ANN’S MUSINGS – Memento mori
Posted on 17. May, 2012 by Ann in Journal
I was at a memorial service the other day for a very great and kind man who died unexpectedly while fully and deeply engaged in life. I was reminded of this 5th century fresco I have seen several times at the Benedictine monastery of Sacro Speco (Sacred Cave) in Subiaco, Italy. This ancient painting shows [...]
TRAVEL PURSUITS – Reading paintings with Sean Forester: the artist as critic
Posted on 10. May, 2012 by Ann in Travel Pursuits
Some of you will have travelled with Sean Forester on a Travel Pursuit in one or another region of Italy. Others of you will have participated in one of his seminars at Toronto Pursuits. All who have encountered Sean will know that he is a passionate about classical painting and has an extraordinary gift in [...]
TORONTO PURSUITS – Sound Advice from Rick Phillips
Posted on 09. May, 2012 by Ann in Journal, Toronto Pursuits
I hope you can join me for Toronto Pursuits 2012 in July for The Concerto: Studies in Contrast. We’ll be delving into the Brandenburg Concertos by Bach, the Clarinet Concerto by Mozart, and many others as we follow the development of the concerto through the centuries. Why did it change and how did it reflect [...]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – Tiptoe through the tulips
Posted on 07. May, 2012 by Ann in Ann's Musings, Journal, On the Road with Ann
Not one of Flora’s brilliant race A form more perfect can display; Art could not feign more simple grace Nor Nature take a line away. – James Montgomery, On Planting a Tulip-Root Everybody thinks that tulips come from Holland. Actually, Tulips are native to Central Asia and Turkey. In the 16th Century they were brought [...]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – Take your soul for a stroll this October.
Posted on 03. May, 2012 by Ann in Journal, On the Road with Ann, Travel Pursuits
Los amigos buenos días, I was sorry to learn that one of our twelve travellers to walk the last hundred miles of the Camino de Santiago this October has had to cancel. TAKING YOUR SOUL FOR A STROLL: A hundred miles on the Camino de Santiago. I would now like to open that vacancy to one [...]
TODAY IN LITERATURE – Vanishing Worlds
Posted on 30. Apr, 2012 by Ann in Today in Literature
“It’s in the nature of things that whole worlds disappear,” writes the poet Robert Hass in the foreword to Jimmye Hillman’s insightful memoir Hogs, Mules and Yellow Dogs: Growing Up on a Mississippi Subsistence Farm . “Their vanishings, more often than not, go unrecorded or pass into myth, just as they slip from the memory of [...]
ON THE ROAD WITH ANN – Who said, “A picture is worth a thousand words”?
Posted on 30. Apr, 2012 by Ann in Journal, On the Road with Ann, Travel Pursuits
I don’t know about you, but I was surprised to find that that commonplace expression originates with Napoleon Bonaparte. It refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of [...]
TRAVEL PURSUITS – A gentleman on the Mekong River
Posted on 29. Apr, 2012 by Ann in Journal, Travel Pursuits
A chance encounter (at a local meeting of Camino aficianados) resulted in an extended conversation about the ways and means and the whys of travel. David Levin has been a serious and life-long traveller. When he learned that Classical Pursuits will be going to Vietnam and Cambodia this fall, his eyes lit up and he [...]
TRAVEL PURSUITS – Why a new book for Vietnam?
Posted on 28. Apr, 2012 by Ann in Journal, Today in Literature, Travel Pursuits
Here was the headline in the book review section of the Globe and Mail, Canada’s national newspaper that caused me to stop and take notice. “Vincent Lam’s first novel, about Vietnam, has makings of a masterpiece.” Vincent Lam is an emergency physician Toronto who also writes – very well. His first book Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures won [...]
TRAVEL PURSUITS – So why don’t the Vietnamese hate the Americans?
Posted on 15. Apr, 2012 by Ann in Journal, Travel Pursuits
Just last night, during intermission at a concert, I overheard a conversation between two people, one asking the other if she planned to join the fall Classical Pursuits trip Vietnam Voices: A Balanced Opposition. Over the din, I heard her response: “Oh, no, I could never go to Vietnam. I am an American.” Vietnam has [...]
