Flightmare 1,000.0 + Ciro Rodriguez Lo Ha Ganado + CNN Gores Obama

Flightmare, the Neverending Story
I won't go so far as to say I've glimpsed Purgatory, but I would imagine that unlike Dante's, More's, Shakespeare's, or Baraka's versions, it looks and feels and smells a lot like the interior of O'Hare Airport. I am once again stuck here, waiting for a delayed flight that was supposed to take off at 6:10 pm, but has been pushed back to 9:30 pm or later. For close to the last three hours I've sat in or strolled about or galumphed around this recycled air-filled, dazed people-thronged, artery-bursting fastfood vendor clogged mini-maze of a terminal, trying to beat back the threat of a cold and to not get upset because what was years an easy and fairly drama-free, two-hour trip has become a phenomenal nightmare. The standard excuse I receive when I ask one of the ticketing agents or call Continental about the delays is "the weather" or "the air traffic control weather"--which makes no sense. The standard response used to be "the wind," which is totally unconvincing for the Newark portion of the trip, since I have spent about one fourth of my life living less than five miles away from Newark Liberty International Airport AND NEWARK AND ITS AIRPORT DID NOT AND DO NOT HAVE WIND PROBLEMS!!! The kind and always information liberal representatives of Continental, however, want me and everyone else to believe otherwise. (Chicago is another story, but I've landed in a rainstorm at both of its airports, in a snowstorm, in what felt like the beginnings of a tornado. The delays were always more common coming into O'Horror, but still not as frequent as they've become.) Tonight, however, I heard another explanation, which made me want to burst into laughter and scream at the same time. Tonight, a voluble epresentative of Continental assured me and everyone in earshot that Mayor Richard Daley, now vying for his sixth term, was to blame for the delays. That's right, His Windiness is the source of O'Horror's and Newark Illiberty's inabilities to land flights on time. Why? Well, as this supersapient woman understood it and felt the need to expatiate at the top of her voice, Mayor Daley craves expanding O'Horror (and not building a new one in the vast fields of Peotone, which was and is Jesse Jackson Jr.'s pet project), so he has [fill in the blank] which now slows down flights at Newark and O'Horror. But of course! I thought about mentioning the simple problem of Daley's lack of control over the air traffic controllers or the FAA or Continental Airlines or its semicompetent fellow carriers, and how flying had once been fun and how even People's Airlines used to be able to get you where you need to go on time, though their planes had duck tape on the wings, and how Continental was quickly racing towards the bottom to vie with Delta and United and American as the worst airlines in the country, but I decided not to waste my breath. Instead, I popped a Xicam lozenge and then, like the rest of the flying sheeple I went back to my little uncomfortable spot, called C. for the umpteenth time to tell him what was going on, opened up my computer and started typing away (as the man sitting near me complained in a stage whisper about his wireless connection then segued into talking about how "huge" and "fat" he felt (???) and how he usually biked 100 miles in the Texas hill country near Houston when spring came to raise money for charity, and then uttered sounds every so often, which I thought about recording but decided not to), and it's only 9 PM, so I have at least another hour to go....

Update: I finally did get back to New Jersey; I'm at home now, and it's 2 AM. Continental, you're doing a heck of a job!

¡Ciro Rodríguez lo ha ganado!
On a good note, Democrat Ciro Rodríguez defeated incumbent Republican Henry Bonilla in their Texas US House runoff race, giving the Democratic Congressional caucus a 30th, new vote, and another progressive member! Rodríguez had previously served in Congress, representing a San Antonio district, then lost his seat to Democrat in Name Only Henry Cuellar, who's voted for quite lots of anti-consumer legislation and even sat with the Republicans at this year's State of the Union speech. His attempts to unseat Cuellar had twice failed. But because of the Tom DeLay-ordered redistricting shenanigans, he got another opportunity after a federal court ruled that the newly drawn district might harm Latino voters, and redrew the district in a way that favored Rodríguez. This, coupled with the increased unpopularity of Republicans among Latinos, led to his strong 55%-45% defeat of Bonilla. The victory also certifies the Republicans' worst midterm losses since the Watergate era. (Who was spouting all that claptrap about how the new Democratic Congresspeople were all conservatives?) Congratulations to Rodríguez!

CNN Gores Obama
It never takes that long for elements in the mainstream media to show their nutty, racist colors. Article A: CNN has taken to split-screening Senator Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden! And Saddam Hussein! Now, they weren't the first launch onto the His-Middle-Name- Is-"Hussein" meme; Republican operative Ed Rogers had already latched onto this fact; his full name, for the record, is Barack Hussein Obama Junior, meaning he is named after his father (you know, like Albert Arnold Gore, Jr., or Edmund Gerald Brown, Jr., etc.), a Kenyan economist, and the "Hussein" is a family name. Yet this small fact has sent the seahorse-brained mainstream media punditry and rightwingosophere into a frenzy. His middle name is HUSSEIN, did you hear that? His middle name is HUSSEIN! HUSSEIN! Even though the US could never get enough of its favorite party-loving Middle Eastern monarch, King HUSSEIN of Jordan. And ole' Saddam HUSSEIN was a great pal of Ronald St. Raygun and George HW, starting wars with Iranian mullahs and gassing Kurds and Shiites and all kinds of wild and crazy stuff St. Raygun and Poppy just thought was dandy, until it wasn't. (But then St. Raygun also thought Osama bin Laden was pretty dandy too, calling him and the other mujahadeen "freedom fighters" and lavishing millions of our tax dollars and publicly-funded weaponry on them, while HW and W both had close personal relationships with the bin Laden family, so close that...but you already know all of this, despite the best interests of the media to keep their mouths shut about it.)

Oh--and we can't forget the Obama-Osama thing. When the natural pol initially ran for his Senate seat, some Republican wags tried to make hay of the similarities between Obama* and Osama (the first being a Luo name, the other Arabic, but both languages are primarily spoken by brown people, so hey, what's the difference? ["Sunnis...Shiites...I can't tell them apart"--Trent Lott]), though it obviously had little effect on the voters of Illinois. Obama has also been proactive about defusing negative (if not idiotic) commentary about his name, calling it "funny" while going on to note that the issue shouldn't be his name but his politics and policies, a simple point his potential constituents grasped fairly quickly.

Now Jeff Greenfield, one of the putative "liberal" newspettifoggers (though "putrid" would be more like it) has decided to participate in the budding wacky rhetorical war, consisting of winks and codes and the like, the usual visual regime of insinuation and insult that's waged without open acknowledgment, on Obama, just as the "liberal" media went on its rampage against Al Gore Jr., I suppose to damage him well in advance of the 2008 election. Greenfield came up with the utterly bizarre suggestion that Senator Odreamy was mimicking the style of...Mahmoud Ahmadinejad--the Holocaust-denying president of Iran (I will try to write about the spectacle taking place there tomorrow) who, like our own Crackpot-in-Chief, receives direct messages from God, which is covered in the DSMV, though I can't recall the exact syndromes! Huh? Then Jeannie Moos on CNN...well, I'll show the screen caps, courtesy of TPM Café, which also has the YouTube link:





Senator Obama, I think it's clear that they're really terrified of you, a young, brilliant, handsome, witty, engagingly charismatic Black man, and with these utterly inane and dizzy and ultimately dangerous people, who foisted the WORST PRESIDENT EVER upon us after engaging in their two-year assault against Al Gore, it's only going to get worse, I can assure you now....
--
*I seem to recall that one of my undergraduate classmates, who was from Kenya, was named Obama Obama, although he might actually have been a classmate of several good friends of mine, who were a year or two years after me. As to Obama Obama's whereabouts, I have no idea.

