Social Scene

Mary Bird • June 8, 2012

The Kalorama-based Sitar Arts Center, almost entirely funded through private charitable contributions, showcased its enthusiastic arts students at the Corcoran Gallery of Art May 2. Music, ballet, fashion design and a preview of this summer’s production of “Joseph’s Coat” were part of a special evening that raised $237,000 to support the center’s arts programs. More than 120 artists volunteer their time to teach and inspire at least 700 underserved young persons, as they explore and study visual and performing arts in an afterschool safe haven. [gallery ids="100804,124546,124496,124539,124505,124532,124513,124527,124521" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Leonard Lauder, Elise and Mark Lefkowitz and Saks Fifth Avenue hosted the Second Annual Great Ladies Luncheon and Fashion show at the Ritz-Carlton in the West End May 2 to benefit the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. Lauder noted, “100 percent of funding goes to Alzheimer’s research.” Carolina Herrera presented her fall 2012 collection and also accepted a tribute to former first lady Nancy Reagan, reading a letter which read, “The soul doesn’t have Alzheimer’s.” [gallery ids="100805,124554,124535,124548,124543" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Family Matters, formerly Family and Child Services, celebrated its 130th anniversary May 3 at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. It is the city’s oldest and largest private social-services agency that provides vital and crisis care to the city’s neediest residents. Programs include foster care, adoption services, mental health support and youth development. The organization operates the Washington Post’s Send-a-Kid-to-Camp program and offers senior services, foster care, adoptions, teen mother assistance and financial rehabilitation guidance.? [gallery ids="100806,124562,124551,124558" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

An international A List, headed by Empress Farah Pahlavi, her son Reza Pahlavi and his wife Yasmine, gathered in the Wine Room above Café Milano on May 5 for Franco Nuschese’s dinner celebrating Annie Totah. Andrea Roane emceed an evening of tributes to the philanthropist who has supported causes that ranged from the Komen Foundation to the arts. Washington Performing Arts Society President Neale Perl and Washington Ballet Artistic Director Septime Webre joined many diplomats and prominent Washingtonians in raising a glass to Totah, who delighted her guests with several songs before they left with her CD to relive a magical evening. [gallery ids="100807,124592,124584,124577,124607,124569,124612,124619,124560,124627,124600" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Adam Mahr, Kristin Manion and David Ochsman hosted Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States at Mahr’s A Mano on Book Hill for a reception and book signing on May 9. Pacelle’s new book “The Bond” reminds us that animals are at the center of our lives. He spoke of his lifelong dedication to animal protection, noting that there are “more pets than people in American homes.” He said that he did not want “to be a bystander to cruelty to animals” and emphasized human responsibility. He termed the HSUS “a measure of our humanity.” [gallery ids="100808,124644,124615,124637,124624,124633" nav="thumbs"]

Georgetowner • June 7, 2012

Washington is one of the social, fraternal cities in the world, it’s a town that’s full of associations, organizations, societies, orders, and institutions, networking across the city, holding meetings, honoring group efforts and individuals, good people all gathering together to make some differences here and there.

It is a kind of subterranean culture, a world whose citizens are continually active, but whose activities often go little noted in the larger world of the whole city. Yet, those meetings, those events and celebrations contain worlds of concern, feelings and talk and expressions and plans about things that matter to each and every one of us.

And so it was that you saw representatives of groups such as The Humanities Council of Washington DC, the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, attorneys, ambassadors, former diplomats, educators and an assortment of co-conspirators in the quest to come together on missions that raise awareness, that enrich the culture, that act as agents for changes and improvement in the community and world at large all gathered together at the Meridian International Center, whose title speaks for itself.

The occasion had a title: “Through the Eyes of a Child: Seeing a Just World”, which was the closing event for the Humanities Council’s “Live to Read” initiative which had spent weeks encouraging and helping Washingtonians, especially its young people, to read, centered around one book: “To Kill A Mockingbird,” the classic American coming-of age novel about a 1950s small southern town in Mississippi and the quietly heroic attorney who challenges his community to seek justice.

My guess is that the event—which featured people who knew each other and people who did not coming together purposefully—will not go viral on U Tube, nor make the front page of the Washington Post. It was a small thing, in terms of size, number of people, results. What was it about? Oh, race, justice, society, children, education, the haunted history of the United States, our personal memories about such matters, the echoes of matters rarely touched on or felt so deeply. It was a quiet thing, but parts of it rang loudly in the heart.

