Drawing: Greg Tate

Attending the Afro-Futurism/festschrift for Samuel R. Delany organized by Alex Weheliye and others at the university last year, I took copious notes which I only recently found and have been perusing, and, as I often do when too engrossed to write things down or feel the compulsion, did some quick drawings. I thought I'd drawn Alondra Nelson and Kodwo Eshun, but the only two images I found--and which I scanned in today--were of Greg Tate and Samuel Delany (I'll post my drawing of him tomorrow).

I know Greg passingly, having met him back in the day when I was in the Dark Room, and he was first starting to work on his science fiction novel (or maybe it was before then, and he was regularly dazzling readers with his weekly critiques in the Village Voice) and then again when he staged his thrilling adaptation of Amiri Baraka's Dutchman. For a week or so the scenes from his version of that play were on autoloop in my consciousness. I found myself looking askance at any potential Lulas on the T.

He gave a talk on the hiphop/tagger/graffiti artist Rammelzee and linked this to Delany's work, noting how Delany "foregrounds the marginal, the countercultural as central, through his literary and cultural practice" (his works, his lectures, his life). In the Q&A, Greg spoke a little about the James Snead, the ideas of the break and the cut, the fugitive, being at the origins of hiphop, the fluidity of performance in all the forms, and the articulation of multidimensionality. He also mentioned the notion of "race memory," in relation both to the hiphop/graffiti aesthetic and to Delany's art.

Anyways, here's my "interesting little sketch," to use Louis Delsarte's term for them, for the flyboy in the buttermilk:


Actually, it could be a self-portrait....

***

If anyone from Blogger is checking out this page, here's a suggestion. Please recalibrate the "Add Image" button in Mozilla Firefox for the Mac platform so that it's more flexible and precise. I'm glad it's now working in Firefox and that it allows you to post directly from the desktop, but it adds the javascript command "onblur," causing the image always to float to the top, and adds other specs that control the image in ways I often don't want to (and other posters might not either).

I always end up going in and erasing everything except the a href and img src tags, the hyperlinks (to Blogger's page, where the image is stored), and the border and alt commands. As it is, border always sets to <"0">, while there's no way to insert any words or phrases for the alt command. It sets no default hspace or vspace parameters either.

***

I also have resumed allowing anonymous posts, though now you'll have to enter a letter code, which ought to prevent the spamming autobots that have accounts on Blogger to evade blocked anonymous posts. Are the system administrators addressing that problem yet?

Transits + Translations

The new quarter begins next week, so I've headed back to to the midwest, a transition that's become familiar but never routine or easy, though the intra-term commuting is less disorienting now than it was a few years ago. The mental resettlement is the hardest part; it is an issue, in part, of translation. I have the voyager but not the nomad in my blood, the rooted ambassador but not the rootless journeyman. (Back to dis/locations....)

As is probably evident, I've begun to decelerate my blogging, though I have focused quite a bit on Hurricane Katrina and its horrific aftermath, since the latter represents, in crystalized form, so much of what is and has been wrong with our government and society, particularly over the last five years. I hope to maintain my discipline of posting at least a piece, even if only a poem (by someone else) or a quote of some sort everyday. So far I've broken the regime only during our summer trips; I said I was going to blog via remote, but I didn't get much past checking email once or twice.

Recently in packing up for the return west, I found some drawings (from an Afro-Futurist conference last spring at the university) I plan to scan in, and have been dabbling in some other things that should, with a little tweaking, be postable. I never cease to be amazed by people who, without a committee or assistance, can post long, deep and cogent entries on a daily basis (do they do anything else beyong blog, bathe, eat, go to the bathroom, and sleep?). I used to be able to write long journal entries on a daily basis, but they were hardly cogent or coherent (and since they were and are for private purposes, what need was there for them to be?).

I've wanted this to be a space for many--if not the full array--of my interests, particularly in the arts, but setting things down daily has proved more burdensome than I originally envisioned, especially after I sailed through my backlog. There are entries I've never gotten around to finishing, on Black aesthetics, Wittgenstein, Elizabeth Alexander's "When," and so on, and since they're involved, they'll have to wait for a bit/a lot longer. My own writing, creative and academic, as well as the argosy of student work I'll be seeing--since I teach a section of the introductory fiction writing class (Hi former students!) and that graduate class I outlined several entries ago--will mean even less time for entries here. But let's see what happens.

PS: To the Field Study Group A participants, I haven't forgotten you....

***
A shout out to Professor and fellow CC poet Greg Pardlo, who was just awarded an NEA translation grant to continue his work on the poetry of the young Danish poet Niels Lyngsoe. Greg published a collection of Lyngsoe's poems, titled Pencil of Rays and Spiked Mace (BookThug) last year.
***
And speaking of translations, polymath Ella Turenne has sent word of an upcoming conference at Columbia University, to be held on International Translation Day. It's entitled "Translating."

The Center for Comparative Literature and Society
at Columbia University
presents a conference celebrating International Translation Day

"Our goal is to think about translation as an active skill in this multilingual and globalized world. Translation today is not merely a convenience that forgets the original, but a performance that celebrates the original, makes it accessible to a larger audience even as it requires language learning among our students."

"Translating"
September 29-30, 2005

September 29
6-8 pm
Heyman Center Common Room
East Campus Entrance

Keynote Dialogue
Lawrence Venuti "Translation, Simulacra, Resistance" (Temple University)
Response: Mary Louise Pratt (New York University)

September 30, 2005
Buell Hall
East Gallery, 1st Floor
9:00 am -12:00 pm

Translation: A Conversation
Moderator: Reinhold Martin (Columbia University)
Speakers:
David Damrosch (Columbia University)
Karen Van Dyck (Columbia University)
Emily Apter (New York University)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Columbia University)
Martin Puchner (Columbia University)
Andreas Huyssen (Columbia University)

1:00 – 3:00 pm
Problems in Translation: The Rest of the Word I
Moderator: David Freedberg (Columbia University)
Speakers:
Kofi Anyidoho "Translating The Oral Performance" (University of Ghana)
George Saliba “Seeking Earlier Cultures: Translations into Arabic in Early Islamic Times”(Columbia University)
Valerie Henitiuk “Things That Can Be Treacherous: Worlding the Pillow Book” (University of Alberta)
Paolo Valesio “Notes from a Translation Workshop”(Columbia University)

3:30 – 6:30 pm
Problems in Translation: The Rest of the Word II
Moderator – Jean Franco (Columbia University)
Speakers:
Halyna Hryn “Translating the Soviet Experience: Ukrainian Case Studies”(Harvard University)
Lydia Liu “What is Printed English”(University of Michigan)
Bruno Bosteels “Just Translating”(Cornell University)
Arindam Chakrabarti “Acyuta! Park my chariot between the two armies: How to Do Things with Sanskrit and English Words” (University of Hawaii)

Co-sponsored by La Maison Française

Hung Debuts

Tonight is the pre-launch party for author and critic Scott Poulson-Bryant's Hung. It's very exciting to see his book hitting the bookshelves, and from what I know of his critical acumen and the writeups I've seen, it's a scrumptiously profound read. (The title alone wins him multiple points.) I've known Scott for close to two decades now (it's a little astonishing to write that--I am getting old) and have enjoyed his critical work for years. even remember when he was a fierce young wordsmith at the Village Voice. If he sees this entry, he'll know that I'm still waiting for that earlier-promised work, TWAMTWW, but Hung I know will be more than satisfying!

Harlem Fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina Survivors

From Elizabeth Alexander, who'll be appearing with an incredible lineup!



AARON DAVIS HALL and SEKOU SUNDIATA
present

DOWN FOR THE CAUSE
A Harlem Relief Response to Hurricane Katrina

AARON DAVIS HALL
Sunday, September 18, 2005 – 3:00 PM

Tickets: $20, $40, $60, $80, $100
$250, $500, $1000
General Admission
Proceeds go to Gulf area hurricane relief efforts.

