"If David Foster Wallace had written Eat, Pray, Love, it might have come close to approximating the adventures of Gideon Lewis-Kraus. A Sense of Direction is the digressively brilliant and seriously hilarious account of a fellow neurotic's wanderings, and his hard-won lessons in happiness, forgiveness, and international pilgrim fashion." --Gary Shteyngart
In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone.
Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, A Sense of Direction is Lewis-Kraus's dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles--the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine--he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is--and find a way forward, with purpose?
Please join us in welcoming Mr. Lewis-Kraus here for this reading, discussion, and Q&A.
Time:
7:30pm
Location:
Bookshop Santa Cruz
Description:
Join us for a preview event of UCSC Opera Program, performing excerpts from this year's production.
This spring, May 31st to June 3rd, UC Santa Cruz Opera Program will present Mark Adamo's Little Women, based on the American novel by Louisa May Alcott. UCSC has been dedicated to provide an opportunity for students to gain skills as they experience what it means to prepare a role, work on challenging music, build a character, and rehearse with a full orchestra in an educational setting every year. The composer, Mark Adamo, has been featured locally in the CabrilloFestival of Contemporary Music, including a performance of Little Women in 2002. The music of this opera is filled with leitmotifs, which are musical themes representing an idea or thought; recitatives written in a modernist musical style with changes in tempo and feel; and arias of intense lyrical beauty. Adamo takes this story of a Civil War-era family and focuses its perspective on Jo, one of the daughters, and how she comes to terms with the passage of time, notably how she grows to cope with change. Little Women will be performed at the UCSC Music Center Recital Hall from May 31-June 3. Show tickets can be purchased at santacruztickets.com or by phone or in person at the UCSC Ticket Office (831) 459-2159 and the Santa Cruz Civic box office (831) 420-5260.
Bookshop Santa Cruz’s preview event is free to all and we hope you’ll join us in hearing the inspiration of literature turned song from this beloved children’s novel!
Description:
May 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20 (matinee), 25, 26, 27 (matinee), at Park Hall
When Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend, Harvey, a six-and-a-half-foot rabbit, to guests at a society party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the verge of lunacy. The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey, it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors.
Time:
6:00pm
Location:
Humanities Lecture Hall
Description:
Tom Marshall and Rusty Morrison poetry
Time:
7:30pm
Location:
Bookshop Santa Cruz
Description:
"Victoria Sweet is a master storyteller and a consummate physician. Her beautifully written stories from the front line of health care document the struggle of al lmodern-day healers, to hold fast to the immortal soul of Medicine despite the pressures of economics, the self-interest of politics, and the reductionism of science. God's Hotel reminds us of the fundamental truth that medicine is and has always been an act of love and brotherhood ... and of the vulnerabilities we share and the compassion we aspire to. " --Rachel Naomi Remen,MD, author of Kitchen Table Wisdo" and My Grandfather's Blessings
San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the "Hotel-Dieu" (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. In practice, it was a catchall for everyone who didn’t fit in somewhere else—a shelter, a farm for the unemployed, a halfway house, and a rehabilitation center, as well as a hospital for the chronically ill with nearly 1,200 patients. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves--"anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care--ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for twenty years. Laguna Honda, lower tech but human paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished. Gradually, the place transformed the way she understood her work. Alongside the modern view of the body as a machine to be fixed, her extraordinary patients evoked an older idea, of the body as a garden to be tended. God's Hotel tells their story and the story of the hospital itself, which, as efficiency experts, politicians, and architects descended, determined to turn it into a modern "health care facility," revealed its own surprising truths about the essence, cost, and value of caring for body and soul.
Bookshop Santa Cruz is proud to welcome Dr. Victoria Sweet here to the store to discuss, read from, and answer questions about her stunning book.
Time:
7:30pm
Location:
Capitola Book Cafe
Description:
BILLEE SHARP
Lemons and Lavender: The Eco Guide to Better Homekeeping (Viva Editions)
Learn how to ditch your lawn and raise organic vegetables, cook healthy meals for pennies, cure minor maladies from the kitchen cabinet, save big dollars with small repairs, and eco-clean your house with lemons and lavender. Live more joyfully and creatively, all on a dime. Billee Sharp was a contemporary art curator in London before moving to San Francisco in 1993. There she started a family, ran an independent record label, founded a green cleaning business, curated many multimedia cultural events, and founded the Mission Casaba, an artisan crafts market.
Description:
May 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20 (matinee), 25, 26, 27 (matinee), at Park Hall
When Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend, Harvey, a six-and-a-half-foot rabbit, to guests at a society party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the verge of lunacy. The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey, it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors.
