May 2021 Newsletter

Right Angle Club (RAC) Monthly Member Newsletter
for
May, 2021

Upcoming Zoom Speakers & their Presentation Topics

May 7:  Scott Ordway, an American composer, conductor and Assistant Professor of Music in the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.  

May 14:  Meeting replaced by the President’s Dinner. 

May 21:  Jonathan Zimmerman, Ph.D, Professor at U of P will talk about his book which was illustrated by Signe Wilkinson. The book is Free Speech: And Why You Should Give a Damn.”

May 28:  No meting due to observance of Memorial Day. 

 

President’s Dinner

The annual Right Angle Club (RAC) Black Tie President’s Dinner will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m on Wednesday, May 12th, on the “Porch” of the Merion Cricket Club, 325 Montgomery Avenue, Haverford, PA 19041. 

 

Announcement

SEPTA announced that Senior Fare Cards due to expire through 12/2021 will now expire through 12/2022.  

Board of Control Meeting Highlights

The April 9 meeting. Highlights included 

Financials: little change from February.  We remain in a strong financial position.  President’s Dinner: will be held on May 12^th at the Merion Cricket Club outdoors on the porch, with access to an adjacent room and an open bar.  

Prior to the President’s Dinner, a survey will be initiated to assess vaccination status of all members.  

Speakers: booked through the summer.  

Pyramid Club: tentatively, considering at least a partial return in June.  Only plated meals will be served, which must be pre-ordered, and drinks will only be served at the tables.  

Website: an upgrade to the website was authorized, to make the members-only section more secure, improve the site in general, and make it easier to enhance in the future.

 

Past Month’s Speakers’ Presentations Summarized

(prepared by Bob Haskell)

April 9, 2021.  Parker Kitterman, Director of Music and Organist at Christ Church, Philadelphia, discussed his experiences in balancing his full-time work life as a Music Director and his creative life as a composer and performer of choral pieces, anthems, art songs, and contemporary music.  His work experience began as an Assistant Music Director with a Unitarian church in Washington, DC.  It was essentially on-the-job training, because running a church music program (e.g., choir management, fundraising, virtual recording and live streaming technology) is not taught in school.  Being a Unitarian church, overtly Christian music could not be used, and he had to learn about the significance of language in music, and their synergies.  At Christ Church, he oversaw the installation and dedication in 2018 of the new Esther Wideman C.B. Fisk Opus 150 organ, which is the fourth in a line of organs going back to 1763.  As a soloist and accompanist, Parker has performed with a wide range of artists including the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and Singing City Choir.  He started composing to accommodate the practical needs of his workplaces, which required him to be sensitive to the abilities of his audience, singers (e.g., amateur, volunteer choirs), and musicians.  His objective is to create fresh, relevant, and consumable material.  The creative process starts with either a text or a melody.  He described three general categories of texts upon which to build harmonies: 1) religious texts, but these are generally too complicated; 2) great poetry, but these are hard to improve with music (e.g., Whitman’s When I Heard the Close of Day; 3) not great poetry, but more traditional poetry with a clear message.  He has gravitated to the latter.  Examples of his choral works are: 1) Singing Bowl, which has traditional sonnet structure, a beautiful metaphor, and metrical scale.  With this piece, Parker was one of four winners of the King Singers (Cambridge, UK) New Music Competition. It premiered with a performance by the Cambridge singers on February 28th at the National Cathedral in Washington DC. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1OQEFT3Tg0)  2) The Lone Wild Bird, which was live streamed from Christ Church during the pandemic.  3)  Requiem, which is a traditional, nine movement mass for the dead that premiered in 2015.  You can read about the premier here…..(https://whyy.org/articles/requiem-premier-expresses-bottomless-grief-of-gun-violence/)  There were 37 participants.

April 16, 2021.  Linda Beck, Co-Director Ambassador Program and Moderator (Volunteer) for Braver Angels (https://braverangels.org/our-story/), explained the continuing efforts of the Braver Angels program, whose purpose is “Building A House United”.  In 2016, America suffered what may have been the most divisive election in its history.  In that moment, David Blankenhorn, Bill Doherty, and David Lapp came together with an idea for an unlikely gathering of 10 Trump supporters and 11 Clinton supporters in South Lebanon, Ohio. This would become the first Red/Blue Workshop organized to see if Americans could still disagree respectfully – and just maybe, find common ground.  From this initial workshop, the effort has grown into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.  Affective political polarization (not only disagreement on issues but personal contempt and distrust) has been growing between us for at least 25 years.  Braver Angels seek to depolarize American politics, especially following the last two contentious presidential elections, through grassroots organizing, working with academia and media, and within politics and government.  Their work is about restoring civic trust in the USA.  The foundation of all their activities is what they refer to as patriotic-empathy: the idea that our love for our country is shown by our concern for our fellow citizens.  They strive to move Americans along the spectrum of political feelings from hatred or disdain to respect and appreciation, hoping to get individuals to understand the other side’s point of view, even if they don’t agree with it; to engage those we disagree with, looking for common ground and ways to work together; and to support principles that bring us together rather than divide us.  Its various programs include Red/Blue workshops, skills training, Braver Angels debates and Braver Angels media.  Their primary source of funds comes from membership fees of individual Americans (dues are low), and from foundations across the political spectrum.  