Featuring

BURNT SUGAR
CRAIG HARRIS GROUP
with special guests CARLA COOK and GRAHAM HAYNES
QUEEN ESTHER and her band
SEKOU SUNDIATA and his band
with special guests WILL CALHOUN and RONALD K. BROWN
SING SING PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE
RHA GODDESS
ELIZABETH ALEXANDER
DANIEL BERNARD ROUMAIN
BILLY BANG
REVERAND OSAGYEFO UHURU SEKOU and More…

Tickets can be purchased in advance by calling 212-650-7100, or at the door.

A list of recipient organizations will be available at concert.

If you can't attend but would like to donate, please make checks payable to:
Aaron Davis Hall / Down with the Cause

and mail to
Aaron Davis Hall, W. 135th St. & Convent Ave., New York, NY 10031.

Arthur Danto on the Art of 9/11

Philosopher and art critic Arthur Danto has for a long time been one of my favorite writers on contemporary art. His essays in The Nation, which I used to read avidly, functioned as a secondary, powerful introduction to the fields of aesthetics and art criticism for me. On the front page of Artnet.com's current magazine, he has a short, cogent piece, "9/11 Art as a Gloss on Wittgenstein," which serves as an introduction to an exhibit he's curated at New York City's apexart gallery, called "The Art of 9/11" (Jeffrey Lohn's "Untitled," 2001, from the exhibit is shown above at right).

Danto begins his brief essay with a statement of profound recognition:

I learned two truths from the attacks of 9/11, both of which I would be glad never to have come to know. One was that everyone is capable of heroism, and, correlatively, that the moral aftereffect of tragedy is a mutual commiseration among survivors. For months after the event, there was a spontaneous bond between New Yorkers that expressed itself in a rare warmth and consideration. The other truth was that even the most ordinary people respond to tragedy with art. Among many unforgettable experiences of the early aftermath of the event was the unprompted appearance of little shrines in fronts of doors, on windowsills, and in public spaces everywhere.

The shrines, as well non-artforms with aesthetic power, which I saw when I returned to the City the day after September 11, 2001, immediately struck me as truly appropriate, moving, comprehensible, and communicative responses--they were not just aesthetic artifacts, but deeply psychological and social artifacts--that a person could devise, under the circumstances. Danto continues:

I could not imagine that anyone not practically engaged in coping and helping was able to do anything except sit transfixed in front of the television screen, watching the towers burn, and of the crowds at street level running from danger and, later, trudging through smoke and detritus in search of someone they knew. I thought the last thing on anyone’s mind was art. But by day’s end the city was transformed into a ritual precinct, dense with improvised sites of mourning. I thought at the time that artists, had they tried to do something in response to 9/11, could not have done better than the anonymous shrine-makers who found ways of expressing the common mood and feeling of those days, in ways that everyone instantly understood.

For him, this common understanding is Wittgensteinian; whether the person created her artwork out of an original impulse or by emulating someone else's, which presupposes understanding or at least a recognition of the prior model, the basis for all the works drew upon a common understanding of the appropriate range of social responses to such an extreme tragedy. (That is, they draw upon rules from a commonly understood language game.) Wittgenstein, and Danto building upon his idea, called the responses an "act of piety." This introduces a religious, or at least spiritual aspect, which might be in keeping with some of the discussions of 9/11's perpetrators as embodiments of a profound "evil." (Danto even uses this term. I find this Manichean-tending argument in general a bit simplistic and, as a result, rather dangerous in the long run, but that's for another discussion.) As Danto says,

In his Notes on Culture, Ludwig Wittgenstein writes, "Recall that after Schubert’s death, his brother cut some of Schubert’s scores into small pieces, and gave each piece, consisting of a few bars, to his favorite pupils. And this act, as a sign of piety, is just as understandable as the different one of keeping the scores untouched, accessible to no one. And if Schubert’s brother had burned the scores, that too would be understandable as an act of piety."

For Danto (pictured below, at the opening of the exhibit, on September 7, 2005, photo courtesy of Artnet.com), this exhibit, consisting of artworks by artists who have a relationship to and with him, like his wife, Barbara Westman, or his friend, Cindy Sherman, is more than a mere showing of art; as a form of memorial to 9/11, it must be. It--and the works in it individually and collectively--is, he believes, an act of piety, that will "serve as an aspect of the question of what art is after all for, and how it, just as Hegel had said, serves, together with religion and philosophy, as a moment in what he called Absolute Spirit." While I beg off the Hegelianism--and truthfully, how many of the people who created those shrines not only did not have the slightest clue about Hegel's thought, but would agree with its premises, particularly in terms of his historicized theories of art?--I would agree that the impromptu works Danto cites, and the sort of art that will probably be in this exhibit aim to go beyond formalism, purposiveness, or aestheticism (here meaning art for art's sake).

The day-after memorials were tangible embodiments of the almost incalculable fear and sorrow of what had just occurred, and embodiments of the finitude, the incompleteness, the ephemerality, the materiality, the mortality, the indeterminacy, the ethics and humanness, of human experience. They were also irreducible social and ethical artifacts--the tragedies of 9/11, the makers' experiences of them, and the viewers' experiences of those tragedies, all were constituted by the works and the experiences of the artists in society--as opposed to some vacuum, or based on ideal templates or metaphysically based models--themselves. The same is true to a certain extent of the artworks, I would imagine, in Danto's exhibit, though as the products of established artists, they are mediated by many other elements, including the art world and art commodity system itself, to which most of the instant shrines neither belonged, nor aspired.

One day you could be going to work in a tower in Lower Manhattan, with a view of New York Harbor or the entire island itself and northern or western boroughs or Long Island or New Jersey, and the next day, as the result of events unfolding beyond your ken of knowledge or experience, your entire world might have come to an end, or at least be utterly upended, as it was and remains for so many people. Those shrines communicated this, embodied this fact that what binds us together are the social dimensions of our experience, because art is a profoundly social medium. This is a tenet expounded not only by the likes of Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Dewey, Marcuse, and other philosophers of art, including Danto, but by an anthropologist like Ellen Dissayanake, who might argue (as Wittgenstein did, in a roundabout way) that the "understanding" that Wittgenstein and Danto talk about derives from the social connections we share and negotiate on a continuous basis--it is an understanding perhaps not so much of what art is, but what art is for, and what it can do. Even in response to events that seem to exceed our ability to grasp them, at least intially, like 9/11.

Danto will give a curator's talk on September 21, 2005, at 6:30 pm, at apexart.

***

I ask that we not only remember the tragic events of 9/11 and those who perished or were severely injured on that day, but also the governmental nonresponsiveness, indifference and incompetence that allowed it to occur. I also ask that we work together, to the best of our ability as human beings who stilll have hope for our future and this world, to end the possibility of such an event ever happening again, on US soil or anywhere else.

How to help the Hurricane Katrina-devastated HBCUs

As I wrote in a post several days ago, I have been very concerned about the fate of two very important institutions located in New Orleans, Dillard University (established in 1869) and Xavier University of Louisiana (est. 1915). I've heard anecdotally that both were at least partially submerged by the post-Hurricane Katrina flood waters. From a colleague at my university, I learned that another historically Black college (HBCU) Tougaloo College (est. 1869), in Mississippi's capital city, Jackson, suffered a small amount of damage as well (please see below).

These three HBCUs have played a key role in educating African-Americans over the last century and a quarter. Dillard is the alma mater of Brown University's president, Dr. Ruth J. Simmons, the first Black person and female to lead an Ivy League institution, and for a while at the end of the 1990s, Dillard had as its president one of the dynamic figures in African-American education, Dr. Michael Lomax of Atlanta, Georgia. Xavier is the only Roman Catholic HBCU in the Western hemisphere and has one of the highest levels per capita of producing Black physicians and scientists of any college or university in the United States. Tougaloo, which was a headquarters for civil rights activism and the push for African-American political and social equality in the 1960s, graduates over 3/4ths of Mississippi's African-American doctors and lawyers.

All three institutions have considerably more limited financial resources than Hurricane Katrina-affected non-HBCUs in the region, such as Tulane University, and will need as much help as they can get, in terms of monetary donations, books and supplies, and new enrollment, to survive. The United Negro College Fund is collecting money on their behalf, so I urge you to contribute something to help all three institutions out.

