My writers group, the Write Stuff, based in LIncoln, MA, Public Library , will be celebrating its 10th anniversary on May 27;  I’m delighted to be joining fellow-members in a public reading from our work at the Library, 3 Bedford Rd, at 7 pm.

The Write Stuff started in fall 2005 as a series of craft sessions led by Jeanne Bracken, then research librarian, to encourage more local writers to contribute to the Lincoln Review, a local publication founded and edited by Elizabeth Smith, of Lincoln.

According to Neil O’Hara, who volunteers as Write Stuff’s facilitator, “It morphed into a critique group over the winter, led by Jeanne through September 2006, when I took over as facilitator.”

WS meets twice a month all year round, typically with four readings of up to 1000 words. All types of writing are welcome: fiction, non-fiction,  poetry, scripts and the like, with no restrictions on content/subject matter, O’Hara said.  There is no charge to join or contribute.

“Our goal is to provide constructive criticism to foster better writing–and it works, as any longstanding member will attest.”  O’Hara says his own writing has improved over the years, which he credits in part to WS, both because members have provided excellent feedback and because, as facilitator, “I feel an obligation to explain both what works and doesn’t work for me—and also why.”

While intent to publish is not a requirement, five Write Stuff members have published books in the last several years. They include: Bracken, Children With Cancer, a comprehensive reference guide for parents,  updated, rev.; Susan Coppock , Fly Away Home;  Anita M. Harris, Ithaca Diaries and Broken Patterns: Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity 2^nd edition; the Rev. Jean F. Risley, Recovering the Lost Legacy:Moral Guidance for Today’s Christians; and Rick Wiggin, Embattled Farmers: Campaigns and Profiles of Revolutionary Soldiers from Lincoln, Massachusetts, 1775-1783;

In addition to providing members with a safe place to test out their work, the group continues to serve its original purpose, O’Hara says. Today, almost every edition of the Lincoln Review includes contributions from one or more WS members.

Readers on Wednesday will include:

Helen Bowden
Carmela D’Elia
Deborah Dorsey
Anita M. Harris
Joyce Quelch
Jean Risley
Ed Robson
Channing Wagg

The library is a member of the Minuteman Library System,  is a consortium of 43 libraries with 62 locations and a Central Site staff that work collectively to provide excellent service to its library users. The members include 36 public and 7 college libraries in the Metrowest region of Massachusetts..

For more information about the Write Stuff please contact Neil O’Hara: neiloh52 at gmail.com For directions to the library, please check the library home page at http://www.lincolnpl.org.

–Anita M. Harris
Anita M. Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA.New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a PR and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge.

Excited to have been interviewed about Ithaca Diaries by radio personality  extraordinare Lisa Mullins.  A segment is slated to air nationally on NPR’s “Here and Now,”  on Memorial Day, May 25, 2015.  The  program airs live on WGBH Boston from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. Both in Boston and elsewhere you can  choose a live stream from WBUR or Click here for a searchable list of public radio stations that broadcast Here & Now.

According to the Here and Now Website, you can also:

Hear individual stories: Audio for stories in the first hour of Here & Now is typically posted by 2:30 p.m. EST. Audio for stories in the second hour is typically posted by 3:30 p.m. EST. You can listen to past shows by browsing or searching the archives.

Hear the whole show: You can stream each hour of Here & Now using the WBUR mobile app. A podcast of each hour is also available in the iTunes store, within hours of its air time (better time estimates coming soon). For more ways to download the podcast (not using iTunes), go here.

About Here and Now:
Here and Now is a live production of NPR and WBUR Boston, in collaboration with public radio stations across the country.  According to its Website, the program reflects the fluid world of news as it’s happening in the middle of the day, with timely, smart and in-depth news, interviews and conversation.

Co-hosted by award-winning journalists Robin Young and Jeremy Hobson, the show’s daily lineup includes interviews with NPR reporters, editors and bloggers, as well as leading newsmakers, innovators and artists from across the U.S. and around the globe.

Here & Now began at WBUR in 1997, and expanded to two hours in partnership with NPR in 2013. Today, the show reaches an estimated 3.6 million weekly listeners on over 383 stations across the country.

