Category: Arts & Culture
-
Three Poems
A Good Man quietly inside of me remembering — always remembering the capon my mother cooked to please the man she loved, a man that came home every night put on his slippers and smoked his pipe they’d sit and chat and watch TV Gunsmoke, Ed Sullivan, Lawrence Welk and always Dad’s favorite – Edith…
-
Street People
Crowds at dusk with better weather here at “The Club, Last Rainbow” some Friday night when out of town folks with lighter arms on shirtsleeve notice taste the smoke among the barbeques in fires of hot stoves by skinny rows of street people listening to my alto sax on the loudspeaker along the waterfront breaking…
-
Unpacking Occupy
“The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement” by David Graeber Spiegel and Grau, 352 pp., $26 (hardcover) Occupy Wall Street ruled the airwaves and imagination of America for about six weeks before its bases of operation were raided by federally co-ordinated government forces. How did it rise to prominence so fast, achieve more…
-
The Mugging: Times Square: 1973
New Year’s I drank quarter beers and lived in a delirium of lights. The flash of the flash-in-the pan the hooker and the tourist whores working the opposite side of the street. And then running down the dark alley the sucker punch the spray of American Express Checks the denominations, flapping to the ground my…
-
Rap and Revolution in Mozambique
Mozambique is proud home to not one, but two female rappers who are both qualified lawyers. Yveth “Vauvita” Matunza is striking. She is tall, wearing shoes with enormous stilettos. She has on full make up and a smart, tailored dress suit. She is doing her master’s part-time while working full-time at the Mozambican Human Rights…
-
Free for All?
“Free For All!” Directed by John Wellington Ennis freeforall.tv, 1:36:36, free online (streaming) The controversial presidential elections of 2000 and 2004 angered many Americans, who believed their ballots were stolen. The investigative documentary “Free For All!” (2008) lifts the veil of secrecy. In this film, director John Ennis investigates unsettling problems such as disfranchisement of…
-
Three Poems
NO APOLOGY! let’s get something straight. i’m a full-fledged member of the 60s generation! The Generation! not generation x or double x or even xxx. No! i graduated from high school in 1965 and graduated from college in 1969. i am completely, unapologetically a complete product of the crazy, wonderful, mad, hopeful, imaginative, Imaginative, love-crazed,…
-
LGBTQ Youth Adrift
LGBTQ Youth Adrift “Outside” Directed by Natalie Avery KUED, 55:58, free online (streaming) There are over 1.4 million homeless youth in the United States today and forty percent of them are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ). The independent documentary Outside is a microcosm of their lives adrift in an anchorless world, addressing the…
-
Adoption and Destruction on the Religious Right
“The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption” by Kathryn Joyce PublicAffaird, 352 pp., $26.99 (hardcover) In her recent book, “The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking, and the New Gospel of Adoption,” Kathryn Joyce notes that the “default view of adoption” in American society is a “‘win-win’ scenario” for all parties involved: adoptive…
-
Gut Feeling
“In the Body of the World: A Memoir” by Eve Ensler Metropolitan, 232 pp., $25 (hardcover) Eve Ensler’s new memoir “In the Body of the World” encapsulates the very physical nature of grieving as experienced through the journey of the author’s transcendent deliverance through cancer. The book convincingly proposes a parallel between the ills that…