Dillard:
According to Wikipedia's site, "Three buildings at the university were reported destroyed by a fire. [1]. A bus fire also destroyed belongings of 37 students in the process of being evacuated."
•This is Dillard's temporary, official Website.
•Dillard has set up this site for Hurricane Katrina information, though nothing has been posted yet.
•There are photos of Dillard University evacuees at this Centenary College site.
•Chronicle of Higher Education article on Dillard's president's fundraising efforts to save the institution

Xavier:
•Xavier's emergency Website
•Xavier University in Cincinnati has a Website with information on Xavier University in Louisiana

Tougaloo:
•On Tougaloo's Website, the college's president reports that the electricity has been restored and the cleanup has gone well, "you would not know the storm had ever touched our campus."

A general article on the institutions' devastation from the Chronicle of Higher Education:

BLACK COLLEGES IN NEW ORLEANS RAVAGED BY HURRICANE KATRINA
New Orleans is a predominantly black city. And upwards of 80 percent of the city's black population is poor, with no automobiles, no relatives outside the city, and no money to buy transportation required to retreat from the devastation in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Therefore, Hurricane Katrina has been disproportionately catastrophic for blacks.
As is the case with most natural disasters in urban areas, the sharp divide between blacks and whites becomes painfully clear.

So too is the terrible impact on African-American college students in New Orleans. Today and for the foreseeable future, there is no higher education in New Orleans, even on high ground, because there is no electricity in the city. Louisiana officials say that 135,000 college students in the state now have no school to attend.

According to JBHE's count, there are at least 20,000 black students enrolled in college in New Orleans who have been displaced and will not be attending classes this semester.

Colleges around the country, in many cases, have tried to find room for displaced students from New Orleans. But in most cases they are skimming off the academically talented white students from Tulane and other predominantly white institutions whose families are prepared to pay or have paid full tuition. Most African-American college students in New Orleans go to community colleges. Tens of thousands of them will have no place to go.

So far, JBHE has no data on the total number of displaced black students who have been admitted to other colleges. Hampton University, the historically black institution in Virginia, reports that about 25 black students who were enrolled at colleges in New Orleans are planning to transfer and enroll at Hampton.

Most of the students who lived on campus at historically black Dillard University were evacuated to predominantly white Centenary College in Shreveport before the hurricane struck. Both colleges are affiliated with the United Methodist Church. The Dillard campus was subsequently flooded with up to eight feet of water. Dillard president Marvalene Hughes has set up office in Atlanta. President Hughes is concerned that Dillard will permanently lose many students who enroll at other institutions this semester.

About three quarters of the 1,600 students at Xavier University, the historically black Catholic university in New Orleans, left campus before Hurricane Katrina hit the city. About 400 students remained on campus. They were housed in two high-rise dormitories. By this past Thursday they had run out of food and water. National Guard troops reached the dormitories by amphibious vehicles and transported the students to a nearby elevated highway. The students were then taken to Southern University in Baton Rouge. University officials said it would be at least late January before the university reopens.

The United Negro College Fund has set up a relief effort for Xavier and Dillard universities and also for Tougaloo College in Mississippi, which was also hit hard by the hurricane. Donations can be made online at: www.uncf.org.

Fiction vs. Reality

FICTION

"'Perhaps it is the age. It is not an age for magic or scholarship, is it sir? Tradesmen prosper, sailors, politicians, but not magicians. Our time is past.'"

***

"Mr. Robinson was a polished sort of person. He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything he positively shone -- which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney."

***

"The war destroyed every present comfort and cast a deep gloom over the future. Soldiers, merchants, politicians and farmers all cursed the hour that they were born, but magicians (a contrary breed of men if ever there was one) were entirely delighted by the course events were taking."

--Susanna Clarke (photo at right, by Sigrid Estrada), from Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel (2004)

***

REALITY


ON THE EVACUEES/SURVIVORS
"My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents."--Right-wing nutcase, NRO Online columnist and chickenhawk Jonah Goldberg, to the people suffering in the Louisiana Superdome

"We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City."--Two French paramedics who were stranded in New Orleans

"If we had opened the bridge [to the evacuees and tourists], our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."--Gretna Police Chief Arthur Lawson to API

"What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."--Barbara P. Bush, former First Lady of the United States and mother of W

"That Americans would somehow in a color-affected way decide who to help and who not to help - I just don't believe it."--Secretary of State, former National Security Advisor and Shoe-Shopper-par-excellence Dr. Condoleezza Rice

"Now tell me the truth, boys, is this kind of fun?"--House Majority Whip, gerrymanderer and anti-judicial activist Tom "Bug-Killer" DeLay, to three young evacuees in the Houston Astrodome

ON THE HURRICANE KATRINA CATASTROPHE
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach in the levees."--George W. Bush, 43rd PResident of the United States (pictured above)

"What didn't go right?"--ibidiot to Congresswoman and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-California)

ON FEMA DIRECTOR MIKE "BROWNIE" BROWN
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."--ibidiot

"Mike [Brown] used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."--Bill Dashner, former City Manager, speaking of fantasist, serial incompetent and FEMA chief (still), Mike "Brownie" Brown

ON VP DICK CHENEY
"Go f*ck yourself."--Vice President Dick Cheney to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), on the floor of the US Senate

"Go f*ck yourself!"--A Mississippian to Vice President Dick Cheney, in the Hurricane Katrina-ravaged city of Gulfport, Mississippi

ON NEW ORLEANS MAYOR C. RAY NAGIN
"Mayor Nay-ger..." --drug addict and radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh Limblatherer

ON NEW ORLEANS
"Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically....I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."--James Reiss, "descendent of an old-line Uptown [New Orleans] family" and Chairman, New Orleans Regional Transit Authority

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." --Rep. Bob Baker (R-Louisiana)

This week's New Yorker

Every year when my subscription renewal to The New Yorker comes up, I engage in a short debate with myself as to whether to send them a check or just be done with the damned bourgeois, self-satisfied, always verging on being too tired for its own good, monocultural thing. After all, every library I get within 200 feet of subscribes to it, the articles now frequently seem to tread well-worn ground and are far less intellectually ranging than they were during the Gottlieb years (I will never forget Sacks's riveting discussion of Tourette's syndrome, which led me and my coworkers to act out some of the passages, or the remarkable account of Richard Evans Schultes' strange botanical genius that made me rue I hadn't taken a course with him, though I don't even think I ever once heard his name mentioned once during my college years), the poems are often dreadful (no more poems about pets/flowers/suburban kitchens/pets and flowers in suburban kitchens/dead parents as apparitions in suburban kitchens, etc. please) and rarely by a person of color or an out homosexual (without either of whom New York would be, well, a giant Schenectady), the stories often read like truncated novel chapters (though I did think Bolaño's "Gomez Palacios" was amazing, and Alice Munro and Haruki Murakami are never less than brilliant), Malcolm Gladwell and Alex Ross and David Denby and John Updike make me want to scream and Seymour Hersh and Susan Orlean don't publish enough in there, and they once held poems of mine for weeks (months) and the poetry editor even claimed to my agent that she was taking them with her on vacation, and I believed that one, but of course I never heard anything back, I didn't even get one of those small, rectangular, polite rejection slips that Tina Brown's legions used to send out (though I always liked the respectfully curt and cruel ones from George Plimpton's The Paris Review the best), and the billionaire-rich Newhouses don't need my money anyhow....and then I think, maybe there'll be a disorienting little piece by Hilton Als (like the brilliant one he wrote about André Leon Talley that deserved a magazine award or at least to be wheatpasted or framed in places where people who thought that conformity had totally taken over could glance up at it and be reassured), or they'll publish a Kevin Young or Carl Phillips poem, or a story by some person I've never heard of that makes me say "I've got to read more by this person," or I'll learn about the arcane history of some system or region or type of cultural proces, and then I'll tell myself that it's not that costly, especially if I get lucky and receive one of those professional discounts (for the lone piece I wrote in Out ten years ago and had to beg and cajole to get paid for)....

