By Diana Brement,
JTNews Columnist
I usually try to find a “hook” before I write about someone — journalist lingo for, “what’s going to grab my reader?” Yet sometimes I meet someone so interesting that I want to write about them, hook or not. So meet Roberta Feins, independent computer consultant, poet and poetry editor.
I heard Roberta read some beautiful and intriguing poems at the It’s About Time Writers Series at the Ballard Library (second Thursday of the month at 6 p.m.), including some about being Jewish.
Getting together last month, Roberta revealed that she was raised in Yonkers, N.Y., in a committed Reform household.
“My parents were very active,” in their synagogue, she says, but her religious education emphasized history and literature. Not surprising, she sees a big connection between being Jewish and writing. “I think it’s…the importance of the word.”
She’s also interested in the sense of ambivalence that religion sometimes generates, as well as the contrast between east and west, both in her own life and as a religious-historic topic. “I’ve actually been working on a pair of poems based on Judah Ha-Levi, the poet and courtier to the caliph in Granada in that golden age in Spain,” she says. “He was torn between his life in the West, which was Spain, and his image of Jerusalem [as a religious ideal].”
Ha-Levi wrote, “My heart is in the east, but I am in the west,” an idea Roberta’s using to explore her love-hate relationship with New York, where she still has a lot of family.
“It’s an environment I sometimes miss,” she says. “At the same time, it’s a stifling place.”
Of course most creative people need a “day job,” and Roberta is no exception, having started working with computers in 1987. She’s a database management expert who’s worked for the now-defunct Puget Sound Water Quality Authority and the City of Seattle.
She uses this expertise in her volunteer job as a co-editor for the on-line poetry journal Switched On Gutenberg, which has been around since 1995 under the editorial leadership of Northwest poet Jana Harris.
“We think it was the first [online poetry journal], says Roberta. In addition to choosing poems, Roberta does a lot of the webmaster work and helps choose the artwork that accompanies each poem. (See it at www.switched-ongutenberg.org.)
“I’d always heard this was a beautiful part of the country,” says Roberta of how she ended up here about 27 years ago. “I needed a break from grad school…. I got a temporary job counting fish on the Columbia,” which is where she met her husband William Ross.
In addition to a University of Washington certificate in poetry, Roberta holds an MFA from New England College, having completed a low-residency program in 2005. “I deliberately picked an eastern college because I wanted more reasons to get back” to the East Coast.
Roberta returns to It’s About Time on March 12 to give the monthly talk on the writer’s craft. For more information visit www.itsaboutimewriters.homestead.com.
|||
I always have to tease new arrivals to Western Washington about the weather, particularly if they’re from California, and especially if we’re recovering from two weeks of snow.
It turns out that Stuart Rosenthal, the incoming executive director of Flying House Productions, is originally from Vermont, so he knows a thing or two about the icy white — and to have a sense of humor about it.
“We’re looking forward to that,” he says, “and we’re stocking up on our flannel and Gore-Tex.”
He also confesses that he finds the Bay Area weather “a little boring.” (It’s snowing again as I write this. I can’t stand the excitement.)
Stuart is leaving his executive director post of the Piedmont Choirs, one of the country’s top youth choral organizations, to join FHP, the parent organization of the Seattle Men’s Chorus and the Seattle Women’s Chorus. FHP is the third largest musical organization in the state with 500 performing members and will celebrate its 30th anniversary beginning later this year.
“I’m humbled,” he says, to take on the leadership of “a nationally prominent organization that I have admired for a number of years.” One goal of the organization, aside from high quality entertainment, is to build understanding between the straight and gay communities.
“I think we’re in a unique position to be in a leadership role in Washington state to influence hearts and minds,” he says.
A vocalist, actor, and music director, Stuart and his partner Eric Ranelletti, an Internet consultant, enjoy performing and recently appeared in a local Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. They’re also the “proud poppas” of a Norwegian lundehund dog, which keeps them busy in their off hours.
The Conservative congregation that Stuart’s family belonged to when he was growing up in Burlington has been around since 1861. Although he’s not formally affiliated right now, he and Eric enjoy putting on an annual seder, “populated by gentiles who haven’t had any Jewish exposure at all.”
They compile their own Haggadah.
“People love it,” Stuart says, “and they especially love my mother’s brisket recipe.”
FHP’s Broadway musical tribute
featuring Debbie Reynolds is March 28 and 29. For more information visit www.flyinghouse.org.