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Saratoga Sampler
Year of the Dragon came in a new dimension
By Mary Ann Cook
GOLDEN DRAGONS: "Descendants of the Dragon" is a show featuring Chinese music and dance that performed for 5,000 area school children last week, thanks to the efforts of an organization called Dimension.
Dimension is a volunteer operation that seeks to expand the cultural education of children in grades 4-8. Each year since 1996 Dimension brings Chinese performances at San Jose's Center for the Performing Arts to as many schoolchildren as the building can hold.
This year is a special year, the year of the Golden Dragon. It is an especially lucky year that won't come around again for 60 years. So it was serendipitous that Dimension this year could bring in the Asian Performing Arts Theater, based in Seattle.
Two dragons were part of the show, including one that was an impressive 60 feet long. And six dancing lions surprised the viewers by appearing from different locations offstage. Some of the performers were imported from China. Dimension held workshops for the children before the performances.
Saratogans who are board members of Dimension include Maria Chen, who is vice president of the board, and Adela Lee. Anchi Ou of Los Gatos is also a board member.
AAUW AUTHORS LUNCHEON: Three fascinating and widely disparate authors spoke at the AAUW scholarship fundraiser this month. Glenda Burgess worked for the state department but sheltered a secret desire to be a writer, which she has now fulfilled with the publication of Loose Threads.
Burgess said she wanted to investigate the question of changing one's life direction and how to accomplish such a change. She said she was impressed with the flexibility of women and pointed to Mary Catherine Bateson's book, Composing a Life. as a prime example. Bateson is the daughter of Margaret Mead.
The difficulties of bridging the distances between one heart and another is also a theme in her book. We each have a notion about what our purpose in life is and what makes us happy, she theorizes, is the degree to which we've accomplished our individual purpose.
Laurel Doud was a librarian, a single mother raising two teenagers, and holding down four jobs. What compelled her to write This Body was "a really bad week. I'd like to start all over again. I'd be 22, rich and thin." She imagined what it would be like for a middle aged woman to come back to life in the body of a drug-addicted younger woman.
Even though it's about transmigration, it's really about family life, she says. It's been optioned by Hollywood with a noted director and she really likes the script.
This Body took five years to write and Doud sent out 60 query letters to agents--cold--when she started to market it. Six were interested. She had never heard of the agent she picked, but now she's convinced she chose well. Two other writers represented by her agent have since made the New York Times bestseller listings.
Lora Roberts is a mystery writer who lives in Palo Alto, as does her protagonist sleuth. The difference is that Roberts doesn't live in a VW van, as does her heroine, Liz. Roberts glories in being the goddess of a fictional Palo Alto. "I get to kill off Realtors," she cites, as just one example of the myriad advantages.
Roberts offered 10 reasons to be a writer, a la David Letterman's schtick. Two of which were: you get to live in a fantasy world of your own creation and nothing--no experience or acquaintanceship -- goes unused. So it's an environmentally sound occupation, she implies.
PEN WOMEN: Tickets for the Pen Women Celebrity Luncheon Feb. 26 to be held at the San Jose Elk's Club, 444 W. Alma, can be ordered through Felicia Pollock at 408.867-4089. Her address is 13561 Old Tree Way, Saratoga, 95070. Tickets are $25; and the money raised goes toward a scholarship.
Those to be honored include two Los Gatans--Carol Greene and Mary Ann Cook. Greene is a singing ventriloquist. I, on the other hand, am usually asked not to sing and try not to put words in people's mouths. At least words I didn't hear.
Other honorees are Clarice Lincoln, Jane Hofstetter, Mary Chabiel, Alice Lee, Pam Paige and Holly Laske. Hofstetter is a popular watercolor teacher at Hakone. Members of the San Jose Symphony will perform: harpist Dan Levitan and flutist Mimi Carlson of Los Gatos.
KINDERSPEAKERS: Two local kindergarten educators were part of a seminar last month at UC-Santa Cruz Oakes College. "Designing a Garden to Enhance Your Child's Play" was the title of the workshop offered by Betty Peck and "Music and the Young Child" was the offering by Anna Rainville who is, incidentally, Peck's daughter.
The conference was sponsored by the Santa Cruz Waldorf School, the California Association of Midwives and UCSC Services for Transfer and Re-entry Students.
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Saratoga, California Since 1955