Time:
7:00pm-9:00pm
Location:
Capitola Book Cafe
Description:
Friday, May 18 from 7-9pm
Drop-in Poetry Group with Magdalena Montagne
With over ten years of experience leading poetry writing groups, Magdalena Montagne can help you bring out the poet within. Join the Magdalena's Muse Writing Group at the Book Café. We'll write new works in a supportive and creative environment. This on-going group welcomes newcomers and drop-ins. All levels and ages are encouraged. Call Magdalena at 831-252- 5776 for more information or e-mail her at magdarose@hughes.net.
Cost: $5 to Magdalena and $5 to Book Café to participate, please.
Description:
A poetry writing circle with Magdalena Montagne.
Bring out the poet within. In the poetry circle we'll write new works in a supportive and fun environment. All levels and ages are encouraged.
Santa Cruz Public Libraries
Downtown Branch Small Conference Room
First Saturday of the month, 10:00 to 12:00
April 7, May 5, June 2
Aptos Branch Meeting Room
Second Saturday of the month, 1:00 to 3:00
April 14, May 12, June 9
Scotts Valley Branch Fireside Meeting Room
Third Saturday of the month, 2:00 to 4:00
April 21, May 19, June 16
www.santacruzpl.org
Description:
May 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 20 (matinee), 25, 26, 27 (matinee), at Park Hall
When Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend, Harvey, a six-and-a-half-foot rabbit, to guests at a society party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behavior as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the verge of lunacy. The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey, it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood's delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors.
Time:
9:00am-5:00pm
Location:
Capitola Book Cafe
Description:
Saturday, May 19 from 9am-5pm
HUMOR WRITING
The Memoir Journal Master Class Series & Capitola Book Cafe present
Throw Cliché Under the Bus:
a workshop for aspiring humor writers with WALLACE BAINE
Wallace Baine, long-time critic, essayist, and humor columnist for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, leads this intensive one-day workshop to help writers of memoir and fiction zero in on the hidden clichés in their work and develop methods for cultivating humor and color in place of tired words and phrases.
Cliché is a useful tool in day-to-day verbal communication. But in writing, it is a disease that preys on originality and insight, and like any effective parasite it is often hard to detect. In this daylong intensive, we will study various ways that clichés lurk within the writer's palette and practice methods to expose and excise them. Close readings from well-known humor writers like Dave Barry and David Sedaris will help us explore the mechanics of funny writing---wordplay, exaggeration, self-deprecation, analogy, and irreverence---and in-class exercises will help us learn how to keep smart writing from developing into cliché.
Wallace Baine has covered the arts and entertainment scene in Santa Cruz County for the Santa Cruz Sentinel for 20 years. He has won national awards for his columns, and is the host and creator of the Gail Rich Awards and the author of the collection Rhymes With Vain.
The Memoir Journal Master Class Series connects aspiring writers with mentors who can inspire new levels of growth and exploration in their work through our ongoing series of daylong intensives. For more information about the series, or to register, please visit www.memoirjournal.com.
DETAILS:
Register Online Only HERE: www.memoirjournal.net
Throw ClichéUnder the Bus: a workshop for aspiring humor writers with Wallace Baine
Saturday, May 19th from 9 AM--5 PM
Capitola Book Cafe, 1475 41st Avenue, Capitola, CA 95062
Course fee: $115 (includes a complimentary subscription to Memoir Journal; students should bring a brown bag lunch)
By advance registration only
Register Online Only HERE
http://www.memoirjournal.net/events/master-class-throw-cliche-under-the-bus/
Time:
7:30pm
Location:
Bookshop Santa Cruz
Description:
In Open Heart, Open Mind, Tsoknyi Rinpoche--one of the most beloved of the contemporary generation of Tibetan Buddhist meditation masters--explains that a life free of fear, pain, insecurity, and doubt is not only possible, it's our birthright. We long for peace, for the ability to love and be loved openly and freely, and for the confidence and clarity to meet the various challenges we face in our daily lives.
Within each of us resides a spark of unparalleled brilliance, an unlimited capacity for warmth, openness, and courage, which Rinpoche identifies as "essence love." Timeless and imperishable, essence love is often layered over by patterns of behavior and belief that urge us to seek happiness in conditions or situations that never quite live up to their promise.
Drawing on rarely discussed teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, Rinpoche describes how such patterns evolve and offers a series of meditation exercises to help us unravel them and, in the process, reawaken an energy and exuberance that cannot only bring lasting fulfillment to our lives but ultimately serve to enliven and inspire the entire world, as well.
With great humor, intelligence, and candor, Tsoknyi Rinpoche also details his own struggles to reconnect with essence love. Identified at an early age as the incarnation of a renowned Tibetan master and subjected to a rigorous monastic training, he ultimately renounced his vows, married, and is now the father of two daughters.
As he recounts his own efforts to strike a balance between the promptings of his heart and an obligation to preserve and protect the teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, Rinpoche provides a bridge between ancient wisdom and modern life, and encourages each of us to rediscover the openness, fearlessness, and love that is the essence of our own life.
Please join us for in welcomingTsoknyi Rinpoche for this discussion and signing (signing if time permits)