This week is a trove. In addition to a Talk of the Town section devoted completely to the Hurricane Katrina and President Katrina tragedies and a Q&A on the topic with Nicholas Lemann, Brahmin Frances Fitzgerald pins an interesting article on Brown University's president, Ruth Simmons, and her establishment of a committee to study that university's founders' roles in the slave trade. Jeffrey Toobin explores Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy's passion for foreign/international law (a fact that sends the Christianist right wingers into paroxysms of derangement). David Grann looks at the career of the ageless Ricky Henderson, whom I think may still be hitting jaw-dropping lead-off home runs around a field just a few miles from where I'm typing this. There's an Ann Beattie story I haven't read, but I plan to; she is one writer my graduate fiction students tend to loathe, though maybe it's just the particular stories by her I've tended to assign; and three poems by someone named Martha Serpas, but I have not looked at the contributor's page to see who she is, nor devoted more than a cursory glance to any of them (and none leapt out at me). There are also pieces by Malcolm Gladwell (!), as well as by David Denby (!!), and John Updike (!!!). Denby's resume of Susan Sontag's film criticism and practice is critical without being nasty (though he gets in some barbs), but I confess that now that Susan Sontag has died, I am interested in reading anything about her life and art; and Updike, who often makes me wretch, pens a snappish but praiseworthy review of a new novel, "The March," by one of my favorite writers, E.L. Doctorow, which makes me want to read Doctorow's new novel even more. No Ross blabbing on about classical music and tossing in his usual barbs against Schoenberg, for a change, and no Joan Acocella, whom I'll never forgive for her trashing of Bill T. Jones, based on faulty aestheticist premises (though get her to discuss Kant and Pater and Wilde together and I'll give you a dollar). At least I think it was Acocella.

***
Quote of the day/month/year/millennium from the "liberal" media: "They are so poor, and they are so black..." -- Wolf Blitzer, CNN's The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, Thursday, September 1, 2005

(Dis)locations (in contemporary African Diasporic fiction)

One of the results of the hurricane and its aftermath has been mass-scale dislocation, displacement, diaspora. More people than the total residents of numerous counties in the United States have dispersed northwards, westwards, eastwards--away from what had been their home, temporary or permament. One of the questions I asked a few posts ago was, what will happen not only a week from now, but six months, or a year, or several years from now, to all of the survivors? Other questions arise: who among them will return to New Orleans, southern Louisiana, and the Mississippi and Alabama gulf coast area? When? What will determine whether or not they come back? What of their homes--what images, memories, sounds, smells, textures, interior spaces and impressions, dreams and nightmares, scars--do they carry with them? Do they carry with them psychogeographic map they can put into words and images? What spaces and places are theirs now, will be theirs? How do they think of home, of place, of location now? What traces of them have survived the storm, what history, what cultural and social artifacts, what imprints and footprints?

Basquiat_in_Brooklyn's recent post about the upcoming term at NYU provoked a temporary pang of nostalgia for those afternoons and evenings in Main Building, 19 University Place, the aeries of Bobst, the computer room at Third Avenue North, the African Studies department, Washington Square Park and the West and East Villages, and so on--but mainly underlined for me that I'd been asking these questions, not about the Gulf Coast tragedy but about certain literary texts, back last spring. I had the opportunity to devise a new graduate English course in the area of African-American literary studies, so I decided I'd teach a course, under the general rubric of Topics in Contemporary Literature, and I'd call it "Dis/locations in Contemporary African Diasporic Fiction."

Actually, it was initially "Contemporary African Diasporic Literature," but after juggling a number of novels, books of poetry, plays, and cross-genre works, I decided I'd restrict the primary texts to novels and short story collectioons, for the sake of consistency, and try to mix in works I've taught before with ones I haven't. I also wanted works from across the Diaspora, but in such cases unless students can read in other languages, you have to go with translated works in English, which is one reason I work on translations. I had an idea of some of the texts I wanted to read with my students, but the list quickly swelled to about 40, which wouldn't be practical under any circumstances.

My final list has come down to:

Calixte Beyala, Your Name Shall Be Tanga
Octavia Butler, Kindred
Maryse Condé, The Last of the African Kings or I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem
Samuel R. Delany, Atlantis: Model 1924
Junot Díaz, Drown
Renee Gladman, The Activist
Marilene Felinto, The Women of Tijucopapo
Wilson Harris, Carnival
Earl Lovelace, Salt: A Novel
Nalo Hopkinson, The Salt Roads
Zakes Mda, The Heart of Redness
Caryl Phillips, Crossing the River
Patricia Powell, The Pagoda
Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá, The Renunciation
Fran Ross, Oreo
Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist

Further winnowing things down, I believe I will invite the grad students to look at the texts by Beyala, Delany, Lovelace, and Phillips on their own, but I may change this. In the past I've taught Condé's I, Tituba (one of my favorite texts of all time), Delany's Atlantis (ditto--I have read this book perhaps 15 times, and every time I read it I find something new), Díaz's Drown, Felinto's The Women of Tijucopapo, Phillips's Crossing the River, and Rodríguez Juliá's The Renunciation in my undergraduate history and myth in African Diasporic literature class (along with works by Ishmael Reed, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, John A. Williams, Thomas Glave, and others), and I've also used stories from Drown in every undergraduate fiction course I've taught over the last few years. I enlisted Whitehead's The Intuitionist for my graduate fiction workshop last year, and the students loved it (how could they not, it's an extraordinary book), and Ross's Oreo a few years ago when I taught a group of very keen advanced undergraduates in Providence. They found the book funny and charming, which it is. I've never taught Renee's novel, nor any works by Beyala, Hopkinson, Lovelace, Mda, or, astonishingly for me given the strong affinities on many levels, Wilson Harris (whose works are hard to get ahold of). It almost feels blasphemous to type that, but it's true. But now's the time. If I teach this class again, I hope to substitute works by Zadie Smith, Tisa Bryant, Manuel Olivella Zapata, Mayra Santos, Luis Rafael Sánchez, Ben Okri, Werewere Liking, Danzy Senna, Jeffrey Renard Allen, Loida Maritza Pérez, V. Y. Mudimbe, Ngugi, Pauline Melville, Esmeralda Santiago, and others.

In terms of critical and theoretical texts, I have been thinking of a wide array of texts, by critics such as Adorno, Alexander, Anderson, Anzaldua, Bachelard, Baraka, Bell, Benjamin, Bhabha, Bloch, Brathwaite, Boyce-Davies, Butler, Carby, Césaire, Delany, Deleuze and Guattari, Edwards, Eshun, Fanon, Gayle, Gilroy, Giscombe, Glissant, Hall, Harris, Heidegger, (C.L.R.) James, JanMohamed, Kant, Lacan, Lorde, Lyotard, Marcuse, Massey, McClintock, Morrison, Moten, Muñoz, Narayan, Neal, Nietzsche, Okpewho, Parmar, Scarry, Schechner, Spivak, Stone, Trinh, Weheliye, Wittgenstein, and Wynter, to name a few. Their various theoretical interventions, I think, will provide analytical lenses through which to view and frame the course's chief theme of dis/locations.