April 23, 2021.  Darlene Cavalier, founder of SciStarter, and a professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society, discussed citizen science.  Citizen science is a collaboration between researchers and the general public.  It is a way for anyone, anywhere to turn their curiosity or concern into impact, and helping science in the process, by engaging in scientific research projects, such as sharing bird observations, monitoring light pollution, or playing online games that advance medical research.  No formal science training or degree is necessary.  SciStarter is a globally acclaimed, online citizen science hub where more than 3,000 projects, searchable by location, topic, age level, etc, have been registered by individual project leaders, or through partnerships with federal governments, NGOs, and universities.  It grew out of a graduate school project that Darlene was working on at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2014, SciStarter was adopted in part by Arizona State University’s (ASU) School for the Future of Innovation in Society. In 2018, with support from the National Science Foundation, ASU’s Center for Engagement and Training in Science and Society, and SciStarter, launched a major upgrade.  SciStarter now hosts an active community of close to 100,000 registered citizen scientists and millions of additional site visitors.  SciStarter accounts are free.  Because of citizen science projects, we have learned that: bird populations have declined buy 50%; birds are breeding earlier; 50+ types of bacteria live in your belly button; the first flowering of 19 species of plants has moved 9 days earlier over the last decade; there is a new type of aura in the night sky; there is another Jupiter-sized planet; invasive mosquito species have arrived in Germany; plus, in one weekend in 2019, 2,566 research hours, or 3.5 months of lab-equivalent time, were accomplished for an Alzheimer’s research project. Current projects include: The Great Sunflower Project, to count pollinators (bees and butterflies) to track their population numbers; Stall Catchers, to play a game flow for Alzheimer’s research by looking for stalls in brain blood; Debris Tracker, to record what type, and where you find (and pick up), plastic in your community; ISeeChange, to document real-life effects of climate change.  There were 29 participants.

April 30, 2021.  Carlos Basualdo, the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) and Curator at Large at MAXXI – Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome, Italy, discussed the theoretical and practical implications of the public/private partnership needed for institutions such as PMA to successfully build their collections and programs.  For the PMA, the City owns the building and helps pay operating costs. The collection belongs to the museum, which is run by the Board of Trustees, Board of Directors, curators, and staff.  98% of the acquisitions are gifts.  It is generally the spirit of the times that drives acquisitions, but always in the context of the existing collection and a strategic collection plan.  Internally, many individuals are a part of the decision making necessary to orchestrate the maintenance of a cohesive, coherent, and comprehensive collection.  The Board of Trustees, Board of Directors, and curators work together.  All bequests are reviewed by committee, and recommendations are passed to the Board of Trustees.  Either can propose an acquisition, but the Board has ultimate approval / veto power.  The “field” of art historians, academics, the press, and the public are also part of the conversation, as are the patrons.  The PMA is not known for its contemporary art collection, but it is now growing 10 times faster than other collections.  Many examples of contemporary art from the PMA’s collection were shared, demonstrating a variety of media and range of artists.  These include examples from the Sachs collection (e.g., Boy with Frog statue by Charles Roy; paintings Red Green Blue by Ellsworth Kelly and Saturnzeit by Anselm Kiefer; and Person Leaning by Michelangelo Pistoletto), the Dietrich collection (e.g., paintings Kettle by Philip Guston, Untitled by Cy Twombly, Hill by Agnes Martin, Time is a River by Paul Thek, Untitled by Eva Hesse), and independent acquisitions (e.g., Zoodram5 by Pierre Huyghe, which is an aquarium with hermit and spider crabs….a cross between surrealist and performance art; Contrapposto Studies, I through VII by Bruce Nauman, which has seven HD color video continuous loop video projections).  A key to art is getting the public to pay attention.  This is more challenging with contemporary art.  Teaching and exposure are required.  With modernity, there is always a tension between tradition and innovation.  There were 28 participants.

Carter Broach
Corresponding Secretary
broach@udel.edu