About Ithaca Diaries
Ithaca Diaries  is a coming of age memoir set at Cornell University in the tumultuous 1960s. The story is told in first person from the point of view of a smart, sassy, funny, scared, sophisticated yet naïve college student who can laugh at herself while she and the world around her are having a nervous breakdown. Based on Harris’ own journals and letters, interviews and other primary and secondary accounts of the time, Ithaca Diaries describes collegiate life as protests, politics, and violence increasingly engulf the student, her campus, and her nation. Her irreverent observations serve as a prism for understanding what it was like to live through those tumultuous  times.While often laugh-out-loud funny, they provide meaningful insight into the process of political and social change we are continuing to experience, today.

Ithaca DIaries is available from Amazon, Kindle and the Cornell Campus Store.

Anita M. Harris is an award-winning writer, blogger, and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. A new edition of her  first book, Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, was published in 2014. 

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.

Photo: Anita M. Harris

I was privileged to  preview  the stunning new Whitney Museum in New York City, which has moved from its Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue at 78th Street to 99 Gansevoort St. Scheduled to open to the public on May 1, the  225,000 sq.ft. glass-and steel building designed by architect Renzo Piano is located in the old meat packing district, a stone’s throw from the Hudson River.

It has already attracted a  number of restaurants and upscale  shops, says friend and New York arts writer Terry Trucco.

Trucco was wowed by the current exhibit–“America is Hard to See”– which is comprised of more than 400 works from the Whitney’s own collection (now numbering 22,000 works by some 3,000 artists). 

The exhibit spans the entire building, occupying both interior and exterior spaces. It’s organized into a series of 23 “chapters”, each titled after an individual work.

It begins on the glass-enclosed first floor, with an introduction to the Whitney’s early history. (The museum was founded by sculptor and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1931.)  The exhibit then moves to the eighth floor, and proceeds down to the 5th and, finally to the third, with work from a different period on each floor.

According to a Whitney brochure: The exhibition reexamines the history of art in the United States from 1900 to the present. It elaborates the themes, ideas, beliefs and passions that have galvanized American artists in their struggle to work within and against established conventions, often directly engaging their political and social contexts. Numerous pieces that have rarely, if ever, been shown appear alongside beloved icons in a conscious attempt to unsettle assumptions about the American art canon.

The title, “America Is Hard to See,”  comes from a Robert Frost Poem and a political documentary by Emile de Antonio.The show constitutes “a kind of collective memory–representing a range of individual sometimes conflicting attitudes toward what American art might be or mean or do at any given moment.”

I very-much liked the numerous “surprises” in the show: elevators opening onto vibrant wallways;

statues looking at paintings; 

guards willing to pose near sculpture of guards;

whimsical works amidst the profound,

and elevator interiors that are commissioned artworks by the late Richard Artschwager.

But I was blown away by the architectural and design elements of the structure–making the museum itself a work of art.

Inside,  I loved the airy, expansive galleries,

creative placement of work,

and

from windows, views of the Hudson river, New Jersey and New York city scapes.

Looking down–installations of outdoor galleries by artists such as Mary Hellman.

And, on the the outside–looking up– wonderful shapes, against the sky.

Throughout, there was an air of festivity, with helpful guards who clearly enjoyed their new workspace, and in the first floor cafe,  staffers  taking part in a celebration of their own.

The Whitney opens to the public on May 1. “America is Hard to See” runs through September 27, 2015.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita M Harris, a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA, reported on the arts and other topics for national public television. Currently, she is managing director of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations firm. She is also the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, and Ithaca Diaries, (Cambridge Common Press, 2014) .

c.  Anita M. Harris 2015

Children’s author, fellow Cornell alum and friend Irene Smalls, who lives in Boston, writes:

Sometime yesterday someone scrawled on the side of my house “Every nigger is a star.”  I was stunned.  I have lived in my neighbohood in downtown Boston for 38 years without incident.  Now, someone is perpetrating a silent assault against me personally and my property  with the “n word.”  I don’t know if it was a prank or a threat. Either way I get a chill entering my front door each day now.  I feel violated and ignored at the same time.  Who ever did this does not know I write books for all children or that I volunteer in the community.  I am raising money to demolish the offensive fence and put security cameras around my property. I am preparing.  My hope is this will never happen again but I am getting ready in case this racist message was real.   I will not be forced out of my neighborhood by hoods or threat of harm.