Quraysh Ali Lansana @ Second Sun + Other News

Quraysh Ali Lansana at Second Sun
I told Krista Franklin today that Naïeveté Studios were becoming my second home in Chicago, and it felt that way today as I was back there to hear fellow poet Quraysh Ali Lansana read from his poetry. Q is a professor at Chicago State University and one of the primary forces behind Chicago State's annual Gwendolyn Brooks Conference Writers' Conference for Black Literature and Creative Writing. It's usually in that capacity that I see him in the city, but he's also the author of two collections of poetry, a children's book, and several chapbooks, and the editor or co-editor of several more, including Roll Call (with Samiya Bashir and Tony Medina, 2002), which included two of my poems. Just a few years ago he published the highly regarded volume They Shall Run--Harriet Tubman Poems (Third World Press, April 2004). He's also a musician, and teaches poetry to Chicago schoolchildren when he's not raising his own family. This afternoon he read early personal poems and very new ones in the same vein, a combination most poets usually don't try except when reading a collected anthology or similar volume, yet his selection worked very well. I mentioned to him during the post-reading affirmation period that his condensed language managed to spring entire worlds forward, which made the poems sound and feel richer than their deceptively brief presences on the page might portend. As always, the crowd was full, there was delicious food, quite a bit of art filled the walls and display nooks, and the winter-dispelling hot wine, which manages to render the December winds a little more bearable, flowed freely as always.

Q, during the reading

Part of the audience, right before the reading

During the reading: Tyehimba Jess (foreground), Krista Franklin and Emily Evans listening and reflecting

Karen Carter Loses, Democracy Wins (?)
The people of New Orleans overwhelmingly reelected their incumbent federal representative, William Jefferson, despite serious criminal charges hanging over his head, rejecting the challenge by Karen Carter in yesterday's runoff election. Or perhaps he was reelected because of them; Jefferson is an embattled sitting Congressperson, facing federal indictments for alleged bribery and other crimes, and in addition to convincing local and national Black politicians to circle their wagons around him, was able to rally a majority of Black voters and enough Whites in Jefferson Parish, on the southern side of the Mississippi River, to his cause. Despite a progressive history, including founding a "progressive Democratic" group, he attacked Carter's support for gay and abortion rights in the latter weeks of the campaign. The notorious, racist Jefferson Parish sheriff, Henry Lee, also came out harshly against Carter for calling attention to the fact that he forbade New Orleansians and visitors fleeing Hurricane Katrina from crossing a bridge to safety. How effective he can and will be in Washington, as he spends time dealing with lawyers and lawsuits, is anyone's question, and it's also moot how his fellow Democratic caucus will respond. The incoming Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi of California, has already removed him from one committee post. Had Carter been elected, she would become the first Black woman to represent Louisiana in Congress. If Jefferson is convicted, and the evidence against him appears damning, Carter very well could head to Washington, though not as soon as she or her supporters would have liked.

Mortgage Market Problems
Today on DailyKos there's a thorough diary on the problems in the mortgage market. The housing market is down in many parts of the country, and has softened considerably in Chicago, but much of the coverage I've seen has focused on sales and building, rather than on the banking side of things. The Kos entry, by bonddad, points to the collapse of the country's 11th largest sub-prime lender, Ownit, the serious problems that 2006 loans in general are having, and the rising price of credit derivatives, which are insurance policies of a sort for mortgages. This is bad news for the economy on many levels, but the mainstream media don't seem to be too interested in reporting it, at least not now when it might scare consumers away from racking up even more debt in pursuit of crap they hardly need and don't really want. But it's worth checking out.

Troy Smith Wins Heisman
After Rutgers' loss to Cincinnati, which knocked them out of the national race, I pretty much stopped following college football (they subsequently lost to West Virginia and thus were out of the Big East league championship race).

That is, I avoided it as much as I could, though since the university is in the Big 10 conference, I constantly heard about or saw the name of the league's and nation's most dominant team, The Ohio State University, which will play the national championship game against the University of Florida. This year's Heisman Trophy winner is the stunning young man at left (photo from Detroit Free Press, LOUIS LANZANO/Associated Press), Troy Smith, who has quarterbacked Ohio State to its 12-0 record.

Smith graciously thanked his teammates for their roles in his award, and also called attention to a friend's father, Ted Ginn, Jr., who has served as a surrogate parent for him. After a period of attitudinal problems in high school, Smith, with the help of this surrogate father, was able to turn his life around. He'll need every iota of fortitude and perserverance against Florida, a point he duly expressed after receiving the award.

Hell Welcomes a New Resident
That's how Steve Gilliard puts it over at the News Blog, and no, I don't mean Jeane Kirkpatrick. Instead, he and others are writing about the death of Augusto Pinochet, the brutal dictator of Chile for over 15 years, who managed to escape foreign and domestic prosecution for his many crimes, which included the overthrow of the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende, in 1973. (There are many excellent books on Chile's long nightmare, but two of the best, fairly recent fictional ones that come to mind are by the late, extraordinary Roberto Bolaño: By Night in Chile and Distant Star.)

I say, Adios, carnicerote.

Photos: Kwame Dawes @ Naïeveté Studios

Here are few more photos from the Naïeveté Studios-hosted reading by and reception for poet Kwame Dawes.

Krista Franklin introducing Dawes

Kwame Dawes reads from Wisteria

Fans gathering and getting his autograph

In the kitchen, Toni Asante Lightfoot whips up some scrumptious hot wine

poet and professor Tracy Hall

People gathering to chat and sample the refreshments

Poem + RIP: kari edwards

I just learned that kari edwards (1954-2006) passed away this weekend. She was an important experimental poet and a longtime dynamic transgender/body disruption activist. After hearing about her and her work for several years, we finally met a couple times at different readings, though I never had an opportunity to sit down with her and talk about her work. During the first year of this blog, I linked up to one of her blogs, Transdada, though she ran several others, including Transsubmutation and In Words. She published a number of books, including Obedience (factorybooks, 2005) and a day in the life of p (A a Arts, 2002), and appeared in a range of anthologies, including most recently Biting the Error: 40 Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House, 2004), Best American Poetry 2004 (Simon & Schuster, 2004) and Bisexuality and Transgenderism (The Haworth Press, 2004).

