Primrose & WTF Coffee Lab - Two Cafe Visions in Brooklyn

Over the past few weeks, I stopped into two recent cafe additions to the still-shifting Brooklyn neighborhoods of Fort Greene and Clinton Hill - Primrose and WTF Coffee Lab.  However, a number of differences in texture, attitude, and sadly, espresso quality, divides these two.  But despite the quality differences, the two cafes are great examples of differing takes on the cafe, and the different purposes they serve, even though they are just a short walk or bike ride from each other.

Review: Opera - Dog Days - David Little & Royce Vavrek

Dog Days is an excellent, terse, tense, disturbing and new opera, composed by David T. Little with libretto by Royce Vavrek, based on a short story by Judy Budnitz.  The work was created for the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University in New Jersey, about 15-20 miles outside Manhattan.  The story revolves around a family, and a man in dog costume, played by a raggedly smart John Kelly, attempting to survive through what seems to be either a nuclear winter or war-ravaged land.  The setting exists entirely in the family home, extending to the immediate area outside the house.