Please help Irene fund her “go fund me”  campaign to replace the fence?

http://www.gofundme.com/rq857g  .
Thanks!

–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. Her new book, Ithaca Diaries, was published earlier this year by Cambridge Common Press. A new edition of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity came out in 2014. 

Anita M. Harris

An aspiring author asks if she needs a Website for her new book.

My answer is yes:.the more exposure you can get on the Web the better–so that people searching for you or your topic can find you. But building a website is not for the faint of heart.

Having researched several site-building platforms, I decided to use WordPress to  build this site and  sites for my books,  Ithaca Diaries and Broken Patterns.

I chose WordPress because it seemed to be the simplest option, and you  can build a site a WordPress.com for free.   But I have to say  there was  quite a learning curve. To start with, the free templates are not at all intuitive (nor are the paid ones).

Then I had to decide if I would  pay for my own domain (web address). That is,   a free WordPress site  for New Cambridge Observer would be posted on WordPress.com and have the address  http://newcambridgeobserver.wordpress.com. I opted to pay approximately $12 to purchase the domain name  “New Cambridge Observer,” so that it could have the simpler address  https://newcambridgeobserver.com.  Then, I had to decide if I would pay for hosting at wordpress.com (simple, but limited options to sell from a site there,)  or pay to have it hosted on the server of a company like Godaddy, com..   I chose the latter because it allows more versatility and hosts my multiple sites for approximately $100 a year.

But no matter which building or hosting option you choose,: be aware that once your site or blog is launched, it takes a lot of time and energy to get readers to go there.  You need to understand the ever changing methods of search engine optimization and be very active on social media. And  once you get readers to the site, it’s a challenge to get them to comment or interact.  (To my readers–what gives?)

So, if you want to do it yourself, I’d advise a simple site optimized for SEO, combined with an intense social media plan. . If your goal is to build a community, you should put time, energy and $ into a Web site. If your goal is to sell books, I’d advise  a small site or blog (like this one–I used a free template called “Magazine Basic”).  It’s relatively easy to post   important information and links  that will take readers to Amazon, Kobo or other sites for stores where your books are available. You should also build an author site on Amazon–that’s  easy compared with building a Web site– but you still need to get people to go there.

Good luck!

–Anita M. Harris
Author, Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s, Cambridge Common Press, 2015)  Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity (Cambridge Common Press, 2014)

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a marketing and PR firm based in Cambridge, MA.

HI! Apologies for my long absence…but am pleased to report that an advance edition of Ithaca Diaries, my new book about college in the 1960s, is (at long last)  available on Amazon–in paperbook and Kindle editions.

The official launch won’t take place for another few weeks, but with the help of my sister, Laura Harris Hirsch and friend Stacy Kaufman, I managed to finish the index and formatting in time for the release of a fabulous writeup in the Cornell University Ezra  Magazine, which came out Dec. 23.

Because the writeup  is not an official “review,” I’m not supposed to quote from it, so suffice it  to say that Ezra’s H. Roger Segelken starts out–“Whenever they went to college, most everyone thinks their undergraduate years were a noteworthy epoch of personal and societal transformation. Not everyone was at Cornell between 1966 and 1970, though, and even fewer kept detailed, heartfelt journals during that turbulent period.”  And, if you’d like,  you can read the rest.

I’m hoping to officially launch the book in mid-January, in time for Cornell’s Boston Sesquicentennial celebration, and am now seeking real reviews (and readers!)

Will be sending autographed copies to Kickstarter supporters early next week–as soon as books arrive on  my doorstep.

You can find more information on the Ithaca Diaries website  and buy the paperback or Kindle edition at  Amazon. The Cornell Store will be carrying the paperback in the near future.

Thanks!

—Anita M. Harris

Anita M. Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries and Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity. 

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, the award-winning marketing and PR firm Harris  founded in 1998.

Last winter, New York’s Metropolitan Opera announced a 2014-15 season that would include its first production of a John Adams’ 1991 work, The Death of Klinghoffer.   The opera portrays the October, 1985 hijacking of a cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, by members of the Palestine Liberation Front who were seeking the release of 50 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.   A vacationing American Jew, the wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer, was shot by the hijackers.  His body was thrown overboard.

