Osaka 2007: Today's Races

Since I seldom post photos from athletic events these days, here are photos from today's Track & Field (Athletics) championships in Osaka, Japan. The biggest event was the showdown between American Tyson Gay and Jamaican Asafa Powell, who is the world record holder in the 100m. Gay's performance in the final was remarkable; he came from behind to win with a time of 9.85 seconds, which more than took care of Powell, who ended up finishing third at 9.96 seconds, after Bahamian Derrick Atkins (see below) came in at 9.91. He can now claim to be the fastest man in the world.

C hipped me to a new toy that makes acquiring pictures like this much easier, so enjoy!

Canada's Anson Henry

Defending 100m world champion Asafa Powell, in an interview

Britain's Mark Lewis-Francis in the 100m semifinal

Gay, before the 100m semifinal heat

Asafa Powell before the 100m semifinal

Powell in the lead before finishing 2nd in his semifinal heat

French star Christine Arron before her 100m quarterfinal heat

American sprinter Torri Edwards before her 100m quarterfinal heat

Edwards's heat before the race

Edwards blazing to a victory

Another women's 100m qf lineup, Lauryn Williams at center

Lauryn Williams just nosing (or kneeing) out first

Gay, before the final heat

Derrick Atkins, before the 100m final

Gay blowing past Powell (in yellow, 3rd) and Atkins (in blue, 2nd): his winning time was 9.95

100m champion Tyson Gay celebrates

Olympic champion Félix Sánchez before his 400m hurdle heat

A contemplative Sánchez before his heat

Sánchez, otra vez

Javier Culson before the 400m hurdle heat

Sánchez after winning his heat

James Carter, after his 400m hurdle heat

New Zealander Valerie Vili, putting the shot to win the women's championship in that event

Photos: Summer City Scenes

Click on them to enlarge them!

Bird's-eye view, W 75th Street at Amsterdam, Upper West Side

Roof scene, Upper West Side

A man literally--not figuratively--dressed in rags (he kept turning away when I tried to photograph him).


A near-fight on 7th Avenue near 23rd Street

A photographer in the New York Public Library

In the 42nd Street Station, heading towards 5th Avenue

Some of our August roses

Lower Manhattan from Hoboken

Momus, in Bryant Park

The crumbling ceiling in the 14th Street PATH uptown station

The disaster-plagued Deutsche Bank building, at the World Trade Center/Ground Zero site

A shoe-shine man near Trinity Church

Tourists at the Wall Street "Bull"

Reggie Wilson & Andreya Ouamba's "Accounting for Customs"

This morning, I thought to myself, I rarely avail myself of free cultural activities in the area, so when I made sure to catch choreographers' Reggie Wilson's (at right, Nan Melville for the NYT) and Andréya Ouamba's "Accounting for Customs," a dance piece that Wilson and his company, Fist & Heel Performance Group, staged on the steps of the U.S. Custom House, which is at the tip of Bowling Green, in New York City's oldest neighborhood.

According to Claudia LaRocca's writeup in the New York Times, this is Wilson's second site-specific piece in New York, and a prelude to a larger project with the Congolese Ouamba, "The Good Dance (Congo-Congo and his search for the Good Dance)," which will premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2009. Alistair Macauley's laudatory review is here. I would concur with all his points: Wilson and Ouamba used the stairs to great use, literalizing the ideas and metaphors of and relations between the body, custom(s) and the Custom House (an old seat of government and colonial power); the dancing felt fresh, particularly when the dancers engaged in synchronized moves that broke up into asychronous but mirrored passages; and the music selection really underlined the dances, especially the final piece, which sounded (to my ears) like high-life. The piece, really was too brief, though. As hot as it was today--and I was dead center in the sun's focus--I could have stood out for at least another 15 minutes to half hour watching these dancers perform.

Here are some photos from the performance. (Blogger allows you to post videos now, but I didn't succeed in posting the one I took, so I'll keep trying.)

Reggie Wilson and his crew, at the mixing board.

Near the beginning of the dance, as the dancers rolled themselves up the stairs.

Massing at the bottom of the bannister.

More of the performance.

One of the dancers breaks the fourth wall and joins the audience for a few minutes.

Another dancer, en pointe.

Near the end of the piece, the dancers descending the stairs.

All of the dancers, and Ms. Ouamba, assembled for a bow.

Here's a short video clip of the performance that I originally tried to post via Blogger, but had to do via YouTube.

Goodbye to Grace Paley

Yet another loss in August, a loss for the world of literature, American arts, New York writing, and the Left: Grace Paley (1922-2007, at left, Ms. Magazine) has died, after a long illness, at her home in Thetford, Vermont, at the age of 84. Paley's name brings immediately to mind New York City, and specifically Greenwich Village, where she lived for many years and set a number of her stories, like "Wants," "Northeast Playground," and "Friends." Her comic, highly ironical, frequently lyric, usually voice-driven, plotless prose is distinctively her own; Paley repeatedly took the raw materials of her life as a divorced, secular Jewish mother, pacificist and activist, and transformed them into the works of art. As some of the obituaries of her note, and as she detailed when she spoke to my fellow MFA students and me some years ago, she primarily wrote poetry until her 30s, when she realized that another genre, fiction, was calling her. She began listening to the narratives in her head, the Yiddish-influenced voices and stories of her childhood and young adulthood, and rather than setting them as verse, she allowed the lyric impulse to unfold as short stories. And what stories! Paley can set a sentence on its side, and double it back again, while making it sound as if someone uttered it, effortlessly, without much thought but also with the finest consideration. In "Wants," she manages to telescope an entire life into a few pages: a woman must return books that are overdue--years overdue--but in the process of journeying to what is the Jefferson Market Library on 6th Avenue and 9th Street, she also journeys to and through her past, with each memory, each event, each word really, assuming significance and resonance. I often reread Paley's work, so utterly different from my own, and teach it, as a way of understanding how a writer can make the most out of so very little, how crucial precision and humor and irony are, how a light touch can carry inestimable gravity. At the Whiting Foundation Awards ceremony a few years ago, Paley read one of her best stories, and one of my favorites, "A Conversation with My Father," and I thought then, as I always have when I've read this story, in the hands of many a writer this might sound like a carefully revised snippet of nonfiction drawn from memories or a journal, but after Paley's touch, it is undeniably fiction, and a work of art.

