by Seth Rogovoy I wake up. Should I have tea or coffee? Can’t make up my mind. Should I have a shower first? Can’t make up my mind. Such are the existential dilemmas brought about by life in quarantine. I skip the shower and have tea. Should I take a walk or do…
by Seth Rogovoy World-renowned Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki – widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the last half-century — died on Sunday, March 29, at the age of 86. While you may have never heard of Penderecki, you almost definitely have heard his music, and probably more than once. Penderecki has…
by Seth Rogovoy (HUDSON, N.Y., March 26, 2020) — Concerts are cancelled. Movie theaters are closed. Performing arts venues are shuttered. What’s a culture vulture to do? While nothing beats live performance or seeing movies on a big screen, we’re all learning to make do with the new normal: staying at home and consuming…
by Seth Rogovoy As soon as I awaken these days, before I am even fully conscious, I take stock of how I am feeling. In that twilight state between sleep and wakefulness, I automatically take inventory: Do I feel feverish? No. Do I have flu-like aches, or that all-around crappy feeling of being attacked…
by Seth Rogovoy (HUDSON, N.Y., March 25, 2020) – Today was the day I had long feared and dreaded – when I would have to break down and walk into a pharmacy to get my prescription for … anxiety. Here’s a case where the cure exacerbated the symptoms. I’ve known for the last few…
by Seth Rogovoy Concerts are cancelled. Movie theaters are closed. Performing arts venues are shuttered. What’s a culture vulture to do? While nothing beats live performance or seeing movies on a big screen, we’re all learning to make do with the new normal: staying at home and consuming our culture via streaming on digital…
by Seth Rogovoy I’ve been working on a Spotify playlist I call “Soundtrack for the Apocalypse” over the last week or so. You can listen to it here. Please listen to it in shuffle mode. As you will hear, the criteria are for both music and lyrics to somehow address an emergency, if…
By Seth Rogovoy In the past few days, since so many schools shut down for the foreseeable future, I have already seen and overheard many parents commenting in frustration on how difficult it is to “homeschool” their children. After half an hour alone with their kids, trying to jam into their brain some data points,…
by Seth Rogovoy Is U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres a Talmudic scholar or a Bob Dylan fan? Or both? Close students of Dylan and the Talmud immediately recognized Guterres’s assessment that “a wind of madness is sweeping the globe” as an allusion to one or both of these original sources. Read more at The…
by Seth Rogovoy I turn 60 on March 19, 2020. For me, the passing of a decade has always been as much about how old I will be a decade hence as it is about what era of life I am entering (e.g., teens, twenties, thirties, forties, fifties). Turning 60 is as much about…
