I am involved with two free cultural events in Palo Alto:

1) tomorrow, Thursday, July 3, 2014, Doris Williams, a performer known as Lady Doris, performs Celtic music (lute and vocals) at Lytton Plaza, University and Emerson. The event starts at noon and will last one hour — unless we get a noise complaint or force majeure.

Doris contacted me after the recent Fete De La Musique and we agreed to pool our resources to try to bring a concert series to Lytton Plaza, which the taxpayers and matching grant from some landlords used $800,000 to redesign and reclaim, in 2009.

Our impromptu event tomorrow to find fellow travelers to help us organize and fund a series or festival there later this summer or early fall. (The Downtown Business Association, plus City of Palo Alto, plus Stanford Federal Credit, have re-mounted Brown Bag series at Cogswell Plaza, starting July 10).

2) “Ripple Effect” an original musical and street theatre comedia dell arte, produced by The San Francisco Mime Troupe, comes to Mitchell Park, Thursday, July 10 at 7 p.m.

For SFMT, my role is trying to find good homes for about 20 cool looking posters. My understanding is that the event is looking for “loaders” to help move equipment, to the “south field” of Mitchell Park. The award-winning troupe will return to Palo Alto in August to reprise this event.

The distinction between producing a small concert and shlepping posters for a larger event reminds me of the joke about the ham and eggs breakfast where the pig is “committed” and the chicken is “involved”.

At the ham and eggs breakfast the pig is committed and the chicken is involved

edit to add: sent 35 copies of this to people in my email band with whom I had corresponded about Lytton Plaza. I would imagine that the bulk of anyone who would notice Doris Williams playing lute and singing Thursday will do so because they are downtown anyhow. The idea of a series proper, perhaps on consecutive noon hours this September, would include more outreach and publicity, and planning. However, never underestimate a small group of the musically-inspired to create change, even in Palo Alto. By the butterfly effect and chaos theory, a lute struck in Palo Alto on July 3 could stop a tank in Afghanistan on July 10, in theory.

Or as Pete Seeger said: this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.

edit to add:

Doris Wiliams life lute and vocals at Lytton Plaza Palo Alto, photo by Deirdre Crommie, a Rec Commissioner, here as private citizen