In its most recent email, the Poetry Project included a selection from her book Obedience, which I'll reprint here:

this is duration


this is an indefinite continuation


this is a continuation of the indefinite


this is a claim number’s damp residue sealed dream


this is tomorrow’s tomorrow -
wandering in a murmur of midnight


this is duration spark


and this is duration on the edge of intimacy


this could be the sound of a child’s cry


the body that becomes ecstasy

Copyright © kari edwards, 2004, 2006.

Karen Carter + Obama Inc + Inland Empire + Kwame Dawes @ Naïeveté

Karen Carter for Congress
You thought the 2006 midterms were over, right? No, I know you're up on things, and you know that Karen Carter (at right) is in a runoff against scandal-tainted, gay-baiting William Jefferson, in whose freezer the FBI just happened to find $90,000 of a $100K bribe that was allegedly meant for the Nigerian Vice President. (I wish I'd thought of that as a plot element.) Jefferson has not been convicted of anything yet, and is innocent until proven guilty under our legal system, which means that he can still run for Congress and act like he's doing his job, but why not help to ensure that can devote his full energies and time to defending himself and put Karen Carter in office instead? She needs your help to win her 2nd Congressional District race in Louisiana. If elected, she won't be so compromised that she can't work hard for the people of her district, who desperately need a representative focused on their needs and concerns in Washington, as well as one with an active and effective record of legislative success.

If you can, help Karen Carter out and give the Democratic caucus in the House one more voice they need.

Riding the President Obama Train
Last night, as I paused to break from my work work, I began to write a short fable about a young African-American Senator who once upon a time was a notably outspoken, progressive state legislator, and who, after dazzling viewers nationally with his stirring speech at the Democratic convention and winning election to the US Senate in spectacular landslide fashion, began moving quickly first to the center, and then to the right. Now, instead of addressing union halls and demanding a swift exit for our troops from Iraqmire, he's giggling with evangelicals and identifying faults among his fellow Democrats as he glides among rich potential backers and party hacks in an effort to prepare the ground for a possible presidential run.

Yet I came across a link to a long and involved essay, "Barack Obama Inc." in Harper's, by Ken Silverstein, on my projected fable's protagonist, Senator Barack Obama (above left, in front of the Superman statue in Metropolis, Illinois) and ended up scrapping what I wrote in favor of pointing readers to this superior, informative piece. After reading it, I considered the fact that Illinoisans are in a good position these days, since they have the liberal, very outspoken Dick Durbin in the Democratic leadership, which now has control of the Senate, and a charismatic, Grammy-winning, best-selling national figure, who floats above the fray but still can deliver some local goods when needed. On the other hand, Black Americans really lose out because since Obama has decided to be a national figure--in case he decides to run for the presidency--we have no one willing to take stands specifically on our behalf in that elite club of 100 as Carol Moseley-Braun sometimes would, or as Obama did before his rock-star echo chamber starting blaring. He has consistently opposed the war in Iraq, did speak out about Hurricane Katrina and has proposed some citizen and consumer-friendly legislation, but recently, while gladhanding George Soros and other amply moneyed friends in New York City, he uttered the sort of weak, triangulating mush about the horrific police killing of Sean Bell in Queens that Democratic voters--and not just Black ones--have come to dread from presidency-craving wannabes. Obama cannot be all things to all people, especially most Black people, and right now, he wants to be the bestest, most moderate Demopublican America could ever dream of.

This is why I think it's crucial that in the next election cycle we elect another African-American senator, and preferably a very progressive, outspoken one from a soundly blue state, who has no designs on the presidency. Harold Ford Jr. would not have been that person, since he was ideologically to the right of Arlen Specter, but Kweisi Mfume, despite his personal baggage, might have done it. It's too bad Deval Patrick was just elected governor of Massachusetts, or he'd be a good option. Perhaps New Jersey State Senator Nia Gill, one of Jon Corzine's alleged considerations for the seat that became Bob Menendez's, will run to replace snoozing doozy Frank Lautenberg, who is likely to and should retire after his term is up.

"extraordinary, savagely uncompromised"
So says the iffy Manohla Dargis of David Lynch's INLAND EMPIRE--and there's much more about this super-bizarre Lynchian dream that'll soon be on movie screens. I. cannot. wait. to. see. it!!!

Reception and Reading for Kwame Dawes at Naïeveté Studios
I'll post more photos tomorrow from the reading, which was excellent, but here's one of poet Kwame Dawes, as he was speaking, pre-reading, about "Miss Rosalie," one of the larger-than-life Sumter, South Carolina denizens whose stories and spirits animate his marvelous 11th book of poems Wisteria (Red Hen, 2006).

For people in Chicagoland, he'll be reading tomorrow at the University of Illinois Chicago's Institute for the Humanities, at 6 pm, 701 S. Morgan, and giving a lecture on "The Art of Bob Marley" at the Chicago Cultural Center's Claudia Cassidy Theater, 78 E. Washington Street, with receptions to follow both events.

Post-Apartheid Fiction + Anti-Gay Repression http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifin Middle East + Spelman Opens Lorde Archive

New South African Fiction
My former student Brian O. hipped me to Rachel Donadio's piece, "Post-Apartheid Fiction," in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine. Its real focus is on the 30-something generation of South African Black male novelists (no female or mixed-race writers are really profiled), and in usual Times fashion, the central issue appears to be: who's going to be the next big thing, which is to say, who'll fill Zakes Mda's footsteps? Donadio selects Niq Mhlongo, one of the liveliest of the new vein of writers, while also mentioning two of the once bright hopes, now deceased--K. Sello Duiker (above, from Boekworm.co.za), a suicide at 30 after a battle with bipolar disorder and depression, and Phaswane Mpe, who died of AIDS at 34.

She also touches upon the larger context, exploring the psychic and social toll the post-apartheid era and its successes, including the rise of a Black elite and middle class, and discontents, from increasing societal hierarchization and stratification to the scourge of AIDS, have taken on the emerging writer, and on the various kinds of negotiations, such as writing in English while speaking local, sometimes hybridized languages, for a public that is marked by extensive illiteracy and poverty, placing the books out of reach of the very people portrayed in them. Who, Donadio seemed to be asking--as Nobel Laureate J. M. Coetzee, who as one of the leading non-Black South African writers is briefly mentioned here, asked in one of the most important chapters of Elizabeth Costello when the eponymous White female writer confronts the Black African author who's performing his African literariness on the ship, in effect speaking for Coetzee himself and countless other African writers--is the intended audience or audiences? And what roles does such a literature play and what effects can it have? This got me to thinking about the different ways, short of translation into a different, more accessible medium (film, TV) the narratives might circulate and reach the mass of Black people there. I left with the sense that the complexity of the new society that has come into being may require a range of approaches and styles, and perhaps no single literary powerhouse will emerge anytime soon, which wouldn't be a problem; what's wrong with an array of voices, in concert and discord, reflecting the realities of the South Africa that now exists?