La Recherche du Temps du Commute + 75% Have Read 1 Book Last Year + Summer Soundtrack

Today as I was on the New Jersey light rail, which I take to the PATH, which I take to the subway (MTA), to get to the spot where I've spent a huge portion of this summer, the New York Public Library (see photo at right), I was musing that if I won the lottery (Mega Millions is up to $201 million as of last night) and could underwrite research by some of the brilliant people and their colleagues I used to work for and with at MIT, and if scientific understanding of the laws of physics were to dramatically advance, one of the things I'd urge them to develop or invent would be a machine or process to allow me and others to recapture time lost as adult in commuting. (Pace Proust, but memories of childhood and adolescence will suffice.)

I roughly calculated that I've spent about 1/4th (or more of non-sleeping hours) of my adult life commuting to school or work--and this percentage will again rise in just under a month, when classes resume and I return to Chicago and Evanston. In fact the only times over that last four decades that I've lived close (which is to say, a walkable trip under 15 minutes) to work or school was during 5th and 6th grade years, when I walked to the nearby Catholic school, and during my four undergraduate college years. Before that, meaning all through most of my preschool through high school years, and after that, like a sizable number of people, I've spent a huge portion of my waking life in cars or on trains, buses and airplanes. Sic transeo ego. (Is that right? It's been a long time!)

One of the things I've always tried to do is maximize this transit time. At one time I was attempting to balance reading with writing; one of the results during my years on the Boston T was a long prose poem, "Transits." In Charlottesville, it was all car all the time, which is when I first started to listen to poetry cassettes that I was convinced no one else ever withdrew from the library. But after moving back north and several years of trying to take notes and write anything beyond snippets of poetry lines on the bumpy PATH and MTA trains, I turned primarily to reading, which is also a lot easier to accomplish if you have to deal with long station waits, switching trains and abrupt stops. I also learned that it's easier to read poetry on short-ish train rides and bus trips than critical or fiction texts, especially if the latter are even mildly engrossing--I have missed more than a few stops on the Chicago and New York subways buried in a novel--and easier to read books of poetry full of discrete, short poems rather than long poems or a poetic series, which you can completely lose the thread of if you have to abruptly break off and cross over from one line to another.

One significant change since 2001 is that during the school year my main reading consists of student work, so during the period that I rode the trains to and buses from Rhode Island and since I've been out in Chicago, I mainly read student stories and papers, which there are always a great many of, on the long commutes; the thorough readings they require are perfectly suited to the delays at O'Horror and Slowwork. As far as car commuting, which I do daily in Chicago, I once mainly popped in CDs, but after losing and misplacing many of them and then acclimating to mp3 technology, now tend to listen to the radio (i.e. NPR, sports radio, or the R&B stations), or my iPod linked to the radio via wireless.

Still, I'd love to get even a few of those hours back. Say just the ones lost in the airport when, after checking in online, viewing the Mac flight widget and the airline's webpages, and studying the departure boards once I arrive in the terminal and then near the gate, all confirming that my flight is on time, I reach the departure gate and learn that unfortunately, the flight will be delayed by a half hour two hours three hours an unknown amount of time because _________ (add excuse of choice, but if all else fails, say "wind"). The recaptured hours from 2001-2007 would add up, I imagine, at least to a summer. Not a lot of time, but I wouldn't complain.

+++

This brings me to the AP report, based on an AP-Ipsos Poll, that I've seen circulating around the web (Reggie H. sent it to the CC list, but it was also on Huffington Post, Raw Story, Yahoo!, and other sites), which noted that at least one fourth of Americans did not read a single book last year.

This news may startle some folks, but I've posted before about and even incorporated into curricular materials the 2004 NEA Report Reading at Risk, which noted that fewer than half of the people surveyed had read a literary work in the preceding year, so I was not surprised at all. In fact, I almost wanted to cheer that according to this new poll, around 75% or so of those polled did read a book last year.


Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison with Oprah Winfrey (from Academy of Achievement)

I also wasn't surprised that the most-read texts (cited by 2/3rds of those who did read a book) were the Bible and other religious tracts (I'm guessing the Book of Mormon, the Qu'ran, etc.). Nevertheless, people who did not attend religious services were more likely to read than those who did. Westerners and Midwesterners were more likely to read than people from other regions, but Southerners were more likely to read religious texts and romances than any other. And the Northeasterners? Fuggedaboudit! Democrats and liberals read a few more books than Republicans and conservatives, and the median number of books read by women was nine, with five for men.

Other points in the report that I think should be discussed in all undergraduate writing and graduate MFA classes include the findings that women read more fiction, and every other category except history and biography, than men (take note, writers!), who prefer non-fiction, when they (we) do read; people older than 50 read more than the young'uns (apparent to anyone who spends time in a classroom); and popular fiction is, well, more popular than literary fiction. (But we already knew this, didn't we?)

Popular fiction, histories, biographies and mysteries were all cited by about half, while one in five read romance novels. Every other genre — including politics, poetry and classical literature — were named by fewer than five percent of readers

Another sad note: considerably people read poetry, a most unfortunate fact. (Though quite a few people listen to it when it's set to music and called hiphop or rock music, but that's another story.) The Poetry Foundation explored this issue last year, and I wrote a little about that too; somewhat converse to this report, Black people were more likely to read poetry than White people, though this poll notes that Blacks and Latinos were less likely to have read any book than White folks.

But back to the report. A quote:

"I just get sleepy when I read," said Richard Bustos of Dallas, a habit with which millions of Americans can doubtless identify. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.

Obviously this man 1) is unaware that you can read and sit in or near a pool and 2) has not cracked open any of a number of anti-soporific works, such as Cormac McCarthy's The Road, a relentlessly propulsive stunner (and Pulitzer Prize-winning Oprah's Book Club Pick as well) which has sections (not including the vapid, easy ending) that might you nightmares that not even Halcyon or Sominex could trump.

Another:

Who are the 27 percent of people the AP-Ipsos poll found hadn't read a single book this year? Nearly a third of men and a quarter of women fit that category. They tend to be older, less educated, lower income, minorities, from rural areas and less religious.

