If you're going through hell, keep going.
- Winston Churchill
E-NOTES: WHEN THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH. E. Ethelbert Miller's view of the world. Visit: http://www.eethelbertmiller.com
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Than a Month" with Filmmaker Shukree Tilghman and E. Ethelbert Miller
ITVS COMMUNITY CINEMA [DC] presents a FREE Community Screening of MORE THAN A MONTH, a Film by Shukree Hassan TilghmanPre-screening "Coffe and Conversation" ...
www.yelp.com/.../washington-more-than-a-month-with-filmm...
ITVS COMMUNITY CINEMA [DC] presents a FREE Community Screening of MORE THAN A MONTH, a Film by Shukree Hassan TilghmanPre-screening "Coffe and Conversation" ...
www.yelp.com/.../washington-more-than-a-month-with-filmm...
This afternoon I watched WHITE: A MEMOIR IN COLOR. This film was sent to me by the filmmaker Joel Katz. I sent him this note:
I enjoyed your film very much. I saw it first as a film about adoption. I have so many friends (many from Korea) who are trying to explore this issue in their creative writing.
I like the father/son relationship that you capture in the film. Your father's death as the world is changing with Obama's election is very moving.
Leah comes across as the star; reminding me very much of the poet June Jordan. Fierce love on the screen...
I've been teaching memoir workshops - so I was pulled into the storytelling and the bases you touched.
This film should open the door to many different types of discussions. What type of world are we creating for our children? How do we honor the work of our fathers?
I enjoyed your film very much. I saw it first as a film about adoption. I have so many friends (many from Korea) who are trying to explore this issue in their creative writing.
I like the father/son relationship that you capture in the film. Your father's death as the world is changing with Obama's election is very moving.
Leah comes across as the star; reminding me very much of the poet June Jordan. Fierce love on the screen...
I've been teaching memoir workshops - so I was pulled into the storytelling and the bases you touched.
This film should open the door to many different types of discussions. What type of world are we creating for our children? How do we honor the work of our fathers?
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| Joel Katz and family |
Saturday, February 04, 2012
THE CREATION OF THE E-BOX
This morning I met with Karolina Gajdeczka at Mayorga (near Takoma Metro). Karolina will be highlighted in my E GALLERY ( www.ethelbertgallery.blogspot.com) during the month of March.
She's the type of young writer I like to help. During our discussion of books and other matters, I realized it would be nice to put together a box of books for her. Over the last few years I've been giving books to charter schools in the DC area as well as the June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco. Karolina and I joked about calling the box - Karolina's box. But maybe that sounds too much like Pandora. Anyway in keeping with everything (E)ssential I decided to call it the E-Box. I'll present it to Karolina in April - in celebration of National Poetry Month. Maybe this is something I will do every year. I've been fortunate (blessed) to meet new writers almost every week. I could present an E-Box to the writer I think has promise or a person I feel we need to watch for future great things. The E-Box might just become as successful as The Miller Classic, the softball game I sponsor which is held every June at the Bennington Writers Seminars in Vermont. This June will mark the 6th year the game will be played. A way for poets to outscore those fiction writers.
This morning I met with Karolina Gajdeczka at Mayorga (near Takoma Metro). Karolina will be highlighted in my E GALLERY ( www.ethelbertgallery.blogspot.com) during the month of March.
She's the type of young writer I like to help. During our discussion of books and other matters, I realized it would be nice to put together a box of books for her. Over the last few years I've been giving books to charter schools in the DC area as well as the June Jordan School for Equity in San Francisco. Karolina and I joked about calling the box - Karolina's box. But maybe that sounds too much like Pandora. Anyway in keeping with everything (E)ssential I decided to call it the E-Box. I'll present it to Karolina in April - in celebration of National Poetry Month. Maybe this is something I will do every year. I've been fortunate (blessed) to meet new writers almost every week. I could present an E-Box to the writer I think has promise or a person I feel we need to watch for future great things. The E-Box might just become as successful as The Miller Classic, the softball game I sponsor which is held every June at the Bennington Writers Seminars in Vermont. This June will mark the 6th year the game will be played. A way for poets to outscore those fiction writers.
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| KAROLINA GAJDECZKA photo by Ethelbert |
 | Saturday, February 4, 2012 6:29:20 AM |
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Park Police raid Occupy D.C. camp
U.S. Park Police in riot gear are enforcing no-camping regulations at the Occupy D.C. encampment this morning.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-buzz/post/occupy-dc-raided-by-park-police-live-updates/2012/02/03/gIQAl3f2oQ_blog.html
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Upcoming Events
A conversation exploring the intersection between creative expression and mental health—Gregory Orr will present and converse with Arts in Mind curator Joshua Wolf Shenk and Donald Rosen, the CEO and Medical Director of the Austen Riggs Center.
