Category: Arts & Culture
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Poems by Jordan Tyler Young
Claiming Black I stand in front of you all black and all shooting hoops, swirling through the rim while the crowd cheers me on that’s what you see me as my words grab silence and shoot into the air you hear the same darn thing but you don’t see me as a poet no, you…
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The Poetry of Everett Hoagland
THE BOTTOM LINE Lo, and behold! Our would be bold new president — nominated, campaigned for, elected by a mainstream political party, by a mainstream political process to head our (inter-) national mess — is neither a comrade, a messiah, nor magician. Not even the so-called American Dream in fruition. Heavens! Unprecedented. Imagine! Of all…
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We Are All In The Dumps: Remembering Maurice Sendak’s Fiction on Homelessness
Noelle Swan Spare Change News Maurice Sendak was being driven through Los Angeles in the early 1990s. It was the kind of journey into darkness found in his children’s books, only more real and scarier. The nation was struggling to emerge from the recession that had followed a worldwide stock market crash in 1987. Big banks reported…
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AMERICA: A New Poem by A.D. Winans
By A. D. Winans Drummed out of the infantry of death I came back to you carrying the poems of my soul opened the door of life and found only death inside America I have read the State of the Union and listened to the state of the econom in a state of hysteria America…
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The Skeleton in Madame Simote’s Closet
Jacques Fleury Spare Change News It remains a mystery as to how and why Madame Simote’s husband actually died. Jean Herbie Simote was the handsome town doctor and was perceived to be a philanderer. He was rumored to have had affairs with a plethora of Madame Simote’s female friends and even some of her relatives.…
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HBO’S Got It: Vicious Queens and Viking Vampires
Photo above: Creepy Prince Joffrey (Jack Gleeson) glowering with Menace. Photo: Helen Sloan Patty Wittnebert Tomsky Spare Change News Dude. Gimme a fantasy with long velvet dresses and hot guys in leather and armor. Gimme Viggo as Aragorn. Or gimme a hot vampire and a heroine with killer curves. (Kristin Stewart need not apply). Gimme…
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Local Music Scene: Some Sweet Sounds from Sweet Wednesday
Jacques Fleury Spare Change News I met the folk musical group Sweet Wednesday back in 2007. I invited them to perform live on my then television show, “Dream Weavers with Jacques,” at Cambridge Community Television (CCTV). They are a rare breed of individuals reminiscent of the best of the 1960s and ’70s peace and love…
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Tattoos Are Art, Not Gang Symbols
Jeremy Parks Spare Change News People with tattoos are not always in gangs. It’s a form of art. People use this to express their feelings and how they live their lives. I have four tattoos, and three are religious tattoos. The tattoo on my back is for all the brothers I lost when I served…
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Discovering Fiction: The Lost of Innocence in James Joyce’s “Araby” and Ernest Hemingway’s “Indian Camp”
Jacques Fleury Spare Change News Ah, Childhood, a time when our slates were clean and fresh like the morning dawn; a time when we saw life very much as we saw a new toy, something to be observed and explored. This innocence lasts up until that moment when, one day, everything changes; the tooth fairy’s…
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Art show features homeless and low-income artists
Constance Lane The work created at Common Art, a Boston art studio for homeless and low-income artists, can be as direct and honest as the blues, and as hallucinatory as a fairy tale. The artists working there are proud, independent, wildly imaginative, and completely dedicated to their craft. The work is often beautiful, sometimes horrifying,…