By David Fortier
Come Sunday morning, exam week will be winding down at school—the week started with the local NAACP scholarship breakfast on a holiday, so exam week began Tuesday will end Monday. It’s a nice stretch of time, since I often find myself playing catch up with grades. And so it goes.
As for the scholarship breakfast, what a wonderful person Danisha Craig is. This item didn’t make it into yesterday’s news article, but her teacher Corey Nagle mentioned in his comments introducing her that Craig takes time from her busy schedule with the Energy Dept. in Washington, D.C., to mentor Bristol kids.
Bristol has produced some pretty outstanding people. We can add Danisha to the list, and she is just getting going.
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Two weeks ago, on another rainy cold night, Mary and I headed to Hartford Stage for its latest production, Espejos: Clean. The drama is told in Spanish and English, with supertitles (translations for both languages appear on a screen above the stage). But this is simply not a play with subtitles.
The main characters, one Canadian on a destination wedding at a resort and the other, a native Mexican working at the resort, appear on a cleverly designed stage, sometimes alone, sometimes in separate sectors of the stage, and other times in the same scene.
It’s a risky undertaking that’s worth a look, not only for the novelty but also for its worldview and artistic storytelling. The play runs through Feb. 5.
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Listening/reading — I have been rummaging through New Yorker and Atlantic articles. A fun one is from the New Yorker, “John Le Carre’s Search for a Vocation.” Le Carre, of course, is the pen name of David Cornwall, who redefined the spy novel. His letters have just been published. Click here for the article.
One of the Atlantic articles, “What the Tech and Media Layoffs are Really Telling Us About the Economy,” points out that in the past 12 months, 130,000 people have been let go in from the tech sector. Click here for the article.
For listening, I returned to the Ezra Klein podcast, with a new episode guest-hosted by Roge Karma, a senior editor, while Klein is on a vacation break. It features professor at Columbia Law School and the director of the Center on Global Legal Transformation at Columbia, Katharine Pistor, who is the author of The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality.
Click here for the episode, entitled “A Guide to the ‘Legal Fictions’ That Create Wealth, Inequality and Economic Crises.”
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On the city front, the mayor and economic development director appeared on a Manufacturing podcast. Click here.
On the political front, anyone interested in early in-person voting can share their thoughts with our state senator and representatives. Here is their contact information.
Click here and scroll down the page for an email address to contact State Sen. Henri Martin (R-31). For State Rep. Cara Pavalock-D’Amato (R-77), State Rep. Joe Hoxha (R-78), and State Rep. Mary Fortier (D-79), click here and scroll down the page for an email address.
Enjoy!
“Come Sunday morning” is intended to be a weekly review, a recounting of the past week and an anticipation of week to come. Among its features will be reviews of old and new books, sharing of favorite podcasts, some family news, Bristol events and happenings and issues surrounding education, work and community journalism. He can be reached at dfortier@bristoledition.org.
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