More specifically, I'm interested in locations and dislocations, as inflected by race, ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender, ideology, economics, politics. Out of the general theme, I hope to examine such issues--in an order related to the order in which we'll be reading the specific texts, beginning with Rodríguez Juliá and ending with Gladman--as interiority and various kinds of imaginaries; exteriority and object(ive) social, political and ideological relations; essentialisms and more fluid forms of identity and identity relations, including various kinds of socially constructed identitarian spaces, cosmopolitanisms, and the ethics of types of identities; power relations and macro/microregimes (of power); centeredness and decenteredness, margins, fragmentation; presence, presentness and absence; authenticity as site of experience; liminal, border and extreme positionalities; questions and notions of home, homelands, home spaces; exile; displacement; nomadism; hybridity and hybrid spaces; the body (with and without organs), embodiment and embeddedness, and non-Cartesian bodies, language, linguistic, symbolic and discursive systems and structures; cultural and social positions and positionalities; geographical/geophysical, topographical, psychogeographical, psychological, and abstracted spaces and locations; African philosophical views of space/location/positionality, and their relation to metaphysical and mythological realms; African-American aesthetic theories of location, monunital cognition, non-objectivity, and Muntu principles; other kinds of ontologies and ontological spaces, including phantom/ phantasmal spaces; modern/Modern and postmodern/post-Modern (including late Capitalist and post-Industrial) locations; post-colonial and subaltern locations; enunciated and unenunciated spaces; diaspora as a location, diasporic spaces, including diasporas in and as process and practice; sign systems as socially embedded locations; chronotopes; smooth/ striated spaces, and nomad/sedentary spaces; deterritorialization and reterritorialization; imagined communities, filiations and non-filiated relationships as loci; imaginary wish-landscapes and utopian spaces, including the idea of the not-yet-born; sites of performance and performativity; Lacanian topologies; Heideggerian Being/being and existential positionality; virtual/cybernetic space(s), and the post-subjective and post-human. And there are others....

In an undergraduate class, I would of course choose perhaps a handful of these to focus on, but I'm looking forward to delving into as many of them as possible, in relation to the primary creative texts, to see what sorts of conversations develop, and how much I learn as we explore these works. I also want to screen John Akomfrah's The Last Angel of History, and Julie Dash's Illusions or Daughters of the Dust. The quarter system is just too brief, though....

Reading or rereading and thinking about many of these works have proved one of the joys of this summer, and reawakened in me a feeling quite different from nostalgia, closer to sheer excitement and aliveness, sometimes exceeding my ability to put it in (simple) words. I will try to say a bit more about some of the themes of this course down the road, and welcome any suggestions for additional topics and themes that you think might be applicable....

***

As for reading for pleasure, there are so many books on the list I may have to wait until I actually finish one of the ones I'm currently working on.

"And then there is using everything"--Gertrude Stein (on the façade of Brown University's department of literary arts building)

Bouillabaise

Tonight, the California State Assembly, following the California Senate's lead last week, became the first state legislature in the United States to pass a bill permitting same-sex marriage. The bill passed by a 41-35 tally, with no Republican support. It now goes to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who Direland reports will probably veto it. Considered to be one of the leading pro-gay Republicans, Schwarzenegger has previously stated that unlike most Republicans he would rather have the courts decide the legality of the issue. (Is that because Democrats control both houses of the legislature?) The Golden State's highest court is doing just that as it looks at Proposition 22, which mandated that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. I don't know enough about California's state constitution to say whether legislated statutes trump a referendum-imposed law, if the Supreme Court were to uphold it, but this is an historic legislative act, no matter how you feel about marriage as an institution or gay marriage in particular, and if Schwarzenegger signs it, will reframe the political struggle around this issue for years to come.

Not only is California the most populous state in the country (it has more people than Canada, Australia or Spain, with an economy larger than France's), but it has frequently been a cultural and social trendsetter (along with Massachusetts, the only other state that approves same-sex marriage). If Schwarzenegger signs the gay marriage bill into law, I could very well see New York State or another one of the New England states (Rhode Island? Maine?) soon following in California's steps. New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, is currently reviewing the legality of same-sex marriage right now, I believe.

The Washington Post and New York Times offer their takes on the vote.

***

Bahia is one of Brazil's oldest and largest states, and traditionally has been one of its most conservative. Its captivating capital city, Salvador, not only served as the first headquarters of Portugal's New World empire from 1549-1763 and as one its major slave ports for several centuries, but also was where the oldest, continuous human and LGBT rights organization in Brazil was born. This summer marked the 25th anniversary of the Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB). Scholar, activist and visionary Dr. Luiz R. B. Mott (in photo at right, courtesy of Marccelus Bragg) established GGB in 1980, and the organization has grown to become one of the leading engines of societal awareness, opennesss and change not only in Bahia but across the conservative, poor northeastern region and across Brazil in general. Mott's partner, Marcelo Cerqueira (in photo at left), now heads GGB, and he has played a key role in GGB's ongoing activism, in its pride celebrations, and in developing LGBT organizations in smaller cities and towns throughout Bahia. (I conducted an interview with him that appeared here months ago.) Here's to wishing GGB a Happy 25th Anniversary and many more years of leadership and success!

***
If religion, according to Marx and Engels, is the opiate of the masses, then professional sports are one of several reliable narcotics. They do make me trip at times, and I've been on a little high as I've watched tennis player and most-beautiful-man-on-the-tour James Blake, who was facing an array of personal disasters last year (a broken vertebra; the death of his father from stomach cancer; a case of facially-paralyzing zoster), play his way into the quarterfinals of US Open Tennis Championships for a matchup against future Hall of Famer Andre Agassi. Blake defeated the 2nd seed, Capri-pants sporting Spanish phenom Rafael Nadal, and then knocked off another talented young Spaniard, Tommy Robredo, to become only the third Black male player to get this far. The other two were 1968 champion and sports icon Arthur Ashe, and Rodney Harmon, in 1982. Now Blake must defeat Agassi, the sentimental choice, to reach the semis, and if he goes all the way, he could face defending champion and current powerhouse Roger Federer of Switzerland.

The Williams sisters weren't in top form during this tournament, and especially not when they faced each other this past weekend. Aloof and cygnine Venus won their matchup, but less through brilliant player than through her sister's Serena collapse. Having won her third Wimbledon just a month ago, Venus seemed set to get all the way and win her third US Open title, but found herself dispatched from Flushing Meadows tonight after falling apart against Belgian Kim Clijsters, who won 4-6, 7-5, 6-2. Clijsters goes on to face the current darling of the women's tour, Russian Maria Sharapova. With Venus out, I'm hoping that Amélie Mauresmo, the young, out French lesbian, can win her first major. She'll have to get past Lindsay Davenport and maybe Sharapova (I am too lazy to check the seeds!), though.

The St. Louis Cardinals are still in first place in their division, with a record of 88-51, which is the best record in baseball right now. Though they've lost a major piston in their winning machine, third baseman Scott Rolen, to a season-ending shoulder injury, the Redbirds have continued to win.

They have one of the best pitching staffs in the majors, paced by the league's only 20-game winner so far, Chris Carpenter, who's leading or near the top of several statistical categories, and who's the presumptive favorite for the Cy Young Award. On the offensive side, the Cardinals have counted on the steady production of MVP candidate Albert Pujols, who continues to dazzle, with a .336 average, 36 home runs, 112 runs and 103 runs batted in. Their weak points include a sub-filled lineup (though rookies Abraham Núñez, John Rodriguez, and Yadier Molina have all played above expectations), the declining skills of future Hall of Famer Larry Walker, and inconsistency since the All Star Game from starting pitchers Matt Morris and Jason Marquis (who has an astounding .342 batting average). The Cardinals still have the talent, and I hope determination, to redeem their dismal play in last year's World Series, when the champion Red Sox walloped them badly. Can they do it? I hope so.

***
Finally, returning to the New Orleans (whose St. Louis Cathedral is pictured at left) theme, this is a poem I wrote years ago that mentions the city. It's based on a family story, and mentions the first Black U.S. Senator, Hiram R. Revels (1822-1901) of Mississippi, who took his seat during the Reconstruction period (1870-1871). Before becoming a politician, he was a minister and social activist, taught school in various places, including St. Louis, and raised one of the Civil War's Black regiments there in 1863. (I met his granddaughter earlier this year in Chicago; she's an elderly woman now, and a major collector of Black art.)


LETTER TO MY SISTER (St. Charles, Mo., 1885)

Today falls in a curtain of rain my determination can barely part.
My Heart, the Missouri once again pounds towards the great Muddy,
the county is shifting again beneath our feet. I just gave ma pétite Anna
a licorice stick to quiet her, its sweetness bleeds black across her lips.

Oh, the pains come and go, aggravated by weather such as we’re having
now, no snow yet but these days that still into a blur of ice. My good husband knows
his Indian remedies, though, keeping busy around here even on the coldest days,
taking odd jobs, such as repairing clocks or paving walks, with the better of the Lutheran families.

