RECOMMENDATIONS
Embedded Files
October/November 2025
The Spectacular Studio Museum
"The iconic museum, which was founded in 1968, has been rehoused in 82,000-sq-ft building providing a new destination for Black art in New York City."
"Its arrival feels pointed in the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, Smithsonian Institution museums, and the way Black history is told, all under attack. New York has just elected a mayor who personifies the city’s cultural diversity and Harlem has a gift for making renaissance look like resistance."
The Guardian, November 11, 2025
Read the entire article HERE
The 'old' Studio Museum, above,
and the amazing new one, below.
Here is the website. So Much to See!
Click below, then scroll down a bit on the Home Page to watch a brief but beautiful introduction.
September 2025
Three Important Books for Today
It Can't Happen Here? 1935
Written amidst the population of demagogues rapidly spreading over Europe and the widespread concern that our country could be overtaken by a fascist dictatorship. The fiery rhetoric of Huey Long and Father Coughlin resonated loudly with the poor, frustrated, and dispossessed. Unfillable promises substituted for understanding. Fascism was touted as Americanism. Doubters were to be silenced or liquidated.
Click on the graphic (right) to read an article from the New York Times in January of 2017, written by Beverly Gage, a teacher of history at Yale.
The New Fascism Syllabus, February 8, 2025
The Diaries of Victor Klemperer
A three volume diary by Victor Klemperer
Volume 1, I Shall Bear Witness, 1933-1941 – his life and that of his Aryan wife in the years leading up to and the first years of the Third Reich. Volume 2, To the Bitter End, 1942-1945 -- their life inside the Third Reich, an ‘untermensch’, a subhuman. Volume 3, The Lesser Evil,1945-59 -- his emergence from ‘slavery’ and his transformation back into being human.
The diary relates the profound uncertainty all Germans (Jews and non-Jews) experienced because of the propaganda so central to the Reich's existence.
This is a hypnotic account of an autocratic regime’s progressive cancelling of the civil rights of a citizen - transforming a life from acceptance to threadbare non-citizen who only by chance escaped transport to a concentration camp and extermination.
The adjacent article vividly details living under persistent uncertainty and fear, and the emotional toll it extracts.
Read the article, especially the first few paragraphs. They could have been written today. Are we watching firsthand "as the pillars of free society crash down around us"?
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust 1996
Daniel Goldhhagen posits that a unique and virulent form of antisemitism, seeking the elimination of Jews, held by everyday Germans, 'allowed' the vast majority of ordinary Germans to become "willing executioners." Will the long-time suspicion and fear of LGBTQ fermenting in our country make Americans willing executioners?
March 2024
August Wilson is back in Boston during March!
King Hedley II
Hibernian Hall, Roxbury March 8-31, 2024
Finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize, King Hedley II is the ninth play in August Wilson’s ten-play cycle (The Pittsburgh Cycle) that, decade by decade, examines African American life in the United States during the twentieth century.
Set in Pittsburgh in 1985, it tells the story of an ex-con trying to rebuild his life. Hedley’s wish, now that he has returned to Pittsburgh from prison, is to support himself by selling refrigerators and to start a family. Set during the Reagan Administration, the play comments critically on the supply-side economic theories of the day, examining whether their stated aim of providing trickle-down benefits to all Americans truly improved the lot of urban African Americans.
Drawing on characters established in August Wilson’s Seven Guitars, this play shows the shadows of the past reaching into the present as King Hedley, a man whose self-worth is built on self delusion, seeks retribution for his mother’s lie regarding the identity of his father.
King Hedley II premiered at the Pittsburgh Public Theater on December 11, 1999, and on Broadway, May 1, 2001. It received a Tony nomination for Best Play in 2001.
Here's an interview from the 60 Minutes archive
Ed Bradley speaks with August Wilson
on January 27, 2002
(13:23)
The Actor's Shakespeare Project
presents
King Hedley II
at the Hibernian Hall in Roxbury
March 8 through 31
Here are a few more things to consider...
Legacy, by Uche' Blackstock, MD
“This book is more than a memoir—it also serves as a call to action to create a more equitable healthcare system for patients of color, particularly Black women.” - Essence
Dr. Blackstock on the PBS NewsHour
January 28, 2024 (5:58)
Review by Damon Tweedy, MD
The New York Times January 22, 2024
and at the MFA through June 24...
No, the revolution wasn’t televised, but it was photographed - The Boston Globe.pdf
Click above for the MFA announcement
February 2024
We discovered a really amazing film this month!
A Thousand and One
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance 2023
Now available streaming on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, You Tube, Vudu, and Google Play
Check out the reviews below to find out more about the film.
January 2024
Here are a few excellent ways to spend time as we await the start of Spring Term 2024!
TROUBLE IN MIND
Lyric Stage January 12 - February 4
"If you are interested in theater and racial justice, you will find them front and center in this production. It opened in New York in 1955 and was scheduled to transfer to Broadway until the white producers decided it needed a happier ending. Playwright Alice Childress, a contemporary of Lorraine Hansberry, refused. It was not until 2021 that it premiered at the Roundabout. Now we are lucky enough to be able to see it at the Lyric Stage."
This was an invitation from the BOLLI Cultural Excursions Committee to attend the play on January 31 at 2:00pm and enjoy a group lunch before the performance. For lots more information visit the Excursions webpage HERE.
Bill Marx's robust review of the Lyric's production in the Art Fuse calls it compelling and enjoyable.
See the Boston Globe's review of the play below:
In case the Boston Globe's paywall is an issue, HERE is a PDF.
The New Yorker has produced a short video that provides an even more engaging introduction to the film than its own trailer. (4:32)
ORIGIN
Ava Duvernay's new film about Isabel Wilkerson and the writing of Caste: The Origins of our Discontents
Opening now in many theaters in the Boston area.
Not yet available streaming.
Here is the film's trailer (2:24):
Faith Ringgold
Freedom to Say What I Please
at the Worcester Art Museum
October 7, 2023 - March 17, 2024
Read all about Faith Ringgold and her ongoing exhibition in Worcester HERE.
You don't want to miss this wonderful book!
Topping Barack Obama's list of favorite books in 2023, it will be the focus of the BOLLI Book Group meeting on February 2 at 9:30.
If you haven't previously attended a BOLLI Book Group meeting and would like to receive the Zoom link, contact Abby Pinard and she will add you to the mailing list.
Read an excellent review from the Washington Post below.
(Access PDF HERE)
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
by James McBride
James McBride appeared on the PBS News Hour in a great interview with Jeffrey Brown. (7:06)
And here's a kind of crazy guy on You Tube who also loves the book. You may enjoy watching him after you've read the book...see if you agree with his review. (9:07)
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