Deqr Ones We are well and getting to this blog for the first time in two weeks, and only for a moment to say that the teaching was fabulous with Eva and psychodrama opening up the deep feelings and family dynamics and current sociopolitical situation for the 20-40 chinese grad students who were with us. Plus a presentation of our work for an audience in the evening of about 150.This was followed by a week's exploration of Tibet around Danba guided by the Dean of Education who had invited us to teach and took us to remote villages where he has [View Full Entry]

---

---

Paris....endless views, history, art...talk and more talk... Exhibit; Renoir and Renoir....The side by side display of the paintings of the the father and the films of the son. What a contrast. A continuous loop of the movie Moulon Rouge next to an oil painting of the same scene: the movie boring after two replays; the painting something you could look at for a lifetime without the slightest fatigue...so much vitality in what the paint reveals:: At night. After a brief visit with Jeff at qn opening of two landscqpe painters we went to the Mabou Mimes version of The Doll's House [View Full Entry]

---

---

The last night in Munich was spent at the theater (just me--Alan's German isn't quite up to it) and it was another amazing experience. Most of you have heard me comment on the German's peculiarities in adopting everything classical (thank God, not the Rosenkavalier) to a modern mise-a-scene. This time it was an 1895 Hauptman play 'Before the dawn'--about very rich German capitalist's family's exploitation of the Silesian coal workers. Well, would you believe it, they changed it to a German family in Bali, quite conscientiously and beautifully, and the exploitation of the seamstresses (Nike [View Full Entry]

---

---

Today: the Franz Marc exhibit at the Kunstbau Lenbachhaus Museum. Large retrospective with his fine fine drawings in a little sketchbook during WW1 that are as powerful as any of the paintings....at the same time re reading 'Steppenwolf' by Herman Hesse...Eva read it in German early on during the trip and here in Munich I found an English translation..occasioning these thoughts: The Marc exhibit is one of those megashows that delight museum directors. The paper says the turnout exceeds expectations, and certainly , on this drippy wet Tuesday the crowds have come out, moving slowly from pain [View Full Entry]

---

---

Munich: on Sunday with the crowds on their way to Octoberfest , yes it is still september..but the weather is good and maybe October comes early here...How we got here is another story..After our incredible luck in getting from Bad ´Gastein to Cos in a serious of hopping from one train to another, getting a flight out within two hours of the Munich airport.....we believed in the travel fairies to a farethewell....so the universe wanted us to be humble and respectful...thus the return flight, due to leave reasonably at 9 pm Cos time and get to Munich by 11 pm was [View Full Entry]

---

---

Kos..has somehow solved the problem of being a huge tourist destination...miles of beaches with selfcontained resorts...including a Club Med..with retaining its cozy nature and abundant archeological sites....the ruins o f the healing center devoted to Askalepius at which Hippocrates practiced is on a series of terraces just above the city of Kos. In a wooded area with views to Asia and nearby islands, the whole sky laid out above and beyond, the patient ascended a series of steps, increasing from 30 to 60 to reach the highest point on which stood monumental stautes of Hygea and Askelepius..a [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sun! Blue Sky! Birthplace of Hippocrates!...whaaa? Where have these Levetons got to now? Well, dear friends here is the saga of the path to the Isle of Kos.... We left Vienna as the sky continued to cloud and threaten rain...and decided to seek out a small mountain retreat in the Austrian Alps, favored by Freud for vacations and Eva's friend Sophie. Vienna, Salzburg, Bad Gastein....so easy on Eurailpass...After getting off one station too soon we arrived at Bad Gastein and found ourselves in a truely 'Gimley' hotel, almost deserted.'Gimley' the name of a very dark Canadian director's noti [View Full Entry]

---

---

'Eiskaffee' at Demel's in Vienna--after watching marching bands, we attended the 'Erntedankfest' (harvest festival) where sugar beet farmers erected large signs protesting the globalization that caused them to lose their livelihood to the Brazilians due to their lack of child labor laws. Displays of fruits and vegetables mounded and wreathed:cabbages, red and white, eggplant, carrots, onions and peppers; apples, plums, strawberries, blackberries and all sorts of berries we don't have, all in front of booths serving small meals, beer and coffee at long tables on the meadows behind the Hofburg, [View Full Entry]

---

---

From Alan: Just to the south of the great castle at Krakow..Wawel..is the forner Jewish quarter, Kazimierz...with several synagogues partly restored, and numbers of restaurants featuring kosher meals and klezmer music. Eva: it's like going to your old aunt's house: a few tables, lace table cloths, dark polished furniture, quarreling waiters (among one another)--At lunch with a woman psychiatrist Maria Orvid whose name was given us by Fred Ford who knew her from teaching here, we talked about this and decided it was an example of the 'return of the repressed'. There is great curiosity and enth [View Full Entry]

---

---

Yesterday was very long:the conference had endings and goodbyes. Then we visited Auschwitz-Birkinau with a group from the conference. One and a half hours travel from Krakow, in rolling green farmland..suddenly we are there. We were in tears even when considering going: being there was deeply moving, exhausting, overwhelming.... I can only give a few impressions.... It is Birkinau that crushes the spirit. I had not understood that Auschwitz was a smaller and older camp..terrible in its treatment of prisioners. It has the infamous gate that says :Arbeit macht Frie' 'Work makes for freedom" [View Full Entry]

---

---