Restaurant pairs nuevo tango music and Argentine (well, sort of, if you squint and imagine) food for dinner in Fargo, ND.
http://www.in-forum.com/articles/rss.cfm?id=180397
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
For all the Gray-Haired Guys and Soon-to-Be-Gray-Haired Guys in Tango Colorado
From Better Nutrition Magazine
No Guts, No Glory
By John Monahan
The vibrant man on our cover this month is 65-year-old Murray Moore, a prostate cancer survivor we’ve chosen to represent men of good health.
You’ll notice that Murray still has his shirt on. We’ve abandoned the convention maintained by virtually all men’s health and muscle magazines that the cover hero must, at the very least, bare his washboard abs. We’ve also dispensed with the admiring busty blonde.
I know from personal experience that it’s easy to define yourself as a man solely by the definition of your muscles. But as a man ages—and his beard turns gray, like Murray’s—he understands that manhood is not vanity. Nor is manhood begrudgingly feminine.
As Joe Lewandowski writes (“Just Do It,” p. 34), men today are awash in ideas about who they should be, without much anchor to who they truly are. Indeed, the very words “male bonding” are now the stuff of insipid sitcoms where men are portrayed as frightened dimwits, even as women are encouraged to run with wolves.
Something is very wrong when a man’s personal power comes from the gun in his hand or the money he’s amassed or the cant he expounds.
The most powerful men I know have become that way through suffering for a purpose other than themselves. The pains of life they’ve endured have dampened their narcissism and steeled their inner strength—and this, rightly so, has allowed them to express genuine moments of joy.
It turns out that the cliché that high school football coaches used to spout—“No guts, no glory”—is true. Except the glory isn’t in trouncing an opponent—including oneself—but in self-disinterested knowledge and the compassion that results, otherwise called love.
Love like this knows no gender—nor bounds, for that matter. And it’s that wisdom you can see in the face of Murray and other old guys who, though they may have lost their hair, have found their spirit.
No Guts, No Glory
By John Monahan
The vibrant man on our cover this month is 65-year-old Murray Moore, a prostate cancer survivor we’ve chosen to represent men of good health.
You’ll notice that Murray still has his shirt on. We’ve abandoned the convention maintained by virtually all men’s health and muscle magazines that the cover hero must, at the very least, bare his washboard abs. We’ve also dispensed with the admiring busty blonde.
I know from personal experience that it’s easy to define yourself as a man solely by the definition of your muscles. But as a man ages—and his beard turns gray, like Murray’s—he understands that manhood is not vanity. Nor is manhood begrudgingly feminine.
As Joe Lewandowski writes (“Just Do It,” p. 34), men today are awash in ideas about who they should be, without much anchor to who they truly are. Indeed, the very words “male bonding” are now the stuff of insipid sitcoms where men are portrayed as frightened dimwits, even as women are encouraged to run with wolves.
Something is very wrong when a man’s personal power comes from the gun in his hand or the money he’s amassed or the cant he expounds.
The most powerful men I know have become that way through suffering for a purpose other than themselves. The pains of life they’ve endured have dampened their narcissism and steeled their inner strength—and this, rightly so, has allowed them to express genuine moments of joy.
It turns out that the cliché that high school football coaches used to spout—“No guts, no glory”—is true. Except the glory isn’t in trouncing an opponent—including oneself—but in self-disinterested knowledge and the compassion that results, otherwise called love.
Love like this knows no gender—nor bounds, for that matter. And it’s that wisdom you can see in the face of Murray and other old guys who, though they may have lost their hair, have found their spirit.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
She Wants to Learn How to Tango...
Dascha Jayne Wright, 4, practices ballroom dancing with her instructor, Sergey Nekrasov ... Wright won first place in the US National DanceSport Championship in the 10-and-under category....Wright and Nekrasov practice the waltz, quickstep, jive, rumba and cha-cha four to six times a week.
.
Katia Zakhardoff, manager and choreographer, said Wright is eager to learn other dances.
"She wants to learn how to tango, but it's too early," she said.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Gardel Tango Song Saves Lives in Burma
From the blog of Martin Varsavsky,
I just want to tell the story of how my Argentine school buddies Diego Wainer and Raul Chevalier and myself were detained in Burma in 1988, and how we got out.
... After the Jefe gave our passports to a colleague and we thought we were headed to Burmese jail or worse, I could hear Diego rumbled something about us being "locos de mierda", stuck in a "jungle de mierda" and "metidos en un lio de mierda".
Raul and I were only slightly more positive at this point. The Jefe then asked each of us what we did.
Diego said he was an architect which the Jefe found boring, I said I was a real estate entrepreneur, which then I was and the Jefe found that even more boring, and then it was Raul´s turn and Raul said he was a musician and that made the Jefe happier.
"A musician" he said and turned to his troops and said something in Burmese that made them all laugh. He then looked back at Raul and still pointing at him with the rifle said "sing something!".
Diego and I glanced at Raul and our stare said it all "sing or we are dead".
And Raul, who used to be the bass player and singer at Zas, then the leading rock band in Latin America, chose the most appropriate song to sing at that moment.
It was not a rock song, it was a tango, "Adios Muchachos" the famous Gardel song that is basically one long good bye of a friend to his buddies:
Adios muchachos compañeros de mi vida (good bye my dear life long friends).
The song was very appropriate for the moment. Diego and I did not know if we should laugh or cry. But we chose the former, and it worked. Because as Raul sang everyone seemed to relax and enjoy his tango.
When he was done the Jefe clapped and his troops followed suit. So did Diego and I.
And then the Jefe much to our surprise said to us "now we sing" and he again addressed his troops in Burmese and we were very pleased to see that they started laying down their weapons and sat on the floor, in a circle.