So: books were passed out, popcorn, and later portions of shrimp were consumed and the amenities of such things were observed. And then, people began to talk, and somehow, the whole thing became more than an exercise. Prominent people were duly noted: F. Scott Bolden, described as a “Washington super-lawyer”, joked that he was here to show that lawyers can be human, then shared announcing the Lawyers for Humanities Initiative with Joy Ford Austin, Executive Director of the Humanities Council of DC.

Then Judith Terra, in her role as Chair of the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, read from one of the closing sections of “Mockingbird” in which Atticus Finch, having lost the case but not the cause, walked out of the courthouse, and his daughter, sitting high up with the communities black citizens was admonished to “Stand Up, your father is passing”. Terra recalled remembering this and her own father who had passed away the day after 9/11.

Katherine Estrada, a student at Raymond Elementary School, also read beautifully from the book. She was followed by a panel discussion on featuring Lorraine Henry, a Master Teacher in the Department of English at Howard University and Uzodinma Iweala, , a novel and son of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, of Nigeria, who was a leading candidate to become President of the World Bank. The discussion darted around concepts of narrative—how children inherit stories, for instance, but also create them—it touched on innocence and its loss, on books and reading and writing. Iweala , a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard wrote the well-received novel “Beasts of No Nation” about child soldiers in Africa, and talked movingly about the power of narrative vis a vis children.

“To Kill a Mockingbird” is of course a book that it seems almost everyone has read, or seen in the form of the movie in which Gregory Peck was forever enshrined as the just lawyer Atticus Finch,the good man of decency. It still resonates, in this city, and elsewhere. One woman talked about the time of the assassination of JFK, when she was a first grade teacher in upstate New York, and how a black student stood up and said, “Now they will blame us for it.” A young teacher from Emerson Prep had come with some of her students, two from Viet Nam, another from Haiti.

The panel discussion was moderated by Sharon Wilkinson, the Diplomatic Advisor at the Meridian.

The usual things happened: old friends and acquaintances caught up, cards and e-mail addresses were exchanged. But a buzz remained, as if some important memories had been created, because serious, hopeful and urgent matters were discussed in a small place in Washington during an election year without politics being mentioned. Hearing Harper Lee’s words transcended the urgent desires of the town’s transient population to be elected or re-elected.

Here with these people and this time, the words of Atticus Finch and Scout resonated and stayed with you on the way home and you remembered them in the morning.

Gatherings like this are all around us, like words that matter. Check your e-mail. [gallery ids="100832,125737" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

On Apr. 11, Ris restaurant hosted a media sneak peek of a multi-day event celebrating Iceland and its cuisine, spearheaded by award-winning chef Thrainn Fryr. Newly appointed Ambassador Gudmundur A. Stefansson quipped that, following an economic setback, Iceland was “getting out of the woods.” He went on to share that it was no surprise as Iceland has no woods. Ris featured a menu that included a “Reykjavik 101” cocktail that no doubt inspired the imbibers to hop on Icelandair for a dip in the geothermal Blue Lagoon. [gallery ids="100743,121628,121599,121623,121609,121617" nav="thumbs"]

Mary Bird •

Down the rabbit hole took on new meaning with the pirouetting enchantress Maki Onuki as Alice, a slinky Red Queen, seductive Cheshire Cat, aerial bicycling Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, elegant white rabbit, beguiling piglets and hedgehogs and every possible imaginative detail as Septime Webre debuted his take on Alice at the Kennedy Center on Apr. 12. The after party at the Oriental Mandarin was a true love fest as Webre acknowledged his creative team, front and foremost composer Mathew Pierce, Cirque du Soleil costumer Liz Vanda, set designer James Kronzer and puppet maker Eric J.VanWyk. [gallery ids="100744,121648,121641,121663,121633,121668,121626,121675,121681,121655" nav="thumbs"]

Michelle Kingston •

With over 30 years of experience, Luigi Parasmo opened his own namesake salon in Georgetown last week. Parasmo, who was born in Rome, Italy, has styled for iconic brands such as Valentino, Armani, D&G, and Versace during Fashion Week Milan, and Tory Burch and Thyphoon at Fashion Week New York. He has lived in D.C. for 20 years now and has previously worked at Watergate, Erin Gomez and Toka Salon. [gallery ids="100746,121704,121686,121699,121694" nav="thumbs"]