This isn't surprising; reading is a skill and a love of reading requires acculturation, particular nowadays, and our educational system, both public and private, does the pursuit of reading few favors. The NEA report noted that the most important factor in "literary" reading was education, with another key factor being income. The more highly educated and wealthier people were, the more they were likely to read, and that appears to be the case in this poll as well.

It also made me think that the publishing industry continues to harm itself with the high cost of even discounted hardcovers. They remain too expensive--for the price of three hardcovers, you can pay for a month of cable TV, or a game for your XBox or Wii. As much as I love books, I swore off of purchasing new ones for several years because I simply could not afford them.

As I noted, the poll's news can be viewed as positive and yet sobering, and offers a number of things for writers, educators, and readers to consider. Cultivating and developing readers long ago ceased to be a given, and it's up to those who care about reading, and its corollary effects, to ensure that we create new generations of readers--avid ones, if possible.

+++

Rereading Brazilian writer Jean Wyllys's story "I Need a Soundtrack to Live," which I translated earlier this year, reminds me that I haven't posted a list of the music I've been listening to in a while, but here's ten (+) songs that're part of my current rotation. (I've finally learned to shed my embarrassment about falling for songs that I first heard in commercials. I do want to figure out how to rid myself of the earworm better known as Swizz Beatz's "Money in the Bank"!)

Alice Smith - "Love Endeavor"
Bebel Gilberto - "Azul" and "Night and Day"
Bloc Party - "Like Eating Glass"
Brazilian Girls - "Jique"
Common - "The People" and "Black Maybe"
Gym Class Heroes - "Viva La White Girl"
Manole - "Vuelo Alto"
Max Roach and Anthony Braxton - "Magic and Music"
Mellowdrone - "Beautiful Day"
Pharoahe Monche - "Desire"

Vick's Plea Deal + Hurricane Dean + Soul Mountain Reading

As disgusted and horrified as I am about the worst of the crimes (the electrocution and drowning of the dogs) that Atlanta Falcons star quarterback Michael Vick (photo at left, Reuters File Photo) has now pled to having committed, I'm also saddened by his having been involved with and even masterminded some of them. With his reported imminent plea deal, I cannot see how his career, even for the sometimes-lax NFL, is not over. (Were he somehow to have wriggled out of conviction, his team and the league might have allowed him to continue playing. He is one of the most exciting quarterbacks of all time, and the single-season rushing leader at his position.) On top of this, the Commonwealth of Virginia, if I read correctly, is still planning to bring charges against him that could result in a 40 year prison sentence.

He's probably asking himself over and over was it worth it, was losing everything and facing a jail sentence really worth the thrill of the entire scheme, the excitement of the fights and of getting away with it for so long, the bets won and lost, the grotesque cruelty to the animals, the camaraderie with friends and acquaintances who had no one's--neither their own or his--best interests in mind? Was it? How could it possibly be? I know gambling is now thoroughly integrated into our culture, and people don't think twice about dropping money they don't have on games of chance, but pitting dogs (or other animals, for human sport) against each other is still ethically more problematic than risking money on instant-win scratch cards, poker games or baccarat tables. I've read rationalizations of dogfighting, an ancient sport that I've never watched and don't care to (just like cockfighting). I find the punitive methods that are alleged in this case indefensible.

One of my first thoughts when I first heard the allegations against Vick was whether or not his teammates on the Atlanta Falcons, the ownership, or the league had any knowledge of his involvement in dogfighting. And is he the only one? I find it curious that for a league taht purports to be focused on its public image and on its talent, no one had a clue until the investigation of Vick's cousin on a drug case led to the discoveries on the Surry farm. I'm also curious to find out if the NFL, PETA and others who are fulminating against Vick are going to look at other players and see if they're involved in dogfighting, cockfighting, and, yes, I'm going to say it, non-subsistence hunting, which is a bloodsport, and racing, where, as Bernie reminded me, horses that lose are "put down," which is to say, less euphemistically, killed. Our society rationalizes the cruelty involved in non-subsistence hunting, but the kind of brutality that Dick Cheney, among others, engages in during closed hunts is just as unconscionable, as is the brutality enacted on animals in other sports. (Yes, I know, few people care as much about ducks or geese or bobolinks or even race horses as they do dogs, which are humans' close companions, but still--and what, as Byron pointed out, about greyhounds? They don't all get adopted and sheltered after their racing lives end. I would add that I know population-control hunting is also controversial, but also doesn't merit the sort of outrage that it probably could.) Something tells me that after Vick goes down there'll be much ado--though little focus on other forms of cruelty to animals or the broader issues of classism and speciesism--for a hot minute, and things will go back to the way they were.

***

As I type this, Hurricane Dean continues its march through the Gulf region, having slashed a terrible swath through Jamaica's capital, Kingston, with 2 dead there and 4 in Haiti. It was, however, less destructive to Jamaica than predicted, and the Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller declared a day of thanksgiving as a result. Every land mass in its path has been drenched. It's currently pounding the Yucatán Peninsula and its resorts, and though it's been downgraded to a Category 1 storm, meteorologists suggest it could again gain force once it moves into the open water. The greatest threat then would be to Mexico's extensive open water oil-drilling infrastructure. Anthony points out on his Monaga blog that the DR did not sustain too much damage from Hurricane Dean, though he does post a disturbing video of a Haitian teenager who tragically is killed by the wall of waves. (He also poses the question of whether this should be on YouTube, and by extension, his site.) Meanwhile, the tropical storm whose name I thought I'd hallucinated, Erin, has inundated parts of the Midwest! I saw last night that Des Plaines River, outside of Chicago, had overflowed its banks, and that there'd been flooding in a number of other states, including Minnesota, Missouri, and Oklahoma.

***

From Dante Micheaux, an upcoming reading of Soul Mountain-affiliated poets, in Old Lyme, Connecticut (Soul Mountain is a writers' retreat founded a few years ago by poet Marilyn Nelson):

18 Nigerians Facing Sharia Death Sentence for Being Gay

Talk about out of the loop. I just received an email from Grupo Gay da Bahia president Marcelo Cerqueira decrying the failure of Candomblé practioners to speak out against the condemnation to death of 18 men in northern Nigeria under the Islamic Sharia-based criminal laws there. That led me to google the story, and here's the first link, from 365gay.com: 18 Men Face Death Penalty in Nigeria.