Things had been well. Then yesterday while passing the general store
halfway to town, I was dreaming of Maman and wandered in through the front door.
I paid for some flour and rising powder, having awoken with the taste
of her pound cake on my tongue. Madame B. clucked, said nothing, counted

my coins, passed back my sack. No change. As I thanked her, it made me think
things may be improving for our people, until I noticed her hands, my own, blanched
pale as wheat flour, the gallery of crueler, blanker stares. Un-noosing my shawl I flew—
my face cold as a white lady's—hoisting my petticoat so they could not see the tears.

My Heart, I hope you are prospering in New Orleans. How are your girls, your Creole husband?
Please send word to your poor soeur more often. My boys are robust as steamboat stokers,
your older niece is courting a coachman from the city. We keep the farm and homestead running
such as we can, for our Good Lord sustains us, despite the neighbors and our Democratic governor.

Often I think about how years ago your friend, that wordsmith who became our first Negro
Senator, set up his academy in a boat on the Mississippi, just a stone’s throw off the levee
over in Saint Louis. With God’s grace he taught those few children to recite their prayers, arithmetic,
geography, even the capitals of foreign states, how to spell and craft Father Abraham's English.

For true I used to wonder why he risked it all, despite the threats of bullets, fires, no money,
and then the answer rose as clear in me as dawn: he tried, as we labor on, My Heart, so that some day
every one of our children, like the currents of the greatest rivers, can keep rolling as they set this all down.

Copyright © John Keene, 1995, 2005.

Animated Poem: Matrix

Breaking from the thrust of recent posts, I'm posting another animated piece from a few years back. It's called "Matrix." I was aiming to create a short, looping piece in which two words could tell an erotic story. I think they can. What do you think?

****

Rehnquist and the Worst-Case Scenario

I actually thought earlier today that the country couldn't have gotten any news worse than what we've gotten since Hurricane Katrina touched down and left death and destruction in its wake. The scenes of human suffering and dying beamed from New Orleans and river delta region, and from Mississippi's Gulf coast, and the "inadequate"--no, Mr. President, INCOMPETENT--governmental responses have shocked, horrified and enraged people not only across the United States but the entire world. What's also been shocking is seeing our disengaged, disingenuous and endlessly dissimulating President and his cabinet go through the motions (though they're now engaged in a grand PR--as in PROPAGANDA--campaign to rectify the public's disgusted opinion of them); grossly incompetent leaders of the key first-response federal agencies; an incommunicative cross-governmental bureaucratic system; a big city police force that disintegrated before the cameras; and one of the nation's most important historical and cultural respositories, and economic engines, nearly washed away under fetid floodwaters. Sadly, the devastation and the incompetence continue as I type this entry. But Hurricane Katrina did not occur in a bad news vacuum: before it wreaked havoc, other bad news included the ongoing war and constitutional crisis in Iraq, the rise in gas prises and the US national poverty rate, George W. Bush's nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, several dreadful recent bills passed by Congress, the splintering of the major labor union coalition, and numerous other crises in Washington and across the globe.

And the bad news keeps coming, with repercussions that may extend as far into the future as the devastation of New Orleans. The extreme right-wing Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William H. Rehnquist, died today of thyroid cancer at the age of 80, leaving the Chief Justice seat open on the bench and possibly opening up the possibility of three seats for the "King of Vacations"--to use Hugo Chávez's term for our President, who couldn't be bothered to fly back to Washington to address the Hurricane Katrina situation or to address the glaring pre-9/11 Presidential Daily Briefing that stated that Osama bin Laden was "determined to attack in the United States" but did rush back from Crawford in order to sign legislation that would meddle with Terri Schiavo's husband's spousal rights--to work with.

Rehnquist has gained notoriety during his years on the Supreme Court, which he joined after being nominated by Richard Nixon in 1971, for his conservative views, which have often favored state powers against individual rights, and states' rights against federal control. He also strongly opposed desegregation and abortion rights, and supported school prayer and capital punishment. His extreme beliefs, with have had a racist cast, were apparent years before, however, when as a law clerk for Supreme Court Associate Justice Robert Jackson he wrote a brief in favor of racial segregation, and later, while a Republican activist in Phoenix, Arizona actively worked to discourage Blacks and Latinos from voting. During his years on the Burger Court, Rehnquist was often in dissent (his judicial and ideological inverses being the famous liberal judges William J. Brennan and Thurgood Marshall). But in the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan's presidency, Rehnquist no longer found himself a right-wing lone wolf. First Reagan appointed the "Federalist" Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981, and then, after elevating Rehnquist to the Chief Justice post to replace Warren Burger in 1986, nominated the "strict constructionist" Antonin Scalia in replace him. President George H. W. Bush appointed Anthony Kennedy, an economic conservative in 1990, and year later, in 1991, seated the ultraconservative Clarence Thomas, giving Rehnquist a five-person conservative, pro-states' right, anti-Congress juggernaut, at least for much of the 1990s.

With Rehnquist's death, George W. Bush has a number of options for remaking the court. Almost all will involve selected right-wingers to replace both Rehnquist and O'Connor; now that he's not up for reelection and has only his far-right base and the Straussian neoconservatives to count on, why would he nominate a moderate? For the good of the country? That's even funnier than the central joke of The Aristocrats!

I think the worst-case scenario would be this:

He would elevate Clarence Thomas, one of most conservative current members of the court--with some libertarian views--to the Chief Justice position. By nominating Thomas, Bush would please his Christian conservative base and conservative Black clergypeople and activists, and also make history as the president who appointed the first Black Chief Justice. Thomas, who barely made it onto the court in a 52-48 vote in 1991, would probably be voted up by a similar margin. In truly cynical fashion, Bush's and Thomas's supporters could argue that opposing him was racist, and in light of the alleged rightward drift of the Republican Party and many of the appellate courts, could even argue that he was in a "mainstream" of sorts.

With the attention on Thomas, John Roberts, whom Bush has nominated to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, would waltz in without much Democratic Senate opposition. Roberts has a minimal paper trail as a jurist, but his writings as a law clerk and as a member of Ronald Reagan's legal staff show him to be on the ideological Far Right. In addition, he served as a legal coach during the contentious post-election struggles in Florida in 2000.

By elevating Thomas, Bush would open up a third slot on the court, to which he could appoint his close friend, Alberto Gonzales, the current Attorney General. Were Gonzales confirmed, which seems likely given the Republican majority in the Senate and the likelihood that some conservative Democrats, as well as Latino moderate Ken Salazar (D-Colorado) and African-American progressive Barack Obama (D-Illinois), who have both repeatedly voted for candidates of color across the ideological spectrum, would provide a majority vote cushion. Bush would again make history by appointing the first Latino to the Supreme Court. While Gonzales's rulings during his brief tenure as an associate judge on the Texas Supreme Court varied between moderation and conservatism, his political approach has been conservative, with deference to the executive branch, and it seems likely that he would write reliably from that position more so than any other. The most damning recent indictments against him are his drafting of memoranda, while White House Counsel, supporting the use of torture methods for the "War on Terror," and his main organizational focus as Attorney General on pornography involving consenting adults.

Even if Bush didn't elevate Thomas and nominate Gonzales, he could elevate Scalia, and nominate a similarly ultraconservative judge, with "originalist" views, as a replacement. (I actually fear Thomas as Chief Justice more than Scalia.) If the third nominee were a woman, even a woman as far out there as Janice Rogers Brown (a two-fer, Black and extremist), Bush would again be able to gain some positive press for himself from the compliant, easily misled media, and possibly achieve a boost in the polls. Any additional "capital" in this man's hands, as events over the last five years have proved time and again, is like plutonium.