Friday, February 03, 2012
www.ethelbertgallery.blogspot.com
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WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED - FEB 5 
DUKE ELLINGTON'S WASHINGTON - FEB 12
FREEDOM ON MY MIND - FEB. 26
Paul E Nelson | ||
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Some February American Sentences
Written by Splabman on Feb 01, 2012 08:41 pmA form Allen Ginsberg invented to “Americanize” haiku, these are snapshots of the moment written by Paul E Nelson, one a day, for over eleven years. These are a sampling from most Februaries of the practice. More info at www.AmericanSentences.com. Below see the email exchange with people entrusted to manage Allen Ginsberg’s ...
Thursday, February 02, 2012
The Washington Post will host a panel discussion in partnership with Howard University's Women as Change Agents titled 'Through the Looking Glass: Black Women in America.' The event will take place on Wednesday, February 29 at Howard University's Blackburn Center beginning at 6:30pm. The discussion will be led by Michelle Singletary, nationally syndicated Personal Finance Columnist for The Washington Post. To RSVP or to submit a question for the panel, please e-mail behindtheheadlines@washpost.com.
RELATED STORIES
Washington Post Focus on Black Women
http://www.theroot.com/blogs/black-women/washington-post-spotlights-black-women
Survey paints portrait of black women in America
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/survey-paints-portrait-of-black-women-in-america/2011/12/22/gIQAvxFcJQ_story.html
African American women see their own challenges mirrored in Michelle Obama’s
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/african-american-women-see-their-own-struggles-mirrored-in-michelle-obamas/2012/01/19/gIQA5k4DMQ_story.html
RELATED STORIES
Washington Post Focus on Black Women
http://www.theroot.com/blogs/black-women/washington-post-spotlights-black-women
Survey paints portrait of black women in America
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/survey-paints-portrait-of-black-women-in-america/2011/12/22/gIQAvxFcJQ_story.html
African American women see their own challenges mirrored in Michelle Obama’s
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/african-american-women-see-their-own-struggles-mirrored-in-michelle-obamas/2012/01/19/gIQA5k4DMQ_story.html
WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA
http://tinyurl.com/7q97pgz
Poland¹s 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, whose simple
words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life,
has died. She was 88.
Szymborska, a heavy smoker, died in her sleep of lung cancer Wednesday
evening at her home in the southern city of Krakow, her personal secretary
Michal Rusinek said.
http://tinyurl.com/7q97pgz
Poland¹s 1996 Nobel Prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska, whose simple
words and playful verse plucked threads of irony and empathy out of life,
has died. She was 88.
Szymborska, a heavy smoker, died in her sleep of lung cancer Wednesday
evening at her home in the southern city of Krakow, her personal secretary
Michal Rusinek said.
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EAR-UP! WITH JOHN PARKS
Johnny Otis: The Godfather of Rhythm & Blues
There is nothing coincidental about death and dying unless it is associated with people whose lives were intertwined. Recently, Jazz and R&B bandleader Johnny Otis passed away on the 17th of January 2012. He has been referred to as The Godfather of Rhythm & Blues. By 1950 he had become a defacto talent scout having discovered a number of artists who would eventually have successful careers in their own right. Arguably the best known person that Otis discovered was Etta James. Coincidentally, James died three days after Otis. Sadly their passing marks the end of an era.
“When I’m gone and other of my era are gone,” he foretold in a 2000 San Francisco Chronicle interview,” there will be no more of this music produced. I don’t care how much these people think they’ve got it down with their little tapes. Blues, rhythm and blues and jazz is doomed as we know it.” In some ways Otis was right. He had been at the forefront of what would come to be known as Rhythm and Blues and Rock ‘n’ Roll. From his perspective, then a 79 year old musician, there seemed to be little respect for the social, cultural and historical significance of these American music genres.
This assessment was captured more than a decade earlier in 1989 by Terry Gross, executive producer and host of NPR’s Fresh Air, as a lamentable observation of the state of the African American community. “What a strange thing has happened as the years went by,” Otis said. “The roles reversed. Today, our audience for blues-oriented music is white. And the black youngsters are not interested in it, and is something that pains us for many reasons – not just personally, but when you start to think from a cultural standpoint, how much we seem to have lost over the past 20 years or so in the African-American community, where blues and jazz artistry is concerned.”
Johnny Otis was a Greek American born on December 28, 1921 in a black neighborhood in Berkeley, California. His birth name was Ionnis Alexandres Veliotes. Though white by birth, socially, culturally Otis was black by choice. He was no bleeding heart liberal and he had a genuine affinity and empathy for blacks and black America. Otis later explained that he couldn’t think of himself as anything other than being black.