(In Marcelo's statement on the GGB site and in his email, he opens with GGB founder and noted anthroplogist and historian Luiz Mott's statement that "Silence is death. And the silence of Brazilian adepts of the African mother religion in relation to the condemnation to death of the 18 homosexuals in Nigeria is a criminal omission." Mott goes on to note that GGB is launching an appeal to all the babalorixás e yalorixás from Bahia and the rest of Brazil to send a protest to the president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, urging him to respect the law of the orixás, which never condemned homosexual love." Marcelo also mentions several scholars of Yoruba religion who point to the fact that important pais and mães de santo in Nigeria were known to be "adé" and "aló," Yoruba terms referring to gays and lesbians. GGB and Quimbanda Dudu, Bahia's Black LGBT organization, had already protested against Nigeria's pending anti-gay laws in front of Salvador's Casa da Nigéria, in March, and have called on Brazil's president, Inácio Lula da Silva, to once again take a bold stand and offer sanctuary to the 18 condemned men as he did back in 2002, when he and Senegal's president, Abdoulaye Wade, offered asylum to Amina Lawal, the Nigerian widow who was sentenced to death by stoning for giving birth outside of marriage.)

Below I've reprinted the entire story, which also discusses the horrific legal situation that people convicted of homosexual acts face not only in the predominantly Muslim north of the country and the particular "panic" around the issue of cross-dressing and same-sex marriage (both of whose local forms have origins in specific cultural traditions in what is now Nigeria), but the looming extreme situation that gays across Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with more than 130 million people, will face if a new law that completely strips lesbians, gays and transgender people of any civil rights and penalizes even the distribution of LGBT literature or information is passed and goes into effect.

(Lagos) Eighteen Nigerian men have been found guilty of sodomy by a Sharia judge in the Islamic northern part of the country. The men are awaiting sentencing and under Sharia, or Islamic law, they could be sentenced to death.

The official government news agency Nan reports that the men were arrested in a hotel in north-eastern Bauchi State.

Bauchi is one of a number of northern states which recognizes Sharia law. Elsewhere in the country gay sex carries sentences up to 14 years behind bars.

If sentenced to death the court decision would need the approval of the state governor.

Nan reports that the men were wearing women's clothes when they were arrested and had gone to the hotel to celebrate a gay wedding.

The government frequently alleges that men arrested for being gay were dressed as women and were attending or preparing to attend gay weddings.

More than a dozen men have been sentenced to death in recent years for alleged homosexuality. In most cases their fate is unknown.

Meanwhile, the government is moving ahead with legislation that would strip gays and lesbians of all civil rights.

The bill started out as a ban on same-sex marriage and has been revised to make it a crime for more than two gay people to be in the same venue at the same time.

It prohibits LGBT social or civil rights groups from forming. It would be illegal to sell or rent property to same-sex couples, watch a gay film or video, visit an LGBT web site, or express same-sex love in a letter to one's partner.

The legislation goes so far as to make it a criminal offense to impart information of HIV/AIDS to gays or for non-gays to meet with any group of gays for any purpose.

The penalty would be five years in prison with hard labor.

The most recent arrests have sparked outrage in Britain and is likely to scuttle Nigeria's bid to host the Commonwealth Games in 2014.

A movement by LGBT rights activists to block the Nigerian bid began before the arrests and appeared to be gaining broader support on Friday.

Mike Hooper, the chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation - the organization that will make the decision about the games venue - said Friday that Nigeria should be rejected on the grounds of the country’s homophobic oppression.

The southern half of Nigeria is predominantly Anglican. The primate of the Nigerian Church is Archbishop Peter Akinola who has been at the forefront of opposing gay clergy in the denomination. Conservative Anglican churches in the US have aligned themselves with Akinola.

A different report appears in the Lagos-based Daily Champion, courtesy of AllAfrica.com.

A quote:

In June an agency tasked with implementing shari'ah law in Bauchi called on the new state governor Isa Yuguda to approve three sentences of death by stoning and 40 of amputation passed since 2002 which his predecessor had refused to ratify.*

The death sentences were passed for sexual offences, including one for sodomy.

STONING AND AMPUTATION! I am not making this up! (*Both emphases are mine.)

Yet another report, from the BBC News: "Gay Nigerians Face Sharia Death," which notes that most of the extreme sentences, which have also been handed out for other alleged sexual crimes, such as adultery, have not been carried out, but that two amputations had been effected in Nigeria's northwestern Zamfara State.

When I went to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Campaign's (IGLHRC) site, the last statement on this issue was from February 2007, announcing a report: "IGLHRC's New Report Documents LGBT Nigerians' Response to the Same-Sex Prohibition Act." (This is a .pdf file.)

In this press release, IGLHRC gives the address for Nigeria's ambassador to the US. They urge that people concerned with the pending legislation politely contact the ambassador. His info:

His Excellency Professor George A. Obiozor
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
Embassy of the Federal
Republic of Nigeria
3519 International Court, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Fax: (202) 362-6552
gobiozor@nigeriaembassyusa.org

In light of this most recent news, I would add that contacting the US ambassador to Nigeria might also be a good idea. The previous ambassador, Bush-appointee John Campbell, has stepped down, and as of July 19, 2007, the acting Chargé d'Affaires is Robert Gribben. Here is his information:

Mr. Robert E. Gribbin
Chargé d'Affaires
Ambassador to Nigeria
Embassy of the United States of America
Plot 1075 Diplomatic Drive
Central District Area, Abuja, Nigeria
Telephone: (234)-9-461-4000
Fax: (234)-9-461-4036

One of the sites that documents some of the crises LGBT people are facing around the globe is Direland. I may be wrong, but I think there's been comparatively little reporting about ongoing massacre of gay Iraqis, though Doug Ireland has written on this topic more than once. On a different note, Andrés (El Blabbeador) at Blabbeando was recently visiting Colombia, and among many other interesting posts links to a Miami Herald article on the gay rights advances occurring there.

Now what was that about "post-gay"...?

