Steven Douglas Maloney

Archive for the ‘Twin Cities’ Category

I went to the Open Eye Figure Theater’s The Holiday Pageant by Michael Sommers.  It was really fantastic.  The fact that weather.com says that Minneapolis “Feels like -22″ is less fantastic.  

The Holiday Pageant is the story of Christmas told from the point of view of Lucifer and his lowest minion.  The Angel Gabriel is like Silent Bob with a trumpet.  God is played by a tuba, and he speaks a if he is Charlie Brown’s teacher.  We see a Lucifer outraged by a humanity that is so adrift that they have become incorruptible out of complete moral indifference.  Cookies are handed out before the performance, puppets are employed brilliantly alongside human actors, and many of the performers do double duty in the pit playing either brass or strings.  Much of the dialogue is in iambic, old man Winter introduces the play as if we are about to see Henry V, and as humorous and engaging as the play is, it also tells us a wonderful Christmas tale in which the miracle of Christmas is that the miracle of Christmas delights both God and Lucifer, for it means that there is once again everything to play for in the hearts of man.  Cheerily, the play suggests the hopeful outcome.

Since it is snowing in the Twin Cities, (though it doesn’t look like the picture in the paper this far south) I am using my personal authority to declare it acceptable to listen to The Nutcracker out of season.

Handel’s “Messiah”! Joshua Bell! “Missa Solemnis”!  Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Project!  Steven’s new Minnesota Orchestra Season ticket package has been confirmed!  Oh, and in case you thought I had forgot:

It is 199 days, 16 hours, 2 minutes and 20 seconds until the Leila Josefowicz show, and I have tickets!  She will be playing this:

I went to the street party for A Praire Home Companion on Exchange Street in Saint Paul on Sunday.  The blurry white thing on the stage in the dark photos would be Mr. Keilor.

Matt Yglesias’ dining party yesterday in St. Paul:

Me today in St. Paul:

Notice a similar background? That’s because WA Frost be a favorite resteraunt of MINE. I was there first, conventioneers!

In case you cannot see, this is a picture of a billboard in downtown Minneapolis that reads, “Truth is treason in the empire of lies.” The quote is attributed to Ron Paul. “Empire of lies”??? Puh-lease.

I went to the new place to get a lot of my paperwork processed. It was a gorgeous day, so I snapped some photos in between administrative tasks. Here’s a sampling.

I wanted to show some pictures of Minneapolis to try and give some sort of sense of the beautiful way that this city is designed and the preservation of and practical use of lots of public space that makes living in the city very agreeable. 

For those in the armed services, leaders, businessmen, students, citizens intent on making and preserving the best of this world so that it may be experienced and shared as broadly as possible, I wish the very happiest Fourth of July.  I give you for the day, the Augsburg Choir from the Twin Cities singing the grand finale of Ralph Vaughan Williams Materpiece (best choral arrangement of the 20th Century?), entitled “Dona Nobis Pacem,” which Vaughan Williams wrote amidst fears in the mid 1930′s that the world was carreening towards unspeakable violence and death.  In our days of potential global economic, terrorist, nationalistic, geopolitical and ethnic violent upheavals, I wish to echo the hope of Ralph Vaughan Williams: Give us peace.

[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukCBVVKrEp0]

Lyrics:

Nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

And none shall make them afraid, neither shall the sword go through their land.

Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

Truth shall spring out of the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.

Open to me the gates of righteousness, I will go into them.

Let all the nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled; and let them ehar, and say, it is the truth.

And it shall come, that I will gather all nations and tongues.

And they shall come and see my glory. And I will set a sign among them, and they shall decalre my glory among the nations.

For as the new heanvens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, so shall your seed and your name remain for ever.

Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace, good-will toward men.

Dona Nobis Pacem

Good-will toward men.

Dona Nobis Pacem

Good-will toward men.

Dona Nobis Pacem

(Lyrics adapteb by Vaughan Williams from Micah 4:3; Leviticus 26:6; Psalms 85:10; Isaiah 43:9 and 66:18-22; and Luke 2:14)