Otis began his career as a drummer. His first professional gig was working for Count Otis Matthew’s West Oakland House Rockers in 1939. Otis has also played with tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Illinois Jacquet. Jacquet was a successful big band leader in the 1940s who said that the height of his career made over $200,000. Otis also played with the Count Basie Orchestra. He moved to Los Angeles after Jimmy Witherspoon and Nat “King” Cole urged him joining Harlan Lenard’s Kansas City Rockets at the Club Alabam in 1943. He scored first hit with his own band in 1945 with “Harlem Nocturne.”
In the post WWII years the popularity of big bands was waning as musical tastes and musical styles began to change. Otis reorganized his band to include the electric guitar, the instrument that created a new sound as well as a deviation from the honky tonk, boogie-woogie, barrellehouse blues styles. These musical styles were the basis of the rhythm and blues genre that emerged in the late 1940s early 1950s. All of the instruments, with the exception of the electric guitar were the standard instruments of a jazz band. The electric guitar, although it eventually passed the critics gauntlet before its acceptance as a legitimate jazz instrument, lay at the threshold of a whole new musical genre, Rock & Roll. But Otis’ music remained closest to blues in style.
Otis’ musical path and talent as a musician, bandleader and observer of talent lead him to the discovery of a laundry list of talented singers. Among them are Ernestine Anderson, Esther Phillips, aka Little Esther, Willie Mae “Big Momma” Thornton, Etta James, the Robis (Coasters), Pie DeSanto, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John. Otis had his own record label, Blues Spectrum which is credited with recording Big Joe Turner, Gatemouth Moore, Amos Milburne, Richard Berry, Joe Liggins, Roy Milton, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Charles Brown and Louis Jordan.
He produced the original “Hound Dog” sung by “Big Momma” Thornton. It was Otis’s band that backed her up on the recording in 1953. “Hound Dog” was a seminal hit for Elvis Presley in 1956. Similarly, Otis produced and played on Johnny Ace’s “Pledging My Love.” Otis also produced a number of Little Richard’s early recordings. Otis also performed on Charles Brown’s 1945 hit “Drifting Blues.”
Otis was also a disc jockey on KPOX radio and anchored another radio show KPFA, both in Los Angeles. It eventually lead to “The Johnny Otis Show,” a weekly variety show that ran on Los Angeles TV from 1954 to 1961. After a string of Top 10 Billboard hits he toured across the country with his California Rhythm & Blues Caravan. A Johnny Otis fan left an affectionate comment to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle who remembered Otis and his TV show traveling act:
“I realize now how very fortunate I was in time and geography just to be able to watch his weekly rhythm and blues show on television…and the music ingrained itself so deeply…His R&B Caravan hit the road, and at one time offered between the stapled covers with photos in boxes of the performers. So you could have a souvenier and for all times remember the evening that the Johnny Otis rhythm and blues caravan powered through town.”
Otis played the drums as well as the piano and vibraphone and is also credited as a producer, songwriter, and visual artist. He was also wrote several books: Listen To The Lams (1968), Upside Your Head! Rhythm & Blues on Central Avenue (1993), Colors and Chords – The Art of Johnny Otis (1995), and Johnny Otis – Red Beans & Rice and Other Rock ‘n’ Roll Recipes (1997). As a songwriter Otis is credited with “Willie and the Hand Jive (1958),” “Roll With Me Henry (1955),” and “Every Beat of My Heart” recorded by Gladys Night in 1961.” “Roll With Me Henry” was renamed “Wallflower” and was the song that put Etta James on the map.
In the 1960s Otis became involved politics largely because the arrival of the Beatles (aka the British Invasion) and the popular craze that followed suffocated his music career. “…the white boys from England came over with a recycled version of what we created. We were out of business, man,” Otis explained in a 1994 interview. After an unsuccessful run for a seat in the California State assembly Otis served as the chief of staff for Mervyn Dymally. Dymally eventually became a United States Representative and California’s first black lieutenant governor (1975-1979).
The late rock guitarist Frank Zappa, who was influenced by Otis’ music and facial hair, managed to get Otis back into the studio through a deal with Kent records. The result was the 1969 album Cold Shot! from which the song “Country Girl” topped 29 on the R&B charts.
1970 was a resurgent year for Otis music career. His contact with Zappa had lead to a TV appearance, the album Cuttin’ Up for the Epic lable and a gig as a headliner of the Monterey Jazz Festival. His band turned out to be a Johnny Otis revue featuring Esther Phillips, Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson.
Since then Otis’ touring, recording steadily grew until failing health caused him to cut back. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a songwriter and producer in 1994 and in1999 released a three CD boxed set The Johnny Otis Rhythm & Blues Caravan: The Complete Savoy Recordings. A comprehensive Johnny Otis discography can be