Prisoners of (Gay) Sex
Also in this Sunday's Times Magazine was Negar Azimi's "Prisoners of Sex," which looked at the circulation and rise of contemporary globally-informed gay identification and practices in some Muslim Arab countries and the accompanying brutal, sometimes deadly backlash. (The article focused primarily on men and said only a little bit about the problems facing lesbians beyond looking at the life of one woman.) Several aspects of the article interested me. One was what I saw as a quasi-Foucauldian* narrative playing out: as the globalized forms of gay identities took hold, in Egypt for example, supplanting prior local forms, and were publicly named and performed, new rhetorics and forms of repression also came into being, since what was not discursively identified could not be punished before, or at least in the same ways, and with the same rhetoric. One example of this was the film The Yacoubian Building, which showed a bourgeois gay man living out a life that might not be out of place outside Egypt, and it met with swift condemnation from religious conservatives and political opportunists, yet I imagine that more subterranean, local forms of homosexual desire and practices, which were not publicly aired or presented so overtly, might not have provoked such a clamor. (I'm not arguing for them, let me make clear--and as the article notes, this film has been a runaway hit.) The suggested conflict between the globalized gay identities and practices (and more broadly other kinds and forms of social liberalism), and concepts of religiously inflected nationalism was also fascinating. In effect, one way of reading the attacks on gay people was as a horribly misguided means through which to "defend" and "protect" the sanctity of the Egyptian-- Muslim Arab--nation from this pernicious Western form of (post-)modernity. (Of course there's a lot more to be said on this.) As a result, in an effort to end some of the persecution, representatives from the global gay rights movement chose not to appeal to universalist or Western notions, but to specific local beliefs, concerns and worldviews, particularly around the lack of popular, public support for torture, with some success. Scott Long of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Campaign (IGLHRC) described it like this: "Perhaps we had less publicity for the report in the United States because we avoided fetishizing beautiful brown men in Egypt being denied the right to love....We wrote for an Egyptian audience and tried to make this intelligible in terms of the human rights issues that have been central in Egyptian campaigns. It may not have made headlines, but it seemed to make history." Yet Azimi makes clear that the conditions for further repression and oppressive measures are present, and that such an eventuality could very well happen at any point. He ends the with the following two paragraphs, which capture something central to his piece:

Today the Queen Boat continues to sit docked on the Nile, its name clumsily respelled “Queen Boot” in garish green neon. It is hardly the gay hangout it once was, instead catering to the very occasional budget tourist. Many dragged away by the police that evening five years ago have since left the country, and others keep a low profile, although there are signs that young people have begun cruising the Nile banks again and meeting on the Internet.

As I prepared to leave Cairo at the beginning of the fall, I received an e-mail message from M., the businessman from the Queen Boat, since relocated to the States. “I sit here, and the Americans talk about something called Islamic fascism, the Arabs go on about their values,” he wrote. “All of us, and I don’t mean gay men, I mean all of us who don’t fit the norm — democracy activists, queens, anything — it’s us who get branded as Western, fifth columnists. We pay the price.”

*Azimi does mention Foucault at one point, in fact, though only for illustrative purposes.

Spelman to Make Lorde Archive Public
Rod 2.0 posts on Spelman College's plan to make Audre Lorde's personal archive public. He points out that according to Lorde's will, her archive, which she bequeathed to the historically Black women's college after her death in 1992, was to remain closed until a biography of her was completed. That occurred in 2004 with the publication of The Warrior Poet. He goes on to note that the Women's Research and Resource Center, which houses the Lorde archive and is celebrating its 25th anniversary, will, according to its director, Dr. Beverly Guy-Sheftall, be shifting its focus to combatting homophobia. What a wonderful step for Spelman College, for all interested in Lorde's crucial and pioneering work and in Black LGBT literature, and for increased openness and discussions, particularly around gender and sexualities studies, at historically Black colleges and universities!

Update: From Reggie H--> FYI: Brian Whitaker, author of Unspeakable Love: Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East, and Noa Sattath, the executive director of Jerusalem Open House (which hosted World Pride 2006 in Jerusalem), were interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air Wednesday 12/5. The interview is available on their website.

Beta Blogger + Beach Pics + Courting Segregation + Brooks on Beyoncé

Bedeviled by Beta Blogger
Since I temporarily lost my blog because of my attempt to switch to Beta Blogger, I've kept open my email updates to the thread I started on the Google Groups site, and almost every other day, at least one or two new bloggers join the thread, in complete panic, because their attempted switches to Beta Blogger have resulted in the complete disappearance of their blogs. Like me, they attempt to contact Blogger via its Help site, but receive no response. None. After repeated email appeals, they discover Google Groups Blogger Help Group, find the place to post, and start or join a thread as I did, at which point a Google employee responds fairly quickly and lets them know how to retrieve or refind their blog. This leads me to ask: why does Blogger even have the Help page if they're not going to respond to it concerning vanished blogs? Why not just put a big, blinking sign on it urging people to go directly to Google Groups Blogger Help if the Beta switch turns into a disaster? And why doesn't the Beta Blogger page contain extensive warnings about the potential disappearance of your blog if you try it? Wouldn't Google spare itself a lot of frantic posts, rants, and denunciations if they were up front about the problems people are encountering?

At the Beach in December
Before I began spending part of each year in Chicago, I had never lived in short walking distance to a beach. There are numerous beaches in Massachusetts and New Jersey, but none that I could reach from where C and I haved lived in less than a hour. The one time a buddy of mine and I visited Revere Beach, which was train ride away from where we were living at the time, we got so freaked out by how completely the people, stores and restaurants near there seemed trapped in the mid-1970s, down to a kitschy Shawn Cassidy mirror on the wall of a pizza shop there, that she and I ran as fast as we could back to the train for fear of getting stuck there. We could already feel the mullets starting to grow. The eastern edge of the city of Chicago is lined by an almost continuous beach that I like to stroll to when it's warm or even cool, since I find the churning waves and the rote that fills my ears to be incredibly calming, as well as beautiful. (I am never here in the summers, so I never experience the extensive beach culture--instead, we get the New Jersey kind.) Today, on the way to the university, I stopped (driving, however, not walking) by Loyola Beach, one of the northernmost in Chicago, to spend a few minutes at the vast inland sea, also known as Lake Michigan. It was far too cold (around 25°F in the sun, with a light wind blowing landwards) to stand outside longer than a few minutes, but I love visiting the lake, which up close feels like a sea, down to its steely immensity, sky-rimmed horizon (except on certain days, when points on the Michigan shoreline are visible) and the seabirds that gather on the docks and pilings and benches. Today, there were lots of gulls, and, though I've seen it numerous times, vast coats of snow and ice atop the sand. Since I still tend to associate beaches with summertime (unless I'm in the tropical place), it surprises me when I see a thick white crust atop the undulating sandy mounds. The snow does disappear the closer you get to the lakewater. I snapped a few pictures and then hurried back to the car before I froze, but the sight and sound of the water had its relaxing effect, as always.

The lake, a pier, and the snow-covered sand.