Controversy and protests began almost immediately after the season announcement.   The opera’s libretto, by Alice Goodman, is the source of much complaint and has been cherry-picked for lines deemed offensive and anti-Semitic.   Goodman’s text — poetic, often obscure, and perhaps ambivalent in its meaning — begins with alternating choruses that express the feelings of “Exiled Palestinians” and then “Exiled Jews.”   Besides the Klinghoffers, the other four named roles are those of the hijackers.  (Other characters have generic names, e.g., The Captain.)   By identifying the Palestinians and giving them voice, the charges go, Goodman humanizes and elevates them, while placing their politics at center stage.   Protesters even objected to the title of the opera, asking why it was called The Death of Klinghoffer and not The Murder of Klinghoffer.

These objections were accompanied by repeated calls for cancellation, as well as for a general boycott of the Met.  By spring, General Manager Peter Gelb had acquiesced to at least one demand, calling off a high-definition transmission that would have played in movie theaters around the world.    The summer’s Gaza incursion (by Israel) raised the temperature even higher:  the protesters were certain that the eight scheduled performances of Klinghoffer would provoke further incidents of anti-Semitism, in addition to those that had been reported in Europe throughout those fraught months.

In late September, opening night of the Met season featured fancy dress inside and demonstrations outside.   New York synagogue bulletins urged members to express their displeasure by writing to Mr. Gelb.  The New York Times reported that some individuals had gone further, actually finding ways to reach the performers themselves through threatening messages to their managers.  On October 20, the night of the production opening, protesters sat in a row of wheelchairs positioned opposite Lincoln Center Plaza.

Art, specifically opera, suddenly mattered.  It had become the center of a nasty, noisy, public debate.  Some music journalists reveled in the attention and in the moment of relevance for a 400-year-old form.  I, however, was incensed by the assault, and embarrassed by the willful ignorance of those who ranted while freely admitting that they had never seen the work in question.

That I love opera is often difficult to explain to those who don’t care for the sound of trained classical singing, let alone those who find it a ridiculous mode of expression.  It is improbable, but also compelling and, on the best nights, transporting.

Well-meaning friends, good people who don’t care about opera or opera-going, suddenly wanted my personal take on the argument, a ruling on the allegations of inherent anti-Semitism in Klinghoffer.   I was frustrated by their questions and by my inability to respond.   Were I to answer, I am sure that I would confound their expectations and might even offend my questioners.

I have been looking forward to seeing Klinghoffer for months now.    I’m no fan of Minimalism in music; I actively dislike the monotonous work of Philip Glass.    Although I haven’t studied the music in depth, I find that Adams offers greater texture and variety — more to intrigue the ear.  A few years ago, his Nixon in China made a deep and lasting impression on me.   Why wouldn’t I be curious to hear the next work in the line, an opera that many deem even more successful as music-drama?

Again, my friends don’t care about this.  Most aren’t really even concerned with the politics of art, only with the question of possible anti-Semitism which, in this case, is probably closer to insufficient focus on Jewish characters or inadequately expressed sympathy for their point of view.

I am not apolitical in the least, but my politics are my own, my taste in music is my own, and the terms of my Jewish identity are my own, too.   I am often inclined to choose art over strict tribal allegiance.   Richard Wagner was, by all accounts, a reprehensible man who wrote glorious music.  Many other arguably great composers were probable or certain anti-Semites.  Of this, there is nothing to be said, no dilemmas or choices to weigh.  These were the commonly-held opinions of the day.  Over time, the art has outshone and overshadowed the failings of the artists, patrons, and societies.

I doubt that The Death of Klinghoffer is “anti-Semitic,” if such a thing can be said of music itself.  It may dramatize conflicting points of view, which is usually desirable in the context of theater.    I haven’t seen the opera yet but, once I have, there might be more to say.  (Check this space in a few weeks.)   For now, I hope to be moved:  to me, that is an essential part of watching live performance.   I may feel inclined to anger, not because I expect to find the representation to be unfair, but because the acts themselves were cruel and senseless, and because music and drama can heighten emotion.    But whatever my response, I will have seen and judged Klinghoffer for its success as a work of lyric theater – my own passion – and not as an affirmation of anyone else’s politics.

