Herbert Can Be Ever Ready » People

Tony Award Winners Celebrate in Manhattan

Herbert Jones — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:10:00 +0000

Well, that time of year came and went again. The Annual Tony Award Ceremony took place tonight on Sunday June 13 at Radio City Music Hall and it and featured some major name celebrity announcers and presenters. This is the highest award that can be received by a theatre practitioner and it represents the highest level of excellence for the stage. The event was hosted by Sean Hayes, who is currently staring in the revival production of Promises Promises. Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johannson, Laura Linney, Denzel Washington and Tony Shalhoub are just a few of the major names that were on the stage tonight. And a number of lucky guests from the Manhattans best hotels watched from the audience.

Other special presentations and performances of the evening included
Michael Douglas presented a special presentation on the Eugene O’Neill Theatre http://www.theoneill.org/ , which won the award for Best Regional Theatre. Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith together presented an introduction to a performance from Fela!, a play for which they both serve as producers. Paula Abdul presented the special performance from Come Fly Away and Promises Promises during her announcement of the winner of the award for Best Choreography, which went to Bill T. Jones for his work on Fela!

Helen Mirren presented the award for the Best Leading Actress in a Play and it went to Viola Davis for her role in Fences. She is starring in this revival of an Arthur Miller play with Denzel Washington, who also won the award for Best Leading Actor in a Play. The Award for Best Revival of a Play went to Fences. The Award for Best Play was presented by Cate Blanchett and it went to Red, which was written by John Logan. The award for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical went to and the award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical went to Catherine Zeta-Jones. Bernadette Peters announced the Award for Best Musical, which went to Memphis.

Tony Award Winners Celebrate in Manhattan is a post from: Herbert Can Be Ever Ready

Thian Hock Keng Temple in Singapore

Herbert Jones — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 17:36:59 +0000

Sought-out sights in the world have always included the architecture inspired by spirituality, such as great cathedrals of Europe and ancient temples in China. In the case of the island city-state of Singapore, you’ll find the oldest and most prominent is the Thian Hock Keng or the Temple of Heavenly Bliss. Built in 1839, around twenty years after Sir Stamford Raffles founded Singapore as a simple trading post on the Singapore River and about one hundred and seventy-one years from today, this Hokkien Temple was constructed to honor the Chinese Sea Goddess Mazu or Mat-Su.

The story behind Mazu is a fascinating one, in which a girl is transformed into a goddess. There is history about this girl contained in immensely old edicts from the government, from court documents, and even shipping logs, as well as Taoist scriptures, that describes Mazu as a young girl and the goddess she became. Even to this day, she has fifteen hundred operating temples and about a hundred million followers. Folk tradition for Mazu describes how in times of trouble if you call upon her by name, Mazu, she will come to your aid; however, if you address her in a more formal manner, such as the Empress of Heaven, then your rescue will be postponed as this means she must delay in order to put on more formal attire. The goddess is based on a woman named Lin Mo Niang to which people attribute miracles during her brief lifetime. She knew Chinese medicine and came to be known as a healer; some of the miracles, though, were about stopping seastorms, and this established her as a protector of sailors and travelers.

The temple’s history is contained in granite tablets which reside on the wall of the Entrance Hall; there’s an inscribed plaque also inside which Emperor Guang Xu of the Qing Dynasty from 1907 gave to the temple, a sign of how important people considered this site. The plaque reads, Bo Jing Nan Ming, which means Gentle Waves over the South Seas. The building is composed in from the traditional form of Southern Chinese architecture. There were no nails used in its construction, and is considered a masterwork of architecture which uses tiles and wood, stones, statues of dragons and phoenixes, and intricate carvings and sculptures amidst the columns.

This temple is only one of many sights available to a traveler in Singapore. All one need do is to arrange for a flight and to stay in one the hotels in Singapore, and begin exploring. If you go to Singapore, be sure not to miss this building, which has been declared a national monument of Singapore for the last thirty-seven years.

Thian Hock Keng Temple in Singapore is a post from: Herbert Can Be Ever Ready

Waiting in Indian Restaurants

Herbert Jones — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:10:16 +0000

Here I am sitting and waiting, because this is what I do. I wait at the beginning of a century, and at the end of a long metaphor, because I have been a metaphor for so many years. It is easy to get confused, but when I remember for whom I am waiting, then there is no question. The only good questions here are about what they might wear, and how they will smell, because there has always been the smell of sandalwood and coffee at the beginning of every meeting. It is easier to wait in an Indian restaurant than anywhere else, because the smells here serve as a potent reminder.