A lake view south towards the Chicago Loop

The shoreline path, looking south (the Sears Tower is visible just several hundred yards down this path)

One of the park courts, and Rogers Park's stolid buildings in the background

Worst Supreme Court Ever
Yes, that's hyperbole; there have been worse ones, such as the one under Roger "Dred Scott Decision" Taney, to give one example. The new right-wing majority on the court, however, was created by the Worst President Ever, an sobriquet for the Resident I began using a while ago, along with Warrantless Wiretapper (all but forgotten, like everything else he's had a hand in) and Emperor Katrina, and now the Washington Post, sometimes his court paper, has decided to come to its senses and validate this view in its Outlook section. Mostly. (He's competing against the likes of Richard Nixon, Herbert Hoover, Warren Harding, Millard Fillmore, James Madison, James Buchanan....) But that wasn't the aim of this entry; instead, I wanted to call attention to one of the effects of this horrible new court he's created, led by the genteel and nauseatingly ultraconservative John Roberts Jr. It's strongly considering helping to reinstitute segregation in public secondary schools. De facto, that is--but segregation nevertheless. Today's arguments before the Roberts court looked very bad for proponents of racially distributive school assignment plans to integrate students in districts in Louisville and Seattle. As the New York Times's Linda Greenhouse describes it, the question is not whether the plans will be overturned, but how far will the justices go. She described the new court's scrutiny of the integration plans as "hostile" and moderate-to-liberal justices as "visibly dispirited" by the line of questioning. For the conservatives, as I read Greenhouse, any accounting for race in the distribution decision-making to achieve racial integration was equated with segregation, though that would be the likely effect if the plans were struck down. This decision, if it turns out as Greenhouse augurs, is sure to be one of more than a few notorious ones with Worst President Ever's death-tainted fingerprints all over it. If there is any motivation to keep the likes of John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, or some of the other Republican wannabes the media is slavering over out of the White House, let me utter one name: John Paul Stevens. Right now, the court has a quasi-swing vote in right-winger Anthony Kennedy, who is hostile to some progressive or liberal views but not others. With another far right authoritarian type of the Thomas-Scalia (who mocked global warming last week)-Roberts-Alito stripe on the highest court, Kennedy's views would be superfluous either way. We cannot let this happen, especially now that Worst President Ever spirals ever deeper into dystopian fantasies of his continued relevance. He, like many in the Republican Party (cf. second in command Trent Lott) has shown that he is going to be even more recalcitrant, truculent and dangerous, despite the national rebuke of his administration and its policies, especially regarding Iraqmire and the disintegrating situation across the Middle East.

Beyoncé, by Brooks
I'm very much an anti-hype person, but I've been totally sucked in by the Dreamgirls pre-release press. I can't wait to see it, both because the original is one of my favorite musicals (I even found a way to weave Jennifer Holiday, singing one of the musical's anthems, into a poem), but also because I want to see how well this new cast animates the story on the screen. (At right, Annika Noni Rose, Beyoncé Knowles, and Jennifer Hudson, from couturecandy.com.) Oscar winner Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy, and chanteuse Jennifer Hudson are all receiving acclaim for their performances, but the supernova among them is the 25-year-old R&B babydiva, Beyoncé Knowles, who plays the Diana Ross-esque part she'd already assumed in real life with her now-defunct group Destiny's Child. I'm not a Beyoncéphile nor one of the constant critics of her style/voice/relationship/etc., but I've enjoyed her singing since Destiny's Child's début, including her first solo effort. The songs I began to hear from B'Day, the newest one, however, didn't really grab my interest, so I while I would catch some of the tracks on the radio, I didn't download any of them. The one day last week I was reading the New York Times, and came across Kelefa Sanneh's review of Beyoncé's new CD. His praise-tinged analysis of her song "Irreplaceable," which I hadn't heard, got me to check it out. And I disliked it, to put it mildly--and right after that it popped up every time I landed on a video channel or show on TV. Today I came across the brilliant Daphne Brooks's reading and historicizing of Beyoncé's B'Day, entitled "Suga Mama, Politicized," in the new Nation, and I found it so well-written and provocative that I just may give the CD another chance. Well, all of it except for "Irreplaceable."

Around the Globe
Hugo Chávez coasts to reelection as Venezuela's president, loved by the poor because of his socialist revolution, despised by the middle and wealthy classes (and the US administration) because of his socialist revolution • Fiji has suffered its 4th military coup in the last 20 years, and Australia has sent warships but will not intervene - Four US servicepersons are killed when a military plane crashes in Anbar Province in Iraq, while over 70 bodies were found in Baghdad and other cities • Ethnic cleansing and de facto partitioning is occurring apace in Iraq despite rhetoric to the contrary • More than 1,000 people are thought dead in the aftermath of the Phillipines typhoon • A US Marine is sentenced to 40 years for rape in the Phillipines • Gay unions near 16,000 in the UK • Bill Clinton becomes an honorary chief in Papua New Guinea as he helps to battle AIDS there

Naïeveté Artists' Coop Galaxy Angel Trunk Show

Naïeveté Studios Open House
Naïeveté Studios/Artists' Co-op, the hosts of the Second Sun gatherings I've posted about several times, held their Galaxy Angel Trunk Show yesterday and today. The show-sale featured visual, video, sonic, print, plastic, and craft works by many of the artists affiliated with the co-op, including Niz[zo]; D. Denenge Akpem; E2 Photos & Deserts; HAJI Couture; Naïeveté Records; and Krista Franklin.

I wasn't able to attend last night's Galaxy Angel Afterparty, which featured DJ Itch 13, live performances, and an open mic, but I did stop by today and got to speak with some of the artists who were exhibiting, as well as a number of other Chicagorati who'd dropped by to stay warm, view the art, converse, select potential holiday gifts, and announce upcoming projects and events. I snapped a few photos when not sampling the delicious "hot," which the antidote, along with all the beauty on display, for the Wintry City's ferocious cold spell.

One of the displays, featuring Krista Franklin's work

People chatting, in front of a video projection

Niz's, E2's, and others' works

Some of Niz's LP paintings (the three in the second row are my favorites)

A tarot reading

One of the youngest revelers

***
More Virtual Chicago

Foster Avenue, Chicago, under a full moon (and 12°F cold)

Snow + Reading @ Adodi Chicago

For those far away from the frigid heartland (it was 16°F last night), here are some pictures of this weekend's snowfall.

At the university

Heading to Chicago, one of the ploughed Evanston streets

An Evanston house lit up for the holidays

Chicago is at the end of the street and around the corner
***
Here are few photos from my Adodi Chicago reading today, in downtown Chicago. A decent crowd of people attended, and what was particularly gratifying was the discussion that followed the reading.

Looking over the text

After the discussion

Passing the cookies one of the members made

World AIDS Day

Today is the 18th annual observation of World AIDS Day, and the theme is "Keep the Promise." Back in 2000, heads of state made a promise not only to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS but also to begin to reverse its growth by 2015.

