Over lunch at the Cambridge Innovation Center on Wednesday,   Mass Life Sciences Center (MLSC) President and CEO Susan Bannister told a gathering of some 100 life science afficionados that the first year of Gov. Deval Patrick’s Life Science Initiatiative has been a success. 

“There’s still capital out there and life science is a good place to put your money,” Bannister said.  “By putting state money into the pot, we have ‘de-risked’ investment that the state would have had to find elsewhere”.

 The funded projects–in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, diagnostics and bioinformatics–could create some 950 jobs in the near term, Bannister said.

By adding employment opportunities,  Massachusetts’  investments and incentives could help to absorb some of the job losses expected in other sectors, according to Bannister.

Frank Reynolds, CEO of InVivo Therapeutics, which is developing stem cell/ polymer technology aimed at halting the effects of traumatic spinal cord injury, said that receiving a $500 thousand loan just as  venture capital possibilities tanked this fall made a tremendous difference in his company’s ability to proceed. ”  It’s a great program,” Reynolds said. (Disclosure:   I work with InVivo).

Bannister cautioned  that in the current economic downturn, tax revenues are “iffy” and it’s not yet clear how much money will be available for the Initiative in 2010.

For more details, please visit  Harriscomblog.wordpress.com.

—Anita Harris

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.

I’m not much of an opera fan, but because friend Rachel was singing in the chorus I managed to take in the final performance of this year’s  Lowell House production: Otello.

The  Verdi opera itself doesn’t have much of a story (Rachel says it cuts back on the complexity of the Shakespearean drama to the point where it’s just the villain Iago planting the lovely Desdemona’s handkerchief in the home of his rival Cassio’s home in order to provoke her husband’s Otello’s jealousy-so I found myself thinking that,  if it weren’t for the music, there wouldn’t be  much there.

But the music was spectacular. Even before the opera started,  the tuning up phase brought palpable energy and anticipation to  the audience. And throughout, the orchestra, a mix of student and professional musicians  conducted by  Channing Yu (who,  in his other life, an attending physician at a Boston teaching  hospital) played dramatical clashes and soothing lows that provided a vibrant backdrop for wonderful singing by both professional  musicians and students.

I was particularly entranced  by Andrew Young, who played the villain Iago so well that he was  booed, during his graceful bow, at the end). I felt that his powerful performance upstaged Brian Landry’s  Otello, who, along with Malynda Davis, gave excellent performances–as did a slightly weaker Andre De Mesquita, playing Cassio. The principals, who also included Ana Ugarte as Emilia, John Erban, as Lodvico, an James Liu, as Montano, and DJ Robinson, as Roderego,  were backed up by an enthusiastic (if slightly hard-to hear) chorus–including the soprano Rachel who appeared to be dressed as a boy.

I never thought I was in Venice or at the Met, but the vibrancy and professionalism of the production and the performers far surpassed what I’d expected to hear–especially  in a college dining hall.

I was happy to join  a well-deserved standing ovation offered by the sold-out crowd.

Hatry photo, Menard Gallery Heads and Tales

If Heide Hatry’s provocative photographic show—Heads and Tales–at the Peirre Menard Gallery, (10 Arrow St. in Cambridge) is meant to shock: it does. In fact, for a few moments,  it made me fear for the mental health of the artist, who has (beautifully–even lovingly)  photographed her sculptures portraying female victims of violent death.

Hatry, who grew up in Germany and moved to New York City in 2003,  sculpted life-sized female mannequins from clay and covered them with untreated pigskin (a cold wet sample of which is available in the gallery with the notice: “please touch”). She added raw meat for the lips and fresh pig eyes—and in some cases, flies, safety pins, and other props—creating, according to the gallery writeup, “the illusion of life where there is none”.

Hatry then photographed the mannequins—some enlarged to 20”x 30”, others more life-size, at 12” x 18”.

Viewed from afar, the photographs appear lifelike, but close up, you realize the subjects are constructs—adding physical and intellectual layers to the artist’s statements on the horrifying situations faced by many women—and on photography’s role in bringing the inanimate to life.

Hatry’s “views” are further emphasized by accompanying tales about the “women’s” lives (and deaths) as imagined by 27 writers—some of them well known feminists.

The show is well-conceived and displayed, which makes its subject matter all the more disturbing.

The exhibit, which opened Feb 13, 2009, will run through March 15. It corresponds with the release of Hatry’s book, Heads and Tales, and with readings, book signings and the premiere of a play.

AMH

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.

I’d expected dancing in the streets in the People’s Republic but perhaps because of deep snow and freezing cold, instead found a friendly breakfast gathering at Upstairs on the Square (photos and video to follow, if people send them to me).

Watched Obama’s eloquent speech with Harvard students at Quincy House–most listened with rapt attention, even standing for the national anthem, hands over hearts.

I was most impressed with Obama’s suggestion to those who blame the West for the state of their own nations that populations care about what governments can build, not what they can destroy–and distressed when, after the address, viewed enthusiastically by millions, the stock market took a 300 point drop.

In the evening, went back to Upstairs for drinks with Mark Hoffman, of Burlington, and Marc Kessler, of Cambridge, whose photo (above) I took with a larger-than-life cardboard Obama cutout.

We were sorry to miss free skating and hot chocolate at the Charles Hotel, readings of various inaugural addresses at the American Repertory’s Arrow Street Theater, the Harvard Bookstore’s “winedown,” and numerous house parties but, unlike the Obamas, who attended ten inaugural balls, we couldn’t be everywhere!

The New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group of Cambridge, MA.

With the ever increasing fall of bookstores and impending newspaper layoffs, I’d like to echo Alex Beam’s call for readers to reach for their wallets.

In case you missed his January 9 column, “Closing Costs,” in the Boston Globe, it opens: “Here is a dispatch from the Land of No Suprises: Bookstores–buffed by the recession, by Amazon, by electronic reading devices–are closing their doors”. He points out that, easy as it is to go to Amazon for books and read newspapers online for free, by behaving normally, “you kill the things you love.”

In Boston, after several waves of reporter buyouts, people keep telling me that they’ve dropped their subscriptions to the Globe because it’s gone downhill, and, anyway, they can get it on line, for free. Duh.

My apologies for stating the obvious, but many of my friends don’t seem to get that, in  a vicious financial cycle,  with fewer paying customers,   the paper can get fewer advertisers, revenues go down, and, as a result, the Globe and many other papers have had to  “encourage”  their most senior,  talented reporters to leave.  The Globe announced  a new round of editorial layoffs just last week.

I’ll be writing more about this–but for the time being, please support the  free press–by paying for it.

The New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, of Cambridge, MA.