Taking a longer-term view, the youthful quartet of Thomas, Scalia, Roberts, and Gonzales, if they could secure periodic votes from Associate Justice Kennedy, would be able to issue conservative to ultraconservative rulings on fairly frequent basis. It's unlikely that Kennedy, who has drifted increasingly to the left in several recent rulings, would concur in overturning Roe v. Wade, Lawrence v. Texas, or several other cases that have increasingly vexed the Right Wing, but his opposition to affirmative action and his role in Bush v. Gore are well known. Were 85-year-old John Paul Stevens to retire either before Democrats gain control of the Senate (at the earliest in 2006) or before a Democratic president took office (in 2008) or both, Bush could make another nomination to ensure an ironclad right-wing majority for decades to come....

Update: W has decided upon John Roberts to replace William Rehnquist as Chief Justice, bypassing both Scalia and Thomas. Jeffrey Rosen was on Brian Lehrer's WNYC show this morning (Monday, September 5th) arguing that Roberts will be to the left of Rehnquist on some issues, while also claiming that Roberts adheres to the principle of stare decisis. I'm not a legal scholar, but I'm also not at all convinced by Rosen's defense. I fear Roberts, with his lifetime appointment and immense power, will be even more conservative than anyone envisions. Doug Ireland, in his usual mordant way, breaks down the dangers of a Roberts-led court in his post today, "Bush's Roberts-for-Chief Ploy." (Though he calls it a "black day for America," I never go along with the usual "black=negative" metaphor.) To quote:

One of the most attention-getting will be the case involving the Bush Administration's legal assault on Oregon's right-to-die-with dignity law, which John Ashcroft began the effort to nullify and which Alberto Gonzales is also committed to erasing. The new Chief Justice is a devout Roman Catholic, and his church was in the forefront of the Terri Schiavo case. The ultra-right Christer lobby, the Family Research Council, has already given its stamp of approval to Roberts, telling the Washington Post this morning, "We have a measure of confidence that he would be better on our issues than Sandra Day O'Connor." What FRC means by "our issues" are things like diminishing abortion rights and the criminalization of homosexuality (O'Connor voted against the former and for striking down the latter).

Check his post out....

Kanye West speaks out + More relief info

A number of bloggers (Rod 2.0, Scott Poulson-Bryant, etc.) covered handsome, dapper rap impresario Kanye West's recent statements on his MTV special "All Eyes on Kanye West" against homophobia. Specifically, he talked about how "gay" had become an antonym for hiphop, and said that while hiphop had once been about "speaking your mind and about breaking down barriers...everyone in hip-hop discriminates against gay people." He continued: "Not just hip-hop, but America just discriminates. And I wanna just, to come on TV and just tell my rappers, just tell my friends, 'Yo, stop it.'"

I applaud West for making these comments, and feel that even if they were primarily meant to help market his new CD, which is set to pop off at Number 1 on the Billboardcharts, and to buttress his heterosexuality, countering the idea embedded in his song "Mama's Boy" that he was a mama's boy and possibly gay, the gesture, which is all too rare in contemporary hiphop, was still an important and necessary one. In his overt anti-homophobic stance, he joins fellow Chicagoan Common, who, after issuing one of the more virulently anti-gay CDs I can remember, later changed his tune.

But I think West wasn't being cynical; while his whining about a lack of attention and praise has rankled me in the past, I do think he's a talented and skilled musician, and even the comments above include a broader commentary about discrimination, which he demonstrated on last night's NBC Concert for Hurricane Katrina Relief, when he broke away from scripted comments and channeled the rage that millions of Americans--especially Black Americans--feel about the horrors we've been viewing on TV. But in fact, he went further: he managed to connect the War in Iraq to the bureaucratic and logistical disaster that worsened the situation on the Gulf Coast, and to indict his own materialism (and by implication, Secretary of State Condoleezza's scandalous recreation and shopping spree in New York after the cataclysm in Louisiana, Mississippi and her home state of Alabama had already occurred.)

The network was unable to censor his live comments, which directly indicted the President of the United States, on the East Coast, but did censor them on the later West Coast feed.

Courtesy of Crooks & Liars: Quicktime Link Windows Media Link

The transcript (courtesy of Crooks & Liars):

"I hate the way they portray us in the media.

"If you see a black family it says they are looting if you see a white family it says they are looking for food.

"And you know that it’s been 5 days because most of the people are black and even for me to complain … I would be a hypocrite because I would turn away from the TV because it’s too hard to watch. I’ve even been shopping before giving a donation and so right now I’m calling my business manager what is the biggest amount I can give.

"And just to imagine if I was down there, those are my people down there. So anybody out there who wants to help with the set up, the way that America is set up to help … The poor, the black people, the less well off as slow as possible. I mean, Red Cross is doing everything they can.

"We already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war now fighting another way and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us."

(Mike Meyers tries to get back on prompter, reads from script and then camera cuts back to Kanye. He pauses before Kanye West continues.

"George Bush doesn’t care about black people."

The cameras then abruptly switched to actor Chris Tucker.

God Bless Kanye West for his courage and for using this brief platform to speak truth, impromptu and unyielding, directly to power!

***

From Jamie Schweser, courtesy of the incomparable Tisa B.:

The NAACP has been trying to send buses into the Gulf states to help with
evacuation efforts. Their buses were reportedly turned back for lack of
proper permits. They've opened an emergency command center in Biloxi, MS,
and have other resources available. They are also partnered with MoveOn.org
(see below).

http://www.naacp.org

Donate money to displaced black college students via the United Negro
College Fund. The academic year won't be starting for many students from
affected areas.

http://www.uncf.org/

Here is a one-page list of non-profits to which you can donate money to help
with emergency evacuation, children and families, and rebuilding efforts:

http://www.networkforgood.org/topics/animal_environ/hurricanes/?source=AOL&c
mpgn=NTWK

The Sparkplug Foundation has a great list of funding and volunteering
options with organizations that doing grassroots relief work that focuses
on people of color and poor people, especially groups that are run by, or
accountable to people of color and economically devastated communities:

http://www.sparkplugfoundation.org/katrinarelief.html

Tides Foundation has a Rapid Response Disaster Relief Fund that specializes
in relief projects that serve those most in need and most forgotten or
disenfranchised from traditional relief organizations:

http://www.tidesfoundation.org/RR_0905.cfm

The League of Pissed Off Voters has a New Orleans Fund, of which 100% of
the money donated goes to their work of building a team of media,
organizing and advocacy-savvy Nawleans refugees who are ready to write
op-eds, fight, advocate, support their displaced neighbors during this
crisis, and work for New Orleans to be restored in a way that includes the
input of ordinary people!

https://secure.democracyinaction.org/dia/shop/indyvoter/custom.jsp?
donate_page_KEY=80

New Orleans Network : In about 24-36 hours, the website that myself (Jamie),
Shana Sassoon and a whole team of volunteer techies are working on, and
will be functional as a way for people to connect with and support the New
Orleans refugees in their area, It will also be a way for New Orleans
refugees to find each other in their exile communities and organize to take
back their city and make sure that it is rebuilt in ways that serve ALL New
Orleans residents. There will be exile community bulletin boards,
discussion boards, resource listings, advocacy how-to sheets, events
calendars, etc.

http://www.NewOrleansNetwork.org

Finally, as the Neighborhood Story Project, (Jamie's friends) Abram and
Rachel will spend the next 4 months working with refugee high school
students to document the stories of people living in the Astrodome. They
are in the process of reprinting the original Neighborhood Story Project
Books at a printshop in Houston. The original books, each written by a
highschool student about their neighborhood in New Orleans, were the
best-selling books in New Orleans over the summer, behind Harry Potter 6.
All remaining copies were destroyed in the flooding.

Anyone who wants to help get their local independent bookstore to take a
box of these incredible books to sell as a way to raise money for relief
and recovery, and as a way to get out the amazing stories of the people and
neighborhoods of New Orleans, please contact me at jamieschweser@yahoo.com
Abram and Rachel will need to raise thousands of dollars to reprint the
books and get them shipped out to bookstores. Information about how to
help will come soon, when they can get some sort of bank accounts and 501c3
organization in Houston after the holiday weekend.

Thanks for all that you are all doing, and for all of the kind words and
well wishes.

It feels great to know that so many people are willing to do so much to
help our friends, family, brothers and sisters who have been so terribly
affected by this disaster of nature and all of the catastrophes of racism
and classism that have made it worse.