Photos: Beacon + Seismosis Talk

Here are a few photos from my visit to Beacon, New York and the talk at the Go North Gallery, which was actually moved to a larger venue just down the street, the historic Howland Memorial Library, which now houses the town's Historical Society. Let me thank Karlos Carcamo and Gregory Slick of Go North once again for inviting Chris and me to speak about and read from Seismosis, and thanks also to all the people who showed up (esp. Dante, Erica and Patricia!) on what might have been the most beautiful Saturday in New York and New Jersey this August.

The interior of the Howland Memorial Library, before the talk (artist and gallery owner Karlos Carcamo is entering the room)

Some of the audience, as we worked out the technical issues with the projector

The exterior of the Howland Memorial Library

The first slide (ready to go!)

After the talk (Chris Stackhouse, in the white shirt, has his back to the camera)

More post-talk chatting (poet Dante Micheaux, in the brown shirt at back, is stretching)

Chris and Karlos, in front of a slide of one of Gerhard Richter's drawings-in-paint

The "Out of Line" show at Go North Gallery (Photo, Go North Gallery)

Main Street, Beacon, New York

Dia: Beacon, which had closed by the time Chris and I headed over there

Near the Dia: Beacon main gates, a view of the Hudson and the Catskills to the west

As we were driving around, we came across this spot, the Max Protetch Gallery's Sculpture Park and Annex

Although redolent of Sol Lewitt's work, I believe this piece, unlabelled, is by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, whom the Max Protetch gallery represents; it may even be one of his "Iceberg" sculptures

I'm not sure who's the artist behind this gigantic piece, but it's visible from the road

Chris is wandering over near a patio that has sculptures by Scott Burton (and perhaps Lewitt)

A train shot, heading back to New Jersey, of the Hudson River and Catskills from the river's eastern side

These Days

Muggy days, sluggish days! I feel like I'm cutting through honey with a baby spoon just to post anything these days.

So much grim news; a few days ago I'd meant immediately after we watched the local late evening newscasters breathlessly announce, without any clear or corroborating information, a pending Al Qaeda strike that was, according to anonymous chatter on various websites, set to strike near 34th Street (or was it 42nd Street), but I couldn't muster the enthusiasm to do so. Why add to the white noise? Then there was horrific insurgent strike in northern Iraq, on top of the daily horror cornucopia over there of attacks and bombings, political dysfunction and ineptitude, worsening infrastructure, exile and ethnic cleansing, general crime, and so on, that the traditional newsmedia no longer want to report on--because they'd have to admit their complete and undiminished complicity in the disaster unfolding over there (and the political nightmares we've had to endure over here).

And the bleak news keeps coming: consider the poor men trapped in that Utah mine collapse. Sadly for them, the traditional media decided to turn into a cheering section for the mine owner--I even wrote The News Hour with Jim Lehrer to complain about Judy Woodruff's nauseating performance, in which all she was missing was pom poms--without reporting on his 300+ safety violations and citations, including more than 100 this year, and the extremely dangerous, high risk mining technique the men had been engaging in. In fact, this Murray person, who has given more than $200,000 to Republican candidates and the party over the last few years, was given free rein by the news media over this last week to trash unions, Hillary Clinton, and Al Gore and the environmental movement. As of today, he's still blabbing away on TV, the miners still haven't been found, and tonight it appears that some of the rescuers may have been injured by another partial collapse at the mine.

To echo Molly Shannon, don't get me started, don't get me started...on the mortgage, housing and banking industries, or the wobbly US stock market and sick global financial industry. Developers are still tearing down everything they can get their hands on in New York City and downtown Jersey City and erecting "luxury" condos, and at least in the former case, it appears that the demand currently and unfortunately is inexhaustible.

I do want to extend my thoughts and best wishes to the people of Peru in the wake of the terrible earthquake, with numerous aftershocks, that struck there yesterday.

Over the last few days, a number of notable figures have passed away. Max Roach, the extraordinary drummer, bandleader, composer, and cultural alchemist, passed away on Wednesday. I was telling C. tonight that Roach's album Karbouda (a/k/a Mop Mop), featuring Tommy and Stanley Turrentine, Julian Priester, Coleridge Perkinson, and Clifford Jordan, has three of my favorite disc performances of all time: Abbey Lincoln's unforgettable medley of "Love for Sale," "Who Will Buy?" and "Long As You're Living." Talk about soul, and songs that embody, in Roach's group's open and exciting playing, and Lincoln's raw and incandescent voice, the dramas of life and love. The 60s marked the third great phase of Roach's very long career; he had started out in the 1940s during the bebop revolution and first made his name alongside some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time; in 1954 he headed his own band with Clifford Brown, inaugurating a new and fertile style, hard bop, until the trumpeter's untimely death. Roach would go on to play with free jazz musicians, rappers in the early 1980s, a string quartet, while also teaching at the University of Massachusetts, injecting political activism into the worlds of jazz and black music more generally, and continuing to create exciting projects and music. One of the finest of all time, Max Roach.

(From Geoffrey Jacques: WKCR-FM, 89.9 FM in New York City. Max Roach Memorial Broadcast 24/7 from right now until (at least) August 22, 2007. Folllowed by the Lester Young-Charlie Parker Birhday Broadcast, starting (maybe) August 24, but definitely Aug. 27-29, 2007.)

Others who've recently transitioned: Elizabeth Murray, the innovative, acclaimed painter, who was one of the 1970s pioneers of the form in the wake of Minimalism's and Conceptual art's dominance (the poet and Bowery Poetry Club founder Bob Holman is her husband)--her 2002-2004 painting "So Long Maryanne," at the Pace-Wildenstein Gallery, is at right; New York Yankees great and Mr. Money Store himself, Hall of Famer Phil Rizzuto, whose bunting gifts and lyric improvisations as a sportscaster have never been surpassed; Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson, who was instrumental in disseminating the music of some of the finest punk bands to come out of Manchester, including Joy Division (later New Order), A Certain Ratio and Happy Mondays, and whose experiences from that era were immortalized in the wacky film 24 Hour Party People; Brooke Russell Kuser Marshall Astor (at the astonishing age of 105), one of the grandest dames of New York's aristocracy and one of the remarkable philanthropists of all time; entertainment visionary and mogul Merv Griffin, whose interview and game shows were integral aspects of my and many others' childhoods; and Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a native Baltimorean and longtime New Yorker who was one of the early pioneers in the mid-20th century Civil Rights movement when she refused to comply with segregated seating rules and her appeal, led by then attorney Thurgood Marshall and William H. Hastie, to the Supreme Court led to a 6-1 ruling, in Morgan v. Virginia, in her favor that served as one of the inspirations for Bayard Rustin segregation-challenging rides and for the Freedom Riders.