As one of the main coordinating sites for the worldwide observation of this special day notes, however, around 65 million people across the globe are living with HIV/AIDS, and the number of people affected, rather in decreasing, increases every day. More than 25 million people have died since the disease was first identified in 1981, with 2.9 million dying so far this year. Southern Africa and the Caribbean are the worst hit regions on the globe, but the AIDS pandemic touches every nation and colony on earth. World Heath Organization estimates suggest that if current trends continue, 117 million people will perish, making AIDS the third leading cause of death in the world.

"Where are you now, now that I need you,
now that I need you, now that I need you?"

Last year I posted a very, long personal entry, which included thoughts and poems about HIV/AIDS, but this year I'll take a different turn, posting some important links to check out, and offering part of this space to the late writer, scholar, critic, ancestor, and altogether fierce person Melvin Dixon (1950-1992), who died from AIDS complications 14 years ago. His first book of poems, Change of Territory, which appeared in 1983, dazzled me when I first came across it; there is nothing in it that deals directly with HIV/AIDS, and hardly anything that's overtly gay, but its record of journeys, of travel and exile, of presence and absence, of a search for names and places to call home, resonates I think very well with the journeys and losses of AIDS pandemic's 25 year span. I also want to evoke Melvin, whom I knew a little, because his life and death are emblematic to me of AIDS pandemic's ravages. He was only 42 years old when he died, a year older than I am today (at the time he seemed so--grown, as they say), and in his short life he was on the move: he had published two novels, an important critical study of African-American literature, and a book of poems, and he'd also translated the collected poems of the great Senegalese poet and co-founder of Négritude, Léopold Sédar Senghor. All that in 42 years. I often think of what he, like so many of the people felled by AIDS over the years, might have accomplished had he lived. He'd be in his late 50s, perhaps still teaching at Queens, certainly publishing more books of poetry, more novels, the essays (and more) that my colleague Dwight McBride has so finely edited with Justin A. Joyce (Melvin Dixon: A Critical Reader, Mississippi, 2006).

"Where are you now, now that I need you,
now that I need you, now that I need you?"

Bernie as always has a very thoughtful entry on the topic, as well as a World AIDS Day Blogroll. Several points he and others make are invaluable in addressing the ongoing HIV/AIDS's ongoing toll:

Educate yourself--read up on HIV/AIDS, and learn how it's transmitted, how it's treated, and how you can take care of yourself and others by asssessing risks, negotiating your behavior, and taking precautions.

Share your knowledge with others--share what you know, even if people do not want to hear it. You might be surprised. As the old slogan says and it's still true: Silence=Death.

Take responsibility for your actions--Acknowledge the risks of your actions, take precautions and take responsibility for your behavior.

I would add: GET TESTED regularly. Do not assume that because you look or feel fine that you might not be HIV positive, and don't assume the same of others. More than 38 million people across the globe have HIV and don't realize it.

A few other sites to check out:

Keith's Debunking of Myths About Black Men & AIDS + List of World AIDS Day Events

UNAIDS: A Joint United Nations Program on AIDS

Avert.org's World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day on MySpace

AllAfrica.com: World AIDS Day

World AIDS Day Resources at The Body

Two poems by Melvin Dixon (at right, portrait by Robert Giard, from ArtistswithAIDS.com)

Angels of Ascent

to Robert Hayden

You know us, all of us, by the tracks
we left in Norfolk and Nashville,
Ann Arbor and Detroit. You know us
by the hollow of our screams
shuttling from street to street:
cautious Stefan, zany me, and Richard
with his chattering teeth on edge.

One of us stayed with you for a time
in Tennessee, someone you claimed
as "orphan boy" and hugged
late at night. Your words
conjuring mysteries of the body
sent him looking for kin.

And still we search. You hear us
hissing like the sea at shipboards,
whisking our arms in first flight.
Your name fluttering in our talk
"Robert Hayden gone a-movering,
movering home."

One in New Have I shook your hand,
held onto that flesh of words. You knew
what mystery children we are, how we ache
in dark and dreamy valleys of paradise
for absolute gravity, with no names
for the spaces we inhabit, nor any
last tears for being there.

from Hemispheres

Beware all round shapes:
earth, moon, sun,
kneecaps, elbows, eyeballs,
and the ridge of any man or woman
that can pull you in deep.
Beware globes of the body
moving on an axis
of easy pleasure.

"I can take you around the world,
to the end of the world," he smiled.

"Travelin'," I said.

Where are you now, now that I need you,
now that I need you, now that I need you?

© Estate of Melvin Dixon, University of Kentucky Press, 1983.

Mega-Dis in Amman + Bushophiles Loopy? + JengoTV + Varnedoe on Abstract Art

Bush Humiliated by Maliki
It's come to this: reality bites--and bites the non-fact-based community hard. For political reasons, the President of the United States got publicly dissed by the puppet he pushed to install--for political reasons. Tonight's abruptly canceled "high stakes" summit between W Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, which the US mainstream media had begun to subserviently hype as they have so much of the Potemkin stagecraft and shadowplay for years with this charlatan, is the culminating embodiment of so much that's gone wrong since W was handed the office on a Supreme platter in 2000. Perhaps he is still unaware that a "civil war"--as even the abashed former Secretary of State General Colin Powell is now calling it--that W refuses to call a civil war rages not far from where he was publicly humiliated; that Iran is considerably stronger than it was in 2003 before the war, as is Syria; and that his advisors and generals increasingly are calling his folly just that, a folly. Put another way, it's over. Over, and more than the mainstream US media were watching. Author Ron Suskind, like so many others (John DiIulio, Paul O'Neill, Richard Clarke, etc.) noted that from the get-go W Ltd. disdained the reality-based community, an assertion proved so many times it became the norm and then a truism, but even W, in his haze or daze, take your pick, must have understood tonight's snub for what it really was. The zombies* can continue to deny that people are being executed gangster-style or set on fire in public squares, that Iraqis' futures look so bleak many no longer can envision a viable future, and that a nationalist cleric who made clear his hatred of the US early on is now calling the shots. But they won't be able to deny that this president, who so arrogantly arrogated himself to the stature of Churchill, Lincoln and others, received a slap across the face harder and more insulting than his party's loss of Congressional power just a few weeks ago. The corporate-synchronized US media will do their best to salvage whatever dignity may remain for him, to help him salvage face (since it's beyond saving, like Iraq), but across the rest of the world, if there were any doubts about how disastrous he's been, they've been dispelled forever.

*The Truth About Bushophiles
Straight from Tom Tomorrow via DailyKos comes a brief report from the New Haven Advocate on a study by Christopher Lohse, a Southern Connecticut State University masters student in social work: there is "a direct link between mental illness and support for President Bush." I can't vouch for the accuracy of the claims in it, but I had to post it nevertheless. Says the report:

Lohse says his study is no joke. The thesis draws on a survey of 69 psychiatric outpatients in three Connecticut locations during the 2004 presidential election. Lohse’s study, backed by SCSU Psychology professor Jaak Rakfeldt and statistician Misty Ginacola, found a correlation between the severity of a person’s psychosis and their preferences for president: The more psychotic the voter, the more likely they were to vote for Bush. [...]

