff, we are also depending on our southern neighbors to sustain us. Where would the Stratford Festival be without the support of American groups, who call themselves Friends of Stratford? Where would the Shaw Festival be without the influx of American tourists and the support of groups in that country who organize tours north of the border, and who st on the Shaw board of directors?

     We are all so willing to accept the largess of our cousins to the south, but when it comes to our politicians, they like to play games and scream, "loss of identity" when we long ago lost it. Remember, if you travel anywhere in Europe, to mention just a small part of the planet, insisting on being called "Canadian" gets tough because Europeans will always insist we are no different from the Americans and so continue to call us Americans. Of course, we are different. We even speak a different language, i.e. we have words in English that Americans can't understand, while we - for the most part - understand they perfectly.

     By the way, we enjoyed the Super Bowl yesterday and were happy the Greenbay Packers won. It was a great party!

     So, here is a suggestion to our honorable members of the opposition: Get with it! Stop trying to play with us and recognize that we need to do something to integrate if we want the economy to continue to grow. Whether we like it or not, we need our cousins to the south. We enjoy what they have to offer.