Harold Ford's War Confusion

Last November the Democrats defeated the Republicans handily to take control of both houses of Congress. Democratic Senate candidates won in conservative states like Virginia, Missouri, Ohio, and even Wyoming, but in the Tennessee race to replace retiring Senator Majority leader Bill Frist, Harold Ford Jr. lost to former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker. During the race I condemned the overtly racist yet successful campaign that Corker and the Republicans ran against Ford, but I also wondered openly about the sort of Democratic senator he would make, especially given his ideological stances, which edged into outright Republicanism ("I love George Bush" remains one of his infamous statements).

After Ford's loss, some Democrats like Jim Carville were actively pushing to have him replace Howard Dean as head of the Democratic National Committee, despite Dean's successful tenure, but fortunately that disaster was averted. More appropriately, Ford was named head of the Democratic Leadership Council (or the Repub-lites) and has done little to dispel the impression that he and his organization are quasi-Republicans and out of touch with majority of Americans on many issues, including the War in Iraq. Just the other day Ford was on Faux News's Hannity and Colmes Show discussing Senator Barack Obama's foreign policy stances and the Democratic candidates' uniform avoidance of the DLC conference, and uttered the following statements in an exchange with host Alan Colmes (from Crooks and Liars):

Colmes: Barack Obama had a great point when he said those who voted for the war in Iraq and then had to apologize for that vote should probably be the last people to criticize he—who was right about the war in Iraq all along.

Ford: I don’t know who’s been right about this war all along…

Colmes: Sure you do…

Ford: That’s open for dispute.

Colmes: You don’t know who’s been right about the war all along?

Ford: One thing is clear. What we’re doing now is not working.

Certainly true on that last point, but come again? "That's open for dispute?" It's as if he's still campaigning to the right of Corker for those phantasmal right-wing independents, and we all know where that got him 10 months ago. As if the Blue Dog and self-style moderates haven't been awful enough, I can only imagine what a disaster he'd have been on most of the legislation that's come up for a vote since January. Democrats and everyone else needs to keep an eye on him, because he is one of the darling "Black folks" of the media types and of party insiders who are still trying to reprise the failed "bipartisan" tactics of 2002 and 2004.

As Coisas A Esmo (Random Things)

Several quick notes: today is C's birthday; as I had the pleasure of wishing him personally, Happy Birthday!

At Firedoglake, there's a Book Salon featuring Digby (who presides over one of my favorite blogs) and Robert Frank, the author of Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class. (And everyone else who's not obscenely rich, especially people who work for wages everyday.) You can participate in the comments section. I have 1,000 thoughts on this topic, but none are coherent right now, so instead, please visit Firedoglake.

For weeks I've been meaning to link to Audiologo's followup post on the vicissitudes of Black American literary fictionists, which she launches through a discussion of Helen Oyeyemi's The Opposite House, but there is so much great stuff on her blog, from a review of the Shainman Gallery's Color Line show to a link to a post on the Black Documentary Collective's screening of Woodie King's The Segregation of the Greatest Generation at Film Forum, muchos recados sobre Black Rock, and a beautiful riff on Black LGBT theater that invokes the PoMo Afro Homos and finishes by noting the August dates of the Fire! Plays in Development that Matter! And that's just July's posts! Drop in and catch some science!

Once upon a time I took an economics course. Or muddled my way through it. The highlight was listening, alongside 200 or so other students, to the legendary John Kenneth Galbraith dilate on the flawed economic assumptions of the Reagan administration, while the low points were too numerous to stick in my memory. (Well, maybe they weren't so bad, but after reading the words "opportunity cost" and "marginal utility" too many times and struggling to decode the various mathematical graphs, I breathed a hugh sigh of relief when I'd taken the final exam and the winter break arrived.) I learned so little that back in the early 1990s, I was unable to concisely explain junk bonds to my mother, despite the fact that I'd worked at a commercial bank and written economic reports! It's a good thing I got out of that business. Anyways, one of the economists whose work I've been reading of late is George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen, who may be the first member of his profession (along with Alex Taborrok) that I've read comprehensibly explain and graph in economic terms the relationship between artists' production of popular, mass-market artworks and those of a formally avant-garde nature. (Cf. the output of the late filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, for example). Cowen writes quite a bit about the economics of culture, globalization, and related topics. His ideological perspective tends, if I can describe it simply, towards the moderate, pro-capitalist libertarian (he has called himself a pluralist and "libertarian with a little l," acknowledging the limits of that perspective), and demonstrates a deep interest and knowledge in the arts and culture, in the broad and micro senses. One example I'd point to is his Reason Online article on protectionism and the French film industry, which not only presents a compelling argument against the French film quota system, but also offers a précis of French film history that I imagine many filmgoers may be unaware of. While I disagree a number of his conclusions, I still enjoy exploring his blog, whose most recent post asks people in India the names of random, deserving individuals there to whom he can send money. He also asks his readers to make "merit-based" donations to India as well. He also suggests skimping on tipping waiters in the US and sending the money to Haiti, ending jail terms for people convicted of marijuana possession and some other reasonable things; then again, Milton Friedman is one of his heroes....

Reading/Talk in Beacon, NY Next Weekend

For any and all who will be in or around Beacon, New York (home of the Dia Foundation for the Arts' Dia: Beacon Museum and not too far from Bard College) next weekend, artist and poet Chris Stackhouse and I will be read and talk about our book, Seismosis. Here's the press release from the Go North gallery, which will be featuring some of Chris's drawings in a summer group show, "Out of Line."

