Getting well quick and going broke quicker
LEAH GARCHIK
“You look like a million bucks,” Norm Goldblatt’s doctor told him. “Bad news? That’s your new deductible.”
Meanwhile, Janice Hough suggests a way for the government to provide health care: “Just allow Trump to rename ‘Obamacare’ as ‘Trumpcare.’ Then he might call it the best health care in the world.”
Meanwhile, Tom Ammiano was saddened to read herein that the Eureka Theatre is folding. Ammiano recalled being riveted by its 1980s production of “Angels in America.” “We were there. We were stunned and mesmerized. What a powerful piece of work.” It was, he recalls, so “bare-bones” with so few “bells and whistles” that at the end of one scene in which an actor had been in a bed, he leaped from the bed to push it offstage for the next scene.”
The play, of course, was presented in the days when AIDS was spreading. Those were also the days before a certain HMO had made a huge turnaround. As the actor wheeled his bed offstage, a voice could be heard from the audience: “He must have Kaiser.”
In support of immigrants and in response to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, five banners commemorating Immigrant Heritage Month were hung on the front of City Lights bookstore on Thursday, June 29. They will remain there all summer, highly visible to tourists.
Each 5-by-15-foot banner pictures a Central American refugee, as drawn by Micah Bazant of Forward Together. The wording is by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (each line here is on an individual banner): “Nothing is harder/ on the soul/ than the smell of dreams/ while they are evaporating.” The fifth banner says, simply, “Stop the deportations!”
City Lights is the first site of the display; more images and text in the series will go up in Oakland later this month. The project was conceived by the New American Story Project, and is a collaboration between that group, Forward Together, Centro Legal de la Raza in Oakland and City Lights. Posters may be downloaded and printed at www.newa mericanstoryproject.org.
We hurried over to the Opera House on Tuesday, June 27, to catch the next-to-last summer-season performance of “Rigoletto,” a treat for several reasons:
It was the last regular performance conducted by the Opera’s departing musical director Nicola Luisotti, obviously relishing the moment and giving it his rapturous all before departing for Italy the next morning.
At the end of the performance, Geoffry Craig, head of wardrobe since 1999, was cited for his expertise and contributions and presented by General Director Matthew Shilvock with the Opera Medal. Taking his place in the lineup of performers at the curtain call, he accepted this honor by saying he shared it “with my brothers and sisters of the Theatrical Wardrobe Union 784,” a tribute to solidarity one doesn’t hear often. It was music to this union maid’s ears. “Live performance of opera is magic,” said Craig, a pro who’d obviously taken his job to heart.
In honor of the cast’s four Pacific Islanders (Quinn Kelsey as Rigoletto, Pene Pati, Amitai Pati and Amina Edris )29 Pacific Islanders from San Francisco State, with family and friends, gathered for a post-performance reception. As we left, an assortment of fresh floral leis was being readied for distribution.
A recent Steve Rubenstein story about steel from the old Bay Bridge being recycled into art mentioned Katy Boynton, who was going to use some of it. What she’s doing, specifically, is building on Pier 3 in San Francisco a replica of a work called the “Prayer Curtain” that was in the Court of Pacifica at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island from 1939 to 1940. The work will be on a platform, allowing visitors to take selfies with it, something that was far less common when the original was shown. Boynton enlisted the Treasure Island Museum Association for help in researching her model.
In other news of government, James Patterson reports that for the month of June, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., has had a rainbow flag alongside the American and California flags near the door of her Hart Office Building door. Harris’ office believes she’s the only senator to thus honor the LGBTQ community.
Maybe, emails Giants fan Tom Cohen, a revival of the Giants’ baseball prospects could be spurred by a new slogan. Cohen suggests: “Make Cal Bears football look good”; “Wait until the next decade”; or “Making the most of the odd- year phenomenon.” Suggestions?
PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “Oh no, girl, I did not have a man bun.” Man to man, overheard voice from a car at 19th and Folsom by Karl Robillard