We sat as well and the Jefe and his troops started singing to us.
We were pleasantly shocked. A few seconds before it looked like I was going to follow the faith of my cousin David Horacio Varsavsky who was murdered by the Argentine military and moments later the Burmese military were singing for us!
And they sang, and we sang, and then they took out a bottle of a liquor that tasted like pure alcohol to me and I could not stomach, but Raul with his Rolling Stone habits of course could. The singing marathon went on for hours.
... As I read the papers these days and think of the Burmese quiet revolutionaries who are confronting the military with chants and I remembered how we managed to get the Burmese soldiers to sing to us, I felt like telling this story.
Will the Burmese soldiers go on killing or join in the singing? The outcome is still uncertain.
In the meantime I want to dedicate this story to Kenji Nagai who died trying to alert to us that there is a peaceful revolution going on in Burma. My heart is with him and his family in Japan.
Read the full story at Singing in Myanmar
I just want to tell the story of how my Argentine school buddies Diego Wainer and Raul Chevalier and myself were detained in Burma in 1988, and how we got out.
... After the Jefe gave our passports to a colleague and we thought we were headed to Burmese jail or worse, I could hear Diego rumbled something about us being "locos de mierda", stuck in a "jungle de mierda" and "metidos en un lio de mierda".
Raul and I were only slightly more positive at this point. The Jefe then asked each of us what we did.
Diego said he was an architect which the Jefe found boring, I said I was a real estate entrepreneur, which then I was and the Jefe found that even more boring, and then it was Raul´s turn and Raul said he was a musician and that made the Jefe happier.
"A musician" he said and turned to his troops and said something in Burmese that made them all laugh. He then looked back at Raul and still pointing at him with the rifle said "sing something!".
Diego and I glanced at Raul and our stare said it all "sing or we are dead".
And Raul, who used to be the bass player and singer at Zas, then the leading rock band in Latin America, chose the most appropriate song to sing at that moment.
It was not a rock song, it was a tango, "Adios Muchachos" the famous Gardel song that is basically one long good bye of a friend to his buddies:
Adios muchachos compañeros de mi vida (good bye my dear life long friends).
The song was very appropriate for the moment. Diego and I did not know if we should laugh or cry. But we chose the former, and it worked. Because as Raul sang everyone seemed to relax and enjoy his tango.
When he was done the Jefe clapped and his troops followed suit. So did Diego and I.
And then the Jefe much to our surprise said to us "now we sing" and he again addressed his troops in Burmese and we were very pleased to see that they started laying down their weapons and sat on the floor, in a circle.
We sat as well and the Jefe and his troops started singing to us.
We were pleasantly shocked. A few seconds before it looked like I was going to follow the faith of my cousin David Horacio Varsavsky who was murdered by the Argentine military and moments later the Burmese military were singing for us!
And they sang, and we sang, and then they took out a bottle of a liquor that tasted like pure alcohol to me and I could not stomach, but Raul with his Rolling Stone habits of course could. The singing marathon went on for hours.
... As I read the papers these days and think of the Burmese quiet revolutionaries who are confronting the military with chants and I remembered how we managed to get the Burmese soldiers to sing to us, I felt like telling this story.
Will the Burmese soldiers go on killing or join in the singing? The outcome is still uncertain.
In the meantime I want to dedicate this story to Kenji Nagai who died trying to alert to us that there is a peaceful revolution going on in Burma. My heart is with him and his family in Japan.
Read the full story at Singing in Myanmar
Nice and timely, too
Hey, wait a minute...
Revisions on my third book are due today.
That means the editor and a handful of reviewers have read the book and suggested improvements. Of course, their suggestions always target the places I have tried to skate, hoping no one would notice.
Revisions are BORING. All the creative work is done; this is mop-up stuff.
Revisions were due July 1. I have an extension until today. For editors, deadlines are always 5 p.m. For writers, they are always 11:59:59 p.m. Today I am a writer. A seriously unmotivated one.
At the stroke of 5 p.m., I get an email from my editor, congratulating me on my previous book's award. (see below)
Wow! These revisions are a cakewalk! Why have I been dragging my feet? I'll be done in a jiffy. And as soon as I'm done, I'll propose the next book in the series!
Hey, wait a minute ... Could there be something to my editor's timing?
For a minute, I am my editor self again, remembering: The middle name of every good editor is Machiavelli.
Revisions on my third book are due today.
That means the editor and a handful of reviewers have read the book and suggested improvements. Of course, their suggestions always target the places I have tried to skate, hoping no one would notice.
Revisions are BORING. All the creative work is done; this is mop-up stuff.
Revisions were due July 1. I have an extension until today. For editors, deadlines are always 5 p.m. For writers, they are always 11:59:59 p.m. Today I am a writer. A seriously unmotivated one.
At the stroke of 5 p.m., I get an email from my editor, congratulating me on my previous book's award. (see below)
Wow! These revisions are a cakewalk! Why have I been dragging my feet? I'll be done in a jiffy. And as soon as I'm done, I'll propose the next book in the series!
Hey, wait a minute ... Could there be something to my editor's timing?
For a minute, I am my editor self again, remembering: The middle name of every good editor is Machiavelli.
Nice
The Voice of Youth Advocates just named my second book to its "5-Foot Bookshelf" of works recommended as "...so essential that it would be difficult to serve teens without having read them."
It's nice to serve teens.
It's nice to receive awards.
It's nice to get royalty checks.
This recommendation ought to bring in enough royalties to cover the Julio/Corina workshop this fall--and a couple of private lessons to boot.
Nice!
It's nice to serve teens.
It's nice to receive awards.
It's nice to get royalty checks.
This recommendation ought to bring in enough royalties to cover the Julio/Corina workshop this fall--and a couple of private lessons to boot.
Nice!
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