GO NORTH: A SPACE for CONTEMPORARY ART
469 Main St., Beacon, NY 12508
gonorthgallery@hotmail.com
www.gonorthgallery.blogspot.com

Drafting a Common (Abstract) Language: Seismosis as Conversation

Saturday, August 18th, 2PM @ GO NORTH GALLERY

Go North is please to present “Drafting a Common (Abstract) Language: Seismosis as Conversation”. Co-authors of the book Seismosis (1913 Press, 2006), John Keene and Christopher Stackhouse will explore the process and practice of conversation across and through distinctive generic lines--visual art and literature--by discussing and reading poems from and selected texts related to this collaborative project. Issues they hope to touch upon include the question of formal and thematic abstraction in specific genres, its relation to questions of race, identification, and authorial agency and autonomy, and the problematics of interpretation. How can the artist and poet speak to each other, and are there languages other than the ones they enact through which to enter their conversation?

“Drafting a Common (Abstract) Language: Seismosis as Conversation” is organized in conjunction with “Out of Line” an exhibition of work by 11 artists who use line as an expressive, formal, or conceptual element within traditional and non-traditional mediums. The show will be on view from August 4 to August 26, 2007. Copies of Seismosis will be available for purchase in the gallery.

Participating artists in “Out of Line” include: Elizabeth Beckman, Thomas Egan, Pamela Hardenburg, Erica Hauser, Kit Keith, Adam Menzies, Jon Patrick Murphy, Christopher Stackhouse, James Walsh, Eleanor White and Mike White.

Founded in September 2006 by artists Karlos Carcamo and Gregory Slick, Go North’s mission is to exhibit and promote art by local, national, and international artists. Its focus is contemporary art that is dedicated to exploring cutting-edge cultural and artistic issues by pushing the boundaries of traditional media. The gallery gives artists the opportunity to expand and explore new dimensions in their work while providing an important cultural resource to the growing arts community of Beacon, New York.

Gallery hours: Saturday and Sunday 12 - 6 PM, Friday by appointment.

756

(AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

Courtesy of Audiologo and the CC list: from Sfgate.com, author David Zirin's "756*!"

Bonds, Rodríguez, Glavine

Yesterday Barry Bonds tied Hank Aaron's home run record of 755 lifetime home runs, and my response was...ambivalence. It's undeniably extraordinary achievement, under any circumstances, to hit so many home runs and tie such longstanding record, especially if a player doesn't spend a 20-year career playing for the Colorado Rockies. At the same time, like any fan who has followed baseball for longer the last half-minute, I can't register Bonds's achievement without also recognizing that, as with an untold number of his peers, his skills and longevity have probably been chemically enhanced. It's true that he's never tested positive for steroid or amphetamine use, as far as I know, but he has been implicated in the steroid scandal that has plagued Major League Baseball for some time, and he has tacitly acknowledged that he may have used steroids but didn't realize it. (I don't believe he's stupid, so where does that leave him?)

Unlike some fans and many members of the mainstream sports media, who are apoplectic about Bonds's record-breaking feats (when he hit 73 home runs to break the androstenedioned Mark McGwire's record of 70, or this one), I understand why he and others may have gone this route in the late 1980s and through much of the 1990s: the benefits, in terms of potentially better stats and extended careers, which would lead to multimillion-dollar payoffs, were tremendous. A player who could bash 25 home runs as opposed to his usual 10, or 40 as opposed to 24, or 70 instead of 42, would certainly be in line for much better contract terms after such a season. Major League Baseball, for its part, had inklings that steroid and other drug use was occurring, and yet did little for years because its leaders and management wanted to see increased offense. The pitchers' seasons of 1968 set the sort of negative example against which some owners probably still have nightmares about. In the case of the aforementioned Mark McGwire, Major League Baseball eagerly encouraged his home run race against Sammy Sosa in 1998 as a way of rebuilding fan support after the labor debacles in 1990 and 1994, though it must have been clear that McGwire, an admittedly talented home run hitter, was being fueled by more than skill, determination, will, and luck. I am not sure how to explain Sosa's monster seasons, and I've never been convinced that he was also roided up, but what do I know? He nevertheless remains a subject of some disrepute, his amazing 1998 run and in subsequent years as tainted as Bonds's and McGwire's. In a sense, baseball and the media legitimated what these players were doing, at least until doing so became untenable, because the public found out about it and began to press the issue and ask questions.

Once upon a time I might have been tempted to hang a good deal of the regular sports media trashing of Sosa and Bonds on the fact that they're Black, which would require them to be beyond the beyond of reproach, but it's the case that while Bonds remains a special target, in part because of his personality and in part because of race, sluggers from the last 15 years across the racial and ethnic spectrum are under a cloud. (Earlier this season he hit his 600th, becoming only the fifth player to do so.) Some, like Rafael Palmeiro, who testified before Congress that he was clean only to soon thereafter test positive for steroids, are total outcasts. Others, like Jason Giambi, have admitted to steroid use and are forever tagged. A few, like Frank Thomas, Manny Ramírez, David Ortiz, and Vladimir Guerrero, appear to be above suspicion, while younger stars like Albert Pujols have had to defend their prodigious power.

Current record holder and Hall of Famer Hank Aaron chose to register his response by making no effort to be present at this or recent games, nor at any of the games in which Bonds may break the record. "I don't even know how to spell his name" was Aaron's bizarre and ridiculous comment some weeks ago, but it would make sense if he'd decided, after having praised Bonds in the past, not to certify this most recent achievement or the next one. Who knows what Bonds's final totals will be. I imagine he'll hit 775 or so, if he stays around for another year, and that he'll be elected to the Hall of Fame, though a minority of sportswriters won't be happen about it. He was already a Hall of Fame caliber player up to his transformation into a mega-slugger, and he deserves the honor. I personally won't be that excited about it, but at the risk of cynicism I also won't gainsay him the fact that he gamed his magnificent skills and the game better than any of his peers.

Astonishingly, just hours before Bonds's achievement came another spectacular one, Yankee Álex Rodríguez's 500th home run, making him the youngest player (at 32) to achieve this distinction. Rodríguez is grossly overpaid and a kind of negative-PR machine, but he is also one of the most talented players ever to play the game. He hits home runs like other players hit singles, and even if he has choked when the Yankees have most needed his power, he continues to put up numbers that seem to portend him breaking Bonds's record at some point in the future, especially if he plays till the age of 40 or 42. Without, as far as I can tell, ever having had to turn to steroids or anything similar. Rodríguez has been blasting homeruns at a furious pace this season, and despite slowing down somewhat already has 36. He may end up with 45, which would be a modest total for either league in recent years, but whatever the final tally, he's ensured he'll have his plaque and speech in Cooperstown.