“Our study shows that psychotic patients prefer an authoritative leader,” Lohse says. “If your world is very mixed up, there’s something very comforting about someone telling you, ‘This is how it’s going to be.’”

The study was an advocacy project of sorts, designed to register mentally ill voters and encourage them to go to the polls, Lohse explains. The Bush trend was revealed later on.

Not that this wasn't apparent all along....

JengoTV
Bernie passed along an email press release for JengoTV, a new online resource and video site for LGBT people of color. Jengo describes itself like this:

JengoTV emerged from the overwhelming response and popularity of Inside Blast, an LGBT of color news and entertainment show created in February 2006.

Jengo means "building strength'' in Swahili. JengoTV is the premiere online media network for the LGBT community of color. Founded in September 2006, the goal of JengoTV is to provide original content by, for and about the LGBT community of color and gay-friendly supporters. Our site is filled with a variety of groundbreaking and acclaimed gay, lesbian films and music videos. Inside Blast is an original talk show on JengoTV and features many gay-friendly celebrities and music artists.

Everyday JengoTV is building new partnerships many of which include filmmakers from around the country, various online social networks and portals, businesses and organizations who support the gay community.

Right now there's not a lot on it, except a few trailers and promo videos (including one featuring Nick Cannon), several interviews (including ones with authors Marvin K. White and Clarence Nero and publisher Lisa Moore), and the beginnings of a bulletin board, blog, and podcast and videocast library, but it has the potential to develop into a great community-driven forum. (The initial video ads are extremely annoying!) I'm bookmarking it and will be checking it regularly to see what's up. Perhaps some J's Theater readers will be contributing to it soon.

The Value(s) of Abstraction
The late J. Kirk T. Varnedoe, for many years chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, and later a professor at the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton, delivered a series of lectures at the very end of his life that have been collected in the volume Pictures of Nothing: Abstract Art Since Pollock (Princeton University Press). The current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education features an adaptation of one of the pieces, entitled "The Shared Culture of Private Visions." It's a little essay that functions as a defense of abstract art, yet adopts an at-times unusual argument that differs from the criticism of art historians and critics such as Arthur Danto, Briony Fer, Yve-Alain Bois, Rosalind Krauss, Franklin Sirmans, and so on. I'll quote the final paragraph below, but I do want to note that in place of the original image that accompanies the article, a painting by Cy Twombly, I've posted an image of a screen painting by Joe Overstreet, which emblematizes some of the ideas in the piece as fully as the Twombly. And now, to quote Varnedoe:

Abstraction has been less a search for the ultimately meaningful ... than a recurrent push for the temporarily meaningless: that is, things that are found not often in exotic realms but rather on the edges of banality, familiarity, and the man-made world. It is the production of forms of order that are not recognizable as order, but vehicles of feeling that appear utterly dumb. Abstract art is a symbolic game, and it is akin to all human games: You have to get into it, risk and all, and this takes a certain act of faith. But what kind of faith? Not faith in absolutes, not a religious kind of faith. A faith in possibility, a faith not that we will know something finally, but a faith in not knowing, a faith in our ignorance, a faith in our being confounded and dumbfounded, a faith fertile with possible meaning and growth.

Events + News Roundup + New Review

More Upcoming Events
From Phebus Etienne

December 8, 2006
Intersection of Poetry and Art: Cave Canem Faculty member Yusef Komunyakaa, and fellows Taiyon Coleman, Phebus Etienne, and Dante Micheaux respond to the African Comics Exhibit. The Studio Museum in Harlem, 144 West 125th Street, New York NY. Free.

From Adodi Chicago

Adodi Chicago will have its monthly discussion group
meeting on Saturday, December 2 2006.

The topic for discussion is Picturing Early American
Black Gay Lives: A Reading by John Keene. A detailed
description is listed below.

MEETING LOCATION: Youth Pride Center
637 South Dearborn
Mtg area: The basement
Time: 2pm - 4:30pm

(Downtown-south loop location - Red line to Harrison or
State St. bus to Harrison - street parking available)

I'm excited about this event because it'll be my first time ever reading to Adodi Chicago, an organization whose membership constitutes one of the chief audiences I have been envisioning for my new novel project.

News Roundup

• The brutal police killing of soon-to-be married 23-year-old New Yorker Sean Bell and the serious injuries to his friends Joseph Guzman, 21, and Trent Benefield, 23, by New York City policemen immediately brought back memories of some of the worst aspects of the racist Rudy Giuliani's years as mayor. Yet Giuliani's successor, Mike Bloomberg, hasn't responded with indifference and disdain; he has met with senior Black political leaders from Queens (which did not placate many critics), and with Bell's family today. He has also stated that there will be a thorough investigation--but if it drags on too long and ends in acquittal, the response could be explosive, because public furor over the killing, particularly among Black and Latino New Yorkers, as well as among human rights organizations, continues to rage. One of the most important underlying issues, the ongoing, systemic racism in the New York City police force, must be addressed. So far, one major piece of news to emerge is that the officer who fired 30 of the 50 shots that riddled the car hadn't fired his gun ever before.
• Years before Bobby McFerrin plagued the country and world with his Bush 41-era anthem "Don't Worry, Be Happy," I would periodically hear the name Robert McFerrin at home. McFerrin (Sr.) graduated several years after my grandmother from St. Louis's main Black high school (in those days the educational system was strictly segregated by law), and like her was an Arkansas native. What I most often heard about was how in 1955 he became the Metropolitan Opera's first Black male soloist, shortly after Marian Anderson's historic debut, which led to discussions of his marvelous voice and talent. Despite suffering a stroke in the late 1980s, he continued to perform up until recently. He died just the other day at the age of 85.
  
• I hadn't heard a thing about a horrific but extraordinarily courageous act of protest, which occurred on November 3, 2006: artist and musician Malachi Ritschler set himself on fire, on an expressway ramp in Chicago, to protest the Bush's Iraq and Afghan wars. In dramatically ironic fashion, he burnt himself up as an act of peace. The Chicago and national media, it seems, have not said much about it, for what I think are obvious reasons, though bloggers and the Chicago Reader have covered Ritschler's clarifyingly significant act.
• Virginia's new Democratic US Senator, Jim Webb, nearly "slug[ged]" President W in the face after receiving a snippy reply to his response to the president's query about his son, who's serving in the Marine Corps in Iraq.
• This Alexander Litvenenko poisoning case in London is so convoluted and bizarre I can't stop reading about it. What exactly happened? Was Russian president Vladimir Putin actively involved in the murder of one of his harshest, most dogged critics? How does it tie into the assassination of the investigative journalist and fellow Putin critic Anna Stepanova Politkovskaya? Talk about a John LeCarré novel come to life....
  

Another Review
Chris hipped me to John Latta's review of Seismosis (and Annotations), which is a bit of a mixed brew.