Rachel Yurman ©2014

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

Butterly-from Ariana Pharma Website

Our Cambridge Innovation Center colleague Ariana Pharma reports that it has joined the WIN consortium as an official technology partner. Congrats! Here’s the release. 

Paris, France, and Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, 29 October 2014 – Ariana Pharma, developer of innovative clinical data analysis and diagnostic solutions for the healthcare sector, today announced it has joined the WIN Consortium as an official technology partner. The Consortium (Worldwide Innovative Networking in personalized cancer medicine) is a global collaboration of 40 leading organizations whose aim is to develop more effective cancer diagnostics and therapeutics, shorten clinical trial timelines and reduce the overall cost of cancer care.

The new WIN/Ariana partnership is expected to accelerate the translation of personalized medicine discoveries into widely available new standards of care for all cancer patients, leading to significantly improved clinical outcomes and a higher quality of life for cancer patients.

As a technology partner of the WIN Consortium, Ariana will have early access to the latest research, key opinion leaders, leading academic groups and personalized medicine clinical trials. Ariana uses OncoKEM^®, a proprietary clinical decision support platform for personalized medicine, to transform big data into better therapeutic decisions for cancer patients.

Ariana Pharma Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dr. Mohammad Afshar said: “We are delighted to be an official technology partner of the WIN Consortium where we can continue to leverage our expertise in patient stratification, multi-marker diagnostic optimization and data mining to transform complex clinical data into actionable information. Our expanded access to the leading global stakeholders in personalized medicine will allow us to test new hypotheses, to enhance interaction to yield valuable feedback and thus accelerate the development process and commercialisation of these critical new services for the global cancer community.”

“We are delighted to welcome Ariana Pharma in our consortium. Ariana Pharma provides outstanding computational skills enabling the translation of academic projects into commercial tools to support the therapeutic decision for cancer patients,” said Dr. John Mendelsohn, Chairman of the WIN Consortium.

WIN is recognized for pioneering the evolution of next-generation clinical trials, which test personalized treatment selection strategies rather than single drugs. These strategies are driven by algorithms that match targeted therapies or combination therapies to individual tumor biological profiles based on diagnostic analysis of genomic data and other information.

In 2013 the WIN Consortium chose Ariana Pharma to develop and globally commercialize ground-breaking decision support software in WIN’s WINTHER trial, the first state of the art clinical trial in personalized cancer medicine to help clinicians choose the best therapies for cancer patients. Ariana retains exclusive global rights to commercialize software and algorithms validated by the WINTHER clinical trial through Ariana’s OncoKEM^® platform.

About Ariana Pharma

Ariana Pharma develops innovative clinical data analysis and diagnostic testing solutions to help the healthcare sector better adapt patient treatments to individual biological characteristics. Ariana Pharma’s KEM^® technology enables personalization of therapies, improves the efficacy and safety of patient treatment, reduces risks and drug development costs, and accelerates time to market. KEM^® is the only FDA tested technology that systematically explores combinations of biomarkers, producing more effective biomarker signatures for personalized medicine. Founded in 2003 as a spin-off of the Institut Pasteur, Paris, France, the company opened a subsidiary in the United States in 2012.For more information, please visit www.arianapharma.com

About the WIN Consortium

Founded in 2010, WIN is an initiative from the Institut Gustave Roussy (France) and University of Texas MD Anderson cancer center (USA). WIN is unique structurally in that it brings together organizations from academia, business and not-for-profits to focus on translating the latest advances in personalized cancer medicine into the standard of care. WIN is built on the recognition that all stakeholders in personalized cancer therapy must collaborate and share information, in order to effectively bring the latest innovations in personalized cancer care to the patient. WIN is a non-profit organization formed by 40 renowned members: Academic cancer centres (25 centres in 16 countries), companies (Blue Cross Blue Shield, Agilent Technologies, GE Healthcare, Oracle Health Services, Foundation Medicine, Millennium Takeda, AstraZeneca and Pfizer), non-profit organizations such as EORTC, Fondation ARC and Sage Bionetworks. WIN organizes an annual symposium in Paris dedicated to personalized medicine. For further information, please visit www.winconsortium.org  and www.winsymposium.org.

–Anita M Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning pr and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA. {Ariana is not our client]. AMH.