Arts + Letters

Cooking has taken on new significance as we shelter in place. As always, we turn to the kitchen for comfort, creativity and sustenance but now also with renewed gratitude for the people who grow, harvest, prepare and sell us our food. For this installment of Quarantine Culture, we asked esteemed chefs and cookbook authors from the Cal community to share with us some simple recipes for these times, when runs to the grocery store are kept few and far between and the pantry staples are calling our attention. Give thanks and bon appetit!

If “classical” just means “Beethoven,” to you why not use this time to bring your knowledge up to date? Jeremy Geffen, Executive and Artistic Director of Cal Performances, has presented us with a selection of old and new classical music to listen to and genre-bending dance to watch.

Samantha Grant, a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and documentary filmmaker, knows how difficult it can be to fill the many hours of day during lockdown. So, she recommended some of her favorite documentaries, new and old, to help pass the time (most of which are kid friendly).

Trapped at home doing laundry without anything to stimulate your quarantine brain? Anna Sussman is here to help. Sussman, a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Journalism and a senior producer and managing editor of WNYC’s podcast Snap Judgment, shares her top podcasts to get you through the week.

Strolling down the magnificently-tiled corridor of the Berkeley City Club you may spot a sign posted in front of a pair of heavy, wooden doors admonishing you to not disturb the theater rehearsal on the other side. Perhaps you’ll spot an actor on their way in, or hear their muffled lines as you pass.

With covers featuring buxom women in tight, revealing clothes, Aya de León’s Justice Hustlers series may seem like beach reads. But, if so, they’re beach reads with a serious agenda: social justice, trafficking, and radical wealth distribution.