Jamie Schweser

More Hurricane Katrina Relief Information

One thought that has come immediately to mind are that we need a non-governmental, Black-run and operated global relief agency that could step in to provide various kinds of assistance--from money, clothing, to technical expertise, coordination of relief and placement, etc.--to Black people, both in the US and elsewhere, in the event of natural disasters such as the one that occurred earlier this week along the Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama gulf coasts, or other kinds of mass-scale crises. Perhaps such an organization exists, and if so, pardon my ignorance; if not, it's an idea whose relevance the horrific scenes out of New Orleans, Slidell, Gulfport, Biloxi and other cities and towns have underscored.

This organization would not preempt any governmental efforts, or other relief agencies, like the Red Cross or Red Crescent, or other kinds of NGOs, like those associated with the UN or independent entities such as Doctors Without Borders/Médécins sans frontières. But it would be able to offer something and provide an immediate response that, as we saw, was utterly lacking this past week. The organization would have to be financially transparent, have transparent disbursement and distribution procedures and, as much as possible, apolitical; it might have on its board some of the very rich Black people that Cane mentions as well as high-level non-governmental officials from across the globe, like actors Danny Glover, Don Cheadle and Sophie Okenedo, public health experts Joycelyn Elders, David Satcher and David Malebranche, scientists and mathematicians Benjamin Carson, William Massey, and Jonathan David Farley, scholars Anthony Appiah, Angela Davis, Johnetta Cole, and Gordon Rohlehr, religious leaders Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Reverend Calvin Forbes, business executives Kenneth Chenault, Pamela Thomas Graham and Stanley O'Neal, authors and artists Nancy Morejón and René Depestre, musical entertainers like P. Diddy, Jay-Z, Aretha Franklin, and Me'Shell Ndege'Ocello, former government officials with vast expertise, including Nelson Mandela, Clifford Alexander, Colin Powell, Alexis Herman, and many others; and there would also be a rotating group of non-famous representatives from across the African Diaspora.

I think it's a realizable goal. What do you think? How much would they need to accomplish even modest goals? How much could this organization accomplish? How long would it take? Certainly they might have been more effective than the ineptitude the entire world has witnessed through today.

***
More Relief and Donation Options (I can't vouch for any, but I'm providing them nevertheless):

Newscaster and entertainer Tom Joyner has set up a special relief fund:

BlackAmericaWeb.com Relief Fund
PO Box 803209
Dallas, TX 75240
OR you can make an online donation by going to www.blackamericaweb.com/relief
This fund has been set up by nationally syndicated radio personality Tom Joyner

NAACP Disaster Relief Efforts

The NAACP is setting up command centers in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama as part of its disaster relief efforts. NAACP units across the nation have begun collecting resources that will be placed on trucks and sent directly into the disaster areas. Also, the NAACP has established a disaster relief fund to accept monetary donations to aid in the relief effort.

Checks can be sent to the NAACP payable to

NAACP Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund
4805 Mt. Hope Drive
Baltimore, MD 21215

Donations can also be made online at www.naacp.org/disaster/contribute.php
FYI, the NAACP, founded in 1909, is America's oldest civil rights organization

Team Rescue One
www.teamrescueone.com
Set up by native New Orleans rapper Master P and his wife Sonya Miller

Rainbow Relief Fund

Please be part of the LGBT community's response to the loss and devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina has blazed a trail of destruction throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Thousands of homes have been destoyed and several hundred lives have been lost. Many of the survivors are homeless and in need of food, safe drinking water, and medical care. It is estimated that tens of thousands will need temorary housing for months to come. RWF has established a fund for donations to help the survivors of Katrina. We are responding with food aid -- donations through RWF will go to our partner America's Second Harvest (ASH), the nation's food bank network. ASH is one of the most effective charities in the world. ASH expects that at least ten food banks and hundreds of related agencies were hit by Hurricane Katrina. Your donations will be used to provide meals and groceries, transport food to survivors, and secure additional warehouse space to assist food banks in resuming and maintaining operations. 100% of the funds you donate to the RWF Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund will go toward helping the survivors recover.

Donate at: http://www.rainbowfund.org/donate, and specify "Katrina" or send a check, payable to Rainbow World Fund, PO Box 14480, San Francisco, CA 94114.

Please help spread the word and forward this email to your friends and families.

Mississippi Action For Community Education

Dear Friends:

Art Without Walls/Caring For Creators of Change in cosponsorship with the Mississippi Action For Community Education,Inc
are working together to assist the victims of hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Mace is a non-profit , multi-purpose community development corporation established in 1967 by civil rights activist and community organizers. The organization was created to build and strengthen local human capacities and indigenous community development efforts in the 20-county Mississippi Delta region.

Throughout the years, programs implemented by MACE have encompassed leadership development programs for adults, youth, and public officials; GED/adult literacy training; job training and career development programs; the Mississippi Delta Blues and Heritage Festival; arts education programs; housing and real estate development; and technical assistance to unincorporated rural communities. MACE also brought national attention to the need of investment capital to fuel development by creation of the Delta Foundation, a capital investment entity, and pioneered the concepts of community development in rural areas.

MACE has agreed to act as a conduit for the distribution of money, food and clothing. Contributions of money can be sent to:

Mississippi Action For Community Education
Mr. Wendall Paris
119 South Theobald Street
Greenville, Mississippi 38701
Telephone: 662-335-3523
e-mail: mace03@bellsouth.net website: www.delatamace.org

For updates please tune in to Dr. Carlos Russell radio Show, "Thinking It Through", 1190, 12am-5 pm

Please be patient as we work to develop "distribution sites" where food and clothing and medical supplies can be dropped off.
I will update you and send a list as soon as possible. Moreover, we are trying to locate the recent graduates from Cuban Medical School a group of doctors who returned less than two weeks ago to the USA.


Thank you for your support,
Mae Jackson

General Sites (from Biogems Environmental Defense):
Charity Navigator
Network for Good

Non-Perishable Shipping Sites

You can ship non-perishable items to these following locations, which are confirmed to be delivering them to the hurricane and flooding victims:

Center for LIFE Outreach Center
121 Saint Landry Street
Lafayette, LA 70506
atten.: Minister Pamela Robinson
337-504-5374

Mohammad Mosque 65
2600 Plank Road
Baton Rouge, LA 70805
atten.: Minister Andrew Muhammad
225-923-1400
225-357-3079

Lewis Temple CME Church
272 Medgar Evers Street
Grambling, LA 71245
atten.: Rev. Dr. Ricky Helton
318-247-3793

St. Luke Community United Methodist Church
c/o Hurricane Katrina Victims
5710 East R.L. Thornton Freeway
Dallas, TX 75223
atten.: Pastor Tom Waitschies
214-821-2970

S.H.A.P.E. Community Center
3815 Live Oak
Houston, Texas 77004
atten.: Deloyd Parker
713-521-0641

****
Also, poet/musician Latasha Natasha Diggs sends this word:

Join KEVIN POWELL and Special Guests

as they present a BENEFIT for New Orleans

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005
at CANAL ROOM
285 West Broadway (at Canal Street)
downtown Manhattan in New York City
7:00 pm - 11:00 pm

* 21 and over with ID
Please RSVP to cher_harrison@yahoo.com

They are not accepting cash donations, but are asking for a range of things, including aspirin, adult and children's clothes and shoes, bedding materials, batteries, and so on.

** If you are placing donated items in a bag PLEASE
LABEL (for example,
Children's shoes or Adult shoes, or Children's clothes
or Adult clothes).

We will NOT be taking monetary donations. See
information below on where you
can send financial contributions.

CANAL ROOM ownership is generously donating the space but there will be a CASH BAR ALL NIGHT.

***
Alternative Websites with accurate and balanced information about the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe

www.diversityinc.com
www.alternet.org
www.blackelectorate.com
www.npr.org
www.daveyd.com
www.slate.com
www.bet.com
www.allhiphop.com
www.democracynow.org
www.blackamericaweb.com