For first meetings, there should always be food, and for the meetings in between beginnings and endings, also food. It is a comfort, and it is a metaphor that always continues to unfold in multiple directions, like the growth of a plant, whose roots are always much more complex than the fruit. Between the root and the fruit, there is infinite possibility for discovery. In between is a waiting of different kinds and different faces, but the waiting is always larger than the things that I count in my head in the morning when I wake up alone.

This morning I woke up wondering about them again, and it was an old story, and one that I don’t want to repeat, but I know I will. As long as there is desire, this story will be filled with doubts and jealousies that gather in the corners of the room, dust that wants to make me wonder if the things that are impossible to weigh are true. Waiting is a truth that has no weight, and longing is a story that has no ending, and in between there is only a long seven-course meal, where we remember everything that we are.

Waiting in Indian Restaurants is a post from: Herbert Can Be Ever Ready

San Francisco Prison

Herbert Jones — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 15:20:38 +0000

All though it is fabulous, your hotel room in San Francisco won’t be able to keep you from mysteries that lie out on the Island of the Pelicans. The intense prison, Alcatraz, is to much of a lure to keep you in the perfectly divine spa all day. Your going to have to get out into the ocean sea breeze and cross that bay with all the other curious people to see if you really can hear the walls talking in what was once the toughest prison in the United States. The Island of the Pelicans was a harmless piece of land in the middle of the bay when it was first explored and over a few hundred years it became many things. Not much in the beginning, then turned into a military site and then turned into a crazy prison with the most intense inmates. Now it stands as one of the most visited places in San Francisco. People come from all over the world to see Alcatraz and they get there tickets and reservations months in advance.

The island was once owned by Julian Workman who was given the land in 1846 by the then Mexican governor Pio Pico. He was to build a lighthouse on it for navigating around the bay. Some how a Francis Temple had the island and ended up selling it to the United States government through John C Fremont for 5000.00 in 1846. United States President Millard Fillmore had the island set aside to be used for military purposes in 1850 when the U.S. gained California from Mexico after the Mexican-American War. Fremont was to be reimbursed for the purchase of the island but the government never paid him and a battle went on until the 1890s. The military did end up using the island first as a way to protect the coast from any unwanted intruders

San Francisco Prison is a post from: Herbert Can Be Ever Ready

Waiting with Waits for Professional Developer

Herbert Jones — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:08:30 +0000

There is this spectacular person I met through the bus driver who navigates me and ten other people 40th Street and Harlan Avenue on Mondays through Fridays at six o’clock. Of course, the bus driver didn’t introduce me to this person. It was his cousin who works in a firm that does collections who had orange hair from a bad dye job and a permanent smile with bubblegum in her teeth. But she was not the person who knew this person that I am writing about. The person who knew the spectacular person was her neighbor who had an opal pendant in the shape of an anatomical heart and was part of the executive training branch of another company. The spectacular person was her friend, Anne Bobby.

It would seem to me that a spectacular person would not have such a plain name that really belongs on a street sign in a little town. I did not know she would be spectacular until I saw her desk at work where she does professional development. Anne Bobby told me I could meet her at her work for coffee at three o’clock, which was when she got off. I could wait in her office until then because she would be in a long, long, long meeting, but it would not last until three, she assured me. Naturally, I did some superficial snooping while awaiting her to come to the office. It was strange that she had none of the usual photos and desk knickknacks that most people had in their offices or cubicles.

Anne Bobby had a photo of a blue balloon in a blue sky bleached of most its color. She had a photo of footprints in cement that were in front of a sign that said no loitering. In a miniature gumball jar near her computer were not gumballs, but old stamps that been used. At the edge of her desk and in the center was not her name–her plain name was not anywhere in sight–but a silhouetted bust collaged in photos of Tom Waits and headlines about his tours. I already knew her before she came in the door right at three o’clock.

Waiting with Waits for Professional Developer is a post from: Herbert Can Be Ever Ready

Waiting in Indian Restaurants