Tonight, remarkably, yet another player established himself as one of baseball's all-time greats. Met Tom Glavine became the 23rd pitcher ever and the 5th left-hander to win 300 games, an even more difficult goal than hitting 3oo or even 400 home runs, especially nowadays when every team uses 5 man rotations, pitchers pitch considerably fewer complete games and fewer innings in general, and many don't make it past the ten-year mark. Glavine, the first active Met pitcher to reach the 300-win mark, is a year younger than me and began pitching the year I graduated from college, 1987; from the beginning he stood apart as one of the best of his generation. For nearly a decade (1993-2002), he was part of one of the best rotations ever, with Greg Maddux (another 300-game winner who's still playing) and John Smoltz. Together they helped ensure that Atlanta was a perennial contender. Glavine continues to pitch well and ought to hang on for a few more years, but with 2 Cy Young awards and now 300 wins in hand, he also can retire and expect to receive his own Hall of Fame call as soon as he's eligible. He definitely deserves it.

SCTV Bergman Parody + Filmmakers of Today + Chomsky on Non-War on Terror

Now for a little humor: SCTV's parody of Ingmar Bergman, Cries of the Wolf. I'd forgotten how silly and hilarious Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, John Candy, and company were. Enjoy!


On IMDb.com, on the Ingmar Bergman page threads, someone suggested that international cinema was "weaker" because of the deaths of these two extraordinary figures, and others like Ousmane Sembène. I agree that their deaths are a tremendous loss, but there are quite a few very talented, in some cases major, relatively prolific international film artists out there. Some of them, like Manoel Oliveira, are older than either Antonioni or Bergman, and still making films, while others are close in age or only a generation younger. And then there quite a few important makers of art films (broadly construed) in the 40-60 age range. The list I came up with includes:

Woody Allen, Theodoros Angelopoulos, Olivier Assayas, Lucas Belvaux, Bernardo Bertolucci, Catherine Breillat, Jane Campion, Laurent Cantet, Souleymane Cissé, Costa-Gavras, David Cronenberg, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del Toro, Claire Denis, Carlos Diegues, Atom Egoyan, Jean-Luc Godard, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Michael Haneke, Werner Herzog, Shohei Imamura, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Abbas Kiarostami, Kim Ki-Duk, Takeshi Kitano, Emir Kusturica, Spike Lee, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, David Lynch, Guy Maddin, Terrence Malick, Takeshi Miike, Nanni Moretti, Mike Nichols, Gaspar Noé, Manoel Oliveira, Nagisa Oshima, Idrissa Ouedragou, François Ozon, Ferzan Ozpetek, Jafar Panahi, Park Chan-Wook, Alexander Payne, Roman Polanski, Alain Resnais, Eric Rohmer, Raoul Ruiz, Walter Salles, Volker Schlöndorff, Martin Scorsese, Cheikh Omar Sissoko, Aleksandr Sokurov, Todd Solondz, Tsai Ming-Liang, Agnès Varda, Ventura Pons, Andrzej Wajda, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Peter Weir, Wim Wenders, Lina Wertmüller, and Wong Kar-Wai.

(Admittedly I've listed far too few women.) Whom would you add?

Audiologo mentions: Kasi Lemmons, Lisa Cholodenko, Nancy Savoca, Lucrecia Martel, Ana Kokkinos, Alison Maclean, and Delphine Gleize.

Other directors?

***

On a completely different note, here's a link to Geov Parrish's recent AlterNet interview with Noam Chomsky on the "war on terror," or the nonexistence thereof.

Says Chomsky:

The fact of the matter is that there is no War on Terror. It's a minor consideration. So invading Iraq and taking control of the world's energy resources was way more important than the threat of terror. And the same with other things. Take, say, nuclear terror. The American intelligence systems estimate that the likelihood of a "dirty bomb," a dirty nuclear bomb attack in the United States in the next ten years, is about 50 percent. Well, that's pretty high. Are they doing anything about it? Yeah. They're increasing the threat, by increasing nuclear proliferation, by compelling potential adversaries to take very dangerous measures to try to counter rising American threats.

This is even sometimes discussed. You can find it in the strategic analysis literature. Take, say, the invasion of Iraq again. We're told that they didn't find weapons of mass destruction. Well, that's not exactly correct. They did find weapons of mass destruction, namely, the ones that had been sent to Saddam by the United States, Britain, and others through the 1980s. A lot of them were still there. They were under control of U.N. inspectors and were being dismantled. But many were still there. When the U.S. invaded, the inspectors were kicked out, and Rumsfeld and Cheney didn't tell their troops to guard the sites. So the sites were left unguarded, and they were systematically looted. The U.N. inspectors did continue their work by satellite and they identified over 100 sites that were systematically looted, like, not somebody going in and stealing something, but carefully, systematically looted.

The Bridge Collapse in Minneapolis and Our Crumbling Infrastructure

I am still in a bit of shock at the horrific bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Although I know only a few people who live there now, several good friends spent considerable time in either Minneapolis or Saint Paul, and many writers I've come across over the years describe it as an artist's paradise. If there can be any good to come out of this tragic event, I hope that it's to push lawmakers and legislators to rethink the cuts to funding of our national infrastructure. This bridge is only one of many such structures suffering from sustained neglect and only cosmetic inspections and repair. I do complain about the outrageous taxes I have to pay to the state of New Jersey (or Illinois, for that matter, or the federal goverment), but I my querulousness subsides when I consider that I am paying, especially at the local level, for public education and health care needs, as well as infrastructure maintenance, repair and development. I once read somewhere that around 1/8th of the bridges in the country were in a state of noticeable disrepair, so perhaps this will focus attention--brief as it is in the US these days--on bridges first, and then on the myriad other infrastructure issues that receive the out-of-sight out-of-mind treatment until there's a crisis. (Remember the levees before Hurricane Katrina....)