LOC National Book Festival (2011)
An estimated 200,000 book-lovers gathered in Washington DC for the National Book Festival. Organized by the Library of Congress with Honorary Co-Chairs President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama, now in its 11th year, the National Book Festival was co-founded by former first lady Laura Bush in 2001. It is organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress and was held between 7th and 14th Streets on the National Mall on Sept. 24-25, 2011. View photos of many of the 100 authors, illustrators, and poets that participated and gave talks in the History and Biography, Contemporary Life, Poetry and Prose, Fiction and Mystery, Teens, and Children's Pavilions. Including photos of David McCullough, Eugene Robinson, Jim Lehrer, Toni Morrison (Nobel Prize winner), Julianne Moore (actress), Garrison Keillor, Rita Dove (poet laureate of US), Jennifer Egan, Hoda Kotb, Gregory Maguire (Wicked author), Edmund Morris (Reagan and T Roosevelt biographer), Sylvia Nasar (A Beautiful Mind), Amy Chua (controversial "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" - subject of WSJ article "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior"), Isabel Wilkerson, Siddhartha Mukherjee (biography of Cancer).
CLICK on the SLIDESHOW bar on the far right for a full screen presentation.
TO SEE ADDITIONAL PICTURES FROM THE FESTIVAL click on THIS LINK http://www.maletphoto.com/Events/LOC-National-Book-Festival-2/19225449_7TrdFX#1495554664_xrr2wBb
Read MoreCLICK on the SLIDESHOW bar on the far right for a full screen presentation.
TO SEE ADDITIONAL PICTURES FROM THE FESTIVAL click on THIS LINK http://www.maletphoto.com/Events/LOC-National-Book-Festival-2/19225449_7TrdFX#1495554664_xrr2wBb
Andre M. Smith
on January 3, 2012Why is the art of music required to endure the ill-informed antics of such inartistic imbeciles as Amy Chua? Her lust for fame as an old-fashioned stage mother of either a famous violinist (yet another mechanical Sarah Chang?) or a famous pianist (yet another mechanical Lang Lang?) shines through what she perceives as devotion to the cultivation of the cultural sensitivities of her two unfortunate daughters.
Daughter Lulu at age 7 is unable to play compound rhythms from Jacques Ibert with both hands coordinated? Leonard Bernstein couldn't conduct this at age 50! And he isn't the only musician of achievement with this-or-that shortcoming. We all have our closets with doors that are not always fully opened.
And why all this Chinese obsession unthinkingly dumped on violin and piano? What do the parents with such insistence know of violin and piano repertoire? Further, what do they know of the great body of literature for flute? For French horn? For organ? For trumpet? Usually, nothing!
For pressure-driven (not professionally-driven!) parents like Amy Chua their children, with few exceptions, will remain little more than mechanical sidebars to the core of classical music as it's practiced by musicians with a humanistic foundation.
Professor Chua better be socking away a hefty psychoreserve fund in preparation for the care and feeding of her two little lambs once it becomes clear to them both just how empty and ill-defined with pseudo-thorough grounding their emphasis has been on so-called achievement.
Read more about this widespread, continuing problem in Forbidden Childhood (N.Y., 1957) by Ruth Slenczynska.
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André M. Smith, Bach Mus, Mas Sci (Juilliard)
Formerly Bass Trombonist
The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra of New York,
Leopold Stokowski's American Symphony Orchestra (Carnegie Hall),
The Juilliard Orchestra, Aspen Festival Orchestra, etc.