(Background: a few months ago Latta spoon-tapped in a review of Cave Canem's recent anthology Gathering Ground. (If you know someone who's interested in poetry, it's a great holiday gift!) As I wrote to Chris about the piece (slightly adapted),

With the Cave Canem [review] he seemed to conclude that Black people wrote a lot--way too much; only--about hard things, hard lives, hard luck, the hardness of oppression, its insistently heavy and hot material weight and spiritual labor, and I started to think as I read his complaint in the form of a non-review about hot kitchens and hot combs and hot summer nights and how those are important aspects of our lives and how he didn't want to really touch or smell them, but he still felt burnt.

The CC anthology seemed to be too indissoluble and blue-black a kernel for him to swallow, so he didn't.)

With Seismosis, the issue is somewhat different. I won't summarize it, but I think despite its uninterest in any sort of historicization or grasp of African-American literary traditions it's on to something. I told Chris that even with the criticisms I like it. I also like that he's actually reading and quoting it. "Tintinnabulation," so long as it's not a plague on the inner ear, isn't such a bad thing at all.

Monday Notes

Upcoming Events In and Around NY/NJ
Several friends have alerted me to upcoming events they'll be participating in. At Princeton University. From Dr. SWEAT:

Tracie Morris performs
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 8:30 pm, Murray Dodge Cafe (Princeton U)
free admission; open to the public

All are invited to a Dinner & Discussion on Poetry, Politics, and Performance with Tracie Morris and Professor Melissa V. Harris Lacewell (African American Studies, Politics); Professor Meredith Martin (ENG; fall freshman seminar, "Poetry and the Public Sphere"); and Cotsen Postdoc Fellow Mendi Obadike (ENG, spring freshman seminar, "The Idea of Black Music") Friday, Dec. 1, 6:00 pm; Mathey Private Dining Room (Princeton University) Space is limited! RSVP to Julia Schwartz: jkschwar@princeton.edu

December 5 Tracy K. Smith and Mendi Obadike
Tuesday, December 5, 4:30 p.m
Contemporary Poetry Colloquium (Poets in Conversation)
Reading and discussing new work
(Princeton University, location TBA)
A reception will follow

Also at Princeton, from Dr. Audiologo:

"Tarry On/Because I Must" [will be] showing as part of the Music Composition Program's monthly Composer's Ensemble series at Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall (2nd Floor), Princeton University. The series is free and open to the public. December's concert is devoted to sound and video work, and will also feature my talented colleagues Seth Cluett, Betsey Biggs, Scott Smallwood, Christopher Tignor, and Judd Greenstein.

From Evie Shockley:

everyone in and around nyc -- including anyone who just happens to be in the neighborhood at the time -- is invited to come out and celebrate my new book with me on monday, december 4, at bar 13. the good folks at louderARTS have graciously made a space for me in their reading series. the show starts at 7:30, with an open mic to kick things off, so bring a poem if you're feeling moved to share. : ) the address for bar 13 is 35 east 13th street, at university place, on the second floor. for more details, see: Louder Arts.

From Tara Betts:

OK, if you'd like to spend a Sunday at Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery
b/t Bleecker & Bowery), I will be there for two separate readings. One
for the Bowery Women anthology in the late afternoon (2 p.m.-5 p.m.)
with the likes of Ms. Lynne Procope, and another reading at 8 p.m. with
Ms. Evie Shockley and Metta Samma. If you can come to one or BOTH, I'd
love to see you. There is a press release below detailing the lineup
for the 8 p.m. reading which is responding to artwork inspired by the
confederate flag and John Sims' artwork.
take care,
Tara

Bowery Poetry Club – 308 Bowery – between Bleecker-Houston
October 27 - December 4, 2006
The Closing, “The Poetic Reflections”
Sunday Dec 3, 7 p.m. $10

performances & appearances by Amiri Baraka, Tara Betts, Bob Holman,
Celena Glenn and John Sims’ “Recoloration Proclamation Trailer”

On December 3 at 7pm, John Sims will present the trailer for his
documentary film, “Recoloration Proclamation." The closing will feature
noted poet/activist Amiri Baraka and other poets including Bob Holman,
Beau Sia, Mahogany Browne, Rich Villar, Kelly Tsai, Evie Shockley,
Metta Samma (Lydia Melvin), Celena Glenn, Survivor, Tara Betts and
others, with responses/reflections to the Confederate Flag. A blues
version of Dixie will be performed by June April and hip hop version by
Tavi & Phes.

+

Editor Randall Horton helped put together a reading. We'll be reading
together with Dante Micheaux, dear DC head Truth Thomas and Deborah Poe
reading our poems in the new Third World Press anthology Fingernails
Across a Chalk Board: Poetry & Prose on HIV in the Black Diaspora at
Vassar College in Poughkeepsie. The free reading takes place in the
Aula at Ely Hall at 8 p.m.

From the Asian American Writers' Workshop:

Monday, December 4, 7pm
at The Asia Society
725 Park Ave @ 70th St
New York City

Please join us in celebrating the winners:

Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation by Jeff Chang
(Picador USA) Nonfiction
Presented by Greg Tate
Sightseeing by Rattawut Lapcharoensap (Grove Press) Fiction
Presented by Brian Leung
Mad Science in Imperial City by Shanxing Wang (Futurepoem Books) Poetry
Presented by Suji Kwock Kim
With announcement of the Members' Choice Award winner
Awards Presentation and Booksigning Reception
$12 general, $10 members, students free with ID
To purchase tickets, please call the Workshop at 212-494-0061

From Mszuliemusic:

Erica Hunt & Akilah Oliver
Belladonna Books
Tuesday, December 12, 7PM
@ Dixon Place (258 Bowery, 2nd Floor˜Between Houston & Prince)
Admission is $5 at the Door.

***
Also, Tara Betts has specific info on poetsister Sonia Sanchez's upcoming trial in Philadelphia. For those who'll be able to show support:

"Sonia Sanchez pulled on a myriad of influences to fortify the political awareness of the crowd by citing lyrics from the hip hop classic Rakim’s "Casualties of War” and a quote from Camus: “The nobility of our call lies in…refusal to lie about what we know and resistance to oppression. These thinkers led Sanchez into mentioning her pending December 1, 2006 court date at 8:30 a.m. in Philadelphia’s Community Court, located at 1401 Arch Street. She urged people to come support her and the other elder women who protested the enlisting of more young people and asked that they be sent instead earlier this year. These women were arrested and detained overnight before they were sentenced to trial in December."

As more notes come in, I'll be posting them.

***

My thoughts go out to the family and fans of writer Bebe Moore Campbell, who recently passed away at the age of 56. She was a best-selling author and talented journalist whose works helped to create the current wave of popular fiction by Black writers. I met Campbell briefly a few years ago and as I wrote on the Cave Canem listserve, she immediately struck me as a lovely and genuine person.

Post-Holiday Blip

What a wonderful but too brief holiday break it's been. As Ms. Toni's inquisitive gaze makes clear, one wonders where the time went. And it went, far too quickly....