Last Saturday afternoon we took a Van Ness bus towards the Civic Center but traffic wasn't moving, so we jumped off and walked. On the sidewalk, there were thousands of people on their way to the Women's March, scheduled to make its way down Market Street at 5PM.
Like the marches that sprouted in seemingly every city and town in the United States and throughout the world, the turnout was astonishing.
The density of the crowd induced claustrophobia, so I escaped to the fifth floor of the Main Library and took a few photos.
My mother took her children to early Vietnam War protest marches in the 1960s and it feels as if I have been attending variations on them intermittently ever since.
I am not sure how effective they are as agents of change, but after the election of the increasingly bizarre Donald Trump as president of the United States, it was heartening to see so many people out in the streets.
The major accomplishment of most of these marches is in creating a monumental, theatrical, communal mental health intervention for the participants. "I'm not alone in thinking this state of affairs is evil and crazy" is always an empowering truth to experience with others.
The fact that the marches were led by women trying to make the world somewhat better for their children, in opposition to fascist old fossils, only added to their power.
Late Saturday morning we heard drums and looked out the window to see streams of protesters walking down McAllister Street on their way to Civic Center.
At first we thought they might be early arrivals for the Women's March scheduled for 3PM in Civic Center, protesting newly elected president Donald Trump's misogynistic evil. Instead, they turned out to be from the annual pro-life, anti-abortion march protesting the Roe v. Wade decision.
Thousands of parishioners from Catholic and evangelical churches are bused in from all points in the Western states to parade down Market Street to show godless liberals in San Francisco the error of their baby-killing ways.
This blog covered the marches in 2015 and 2016. They were annoying in their patriarchal stupidity, but the crowds felt basically harmless, as they enjoyed a jaunt into the Big City with fellow true believers from the provinces.
Mexican-American family groups with their teenage children looking bored out of their minds have always been a feature...
...although what looked like two gay daddies embracing the cause was certainly a new, grotesque twist.
What was new this year was the vehemence and excitement of the speakers. A woman was onstage in front of the recycled Abortion Hurts Women signage telling the crowd that they "should pray for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. This is Our Season, and we will triumph. Planned Parenthood WILL be defunded, which won't make any difference to women's health. I'm a nurse and just got back from West Africa where we were taking care of women and Planned Parenthood was nowhere to be seen! This is our moment." Her speech was insane and perfectly chilling.
Across Polk Street in front of City Hall there were a half dozen early arrivals for the Women's March who looked utterly depressed by the spectacle. "Are you the counter-protest?" I asked and they laughed. One woman, not pictured, said "I need a drink. Let's go."
Last weekend at Davies Hall, the SF Symphony Orchestra under Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, the SF Symphony Chorus, a quartet of superstar vocalists, a gaggle of dancers, and a few stray children gave a staged presentation of Gustav Mahler's earliest compositions. The reactions to the performance were all over the map (click here for Lisa Hirsch's critical roundup), but I was enchanted by the entire evening. (All photos by Cory Weaver.)
That may have something to do with how I discovered Mahler's music. With the proceeds from my first job at age 13, bagging groceries, I bought a stereo turntable and speakers. This led to becoming the teen mascot for the classical music staff at Discount Records, a proto Tower Records chain with an outlet in the La Cumbre Plaza shopping center in Santa Barbara. I adored the look and feel of boxed classical music sets but usually couldn't afford them. When Leonard Bernstein's big, black, leatherbound collection of close to 20 LPS surveying the Complete Symphonies of Gustav Mahler appeared on the front counter in 1968, I went bonkers with acquisitive ardor. Unfortunately, the price was $100 which might as well have been $1,000 at the time. There was another catch, which was that I didn't have a clue who the hell Gustav Mahler was and what his music even sounded like.
Still, the big black box set beckoned and I watched as it was transferred from the front counter to a back, top shelf, and saw the price descending over the months to $75, then $49, then $33, which was when I made the leap and bought it. Proceeding slowly through the LPs, I wouldn't play the next symphony until assimilating the previous one through repeated listening. The moment it became clear that the music was not going to be a disappointment, and was worth every one of those thirty-three dollars, was on first hearing the third movement of the First Symphony, with Frere Jacques rewritten as a funeral march suddenly being interrupted by a raucous, grotesque gypsy band. It didn't need to be explained that this was wild music, filled with rapturous longing, perfect for a romantic, precocious teenager.
Listening to live Mahler performances over the ensuing decades usually ensures a Proustian madeleine moment involving time transport to an often tortured teenhood. This was very much the case at last Saturday's performance because the program was music Mahler had written as a teenager or thereabouts. It started with an early lyric orchestral movement, Blumine, which was not particularly interesting except for the divinity of the Mark Inouye's trumpet solo. This was followed by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (above) exquisitely singing the four Songs of a Wayfarer in that voice which melts me to butter, every time. It was fascinating hearing all the tunes and phrases Mahler recycled into his First Symphony in their original form.
The second half of the program was the staging of the original, three-movement, hour-plus gargantuan cantata for orchestra, soloists and chorus, Das Klagende Lied. The staging was by the usual suspects, director James Darrah, projection designer Adam Larsen, set designer Ellen Lenbergs, lighting designer Pablo Santiago, and costume designer Sarah Schuessler. I heard a few reactions about the staging on the order of "awful, just awful," and reactions to the music that it was derivative, unshapely and a mess.
I thought the understated staging and projections were evocative and beautiful, even though they never quite got around the fact that the piece wasn't meant to be staged. The musical performances by soprano Joelle Harvey (photos 2 and 6), mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke (photos 2-4), tenor Michael Konig (photo 7), and baritone Brian Mulligan (photo 6) were sweet, convincing and heroic, considering they were wandering on a ramp trying to project their voices from behind a huge orchestra, which was sounding their usual excellent Mahlerian selves under MTT.
As for Das klagende Lied, I had never even heard of it before these performances, and over the course of a week listening to it via YouTube, fell in love with the nutty, extravagantly ambitious music. The dark German fairy tale story about fratricide over an ice princess is serviceable, and throughout the score you can hear multiple glimpses of Mahler masterpieces to come. I was teleported right back to a cheap 1960s turntable and speakers blasting out lavish Austro-Hungarian-Czech-Jewish orchestral music in a SoCal university beach town.
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence began as a costumed prank in San Francisco in 1979, and in the ensuing decades has morphed into an amazingly political and spiritual movement, with Sisterly orders sprouting up all over the country and the world. (Pictured above is Sister Rose Mary Chicken aka Poultry in Motion.)
Though the Sisters are predominantly gay men, any gender can join after going through a rigorous step-by-step trial period that involves being an Aspirant, a Postulant, a Novice Sister, and if 75% of the order approves, a full-fledged Sister.
Last Saturday in the tiny, triangular Castro District park created by Upper Market and 17th Street, two Postulants were being elevated to Novice Sister, including Gwen Essex (above center, flanked by Flora Goodthyme and a Sister out of habit).
Gwen's religious name will be Amor Ah Quality, and she had a posse of friends supporting her at the public event.
Both Amor and NormaLee Chaste knelt on the ground while their "Mothers" applied full-face white makeup.
They were given white veils to wear to signify their elevation...
...and were ornamented with fabulous costume jewelry.
A leader of the group gave a heartening speech about the difficult political times ahead, and how "the Sisters have devoted ourselves to community service, ministry and outreach to those on the edges, and to promoting human rights, respect for diversity and spiritual enlightenment. We believe all people have a right to express their unique joy and beauty and we use humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit." We all raised our arms in the air and recited a prayer that ended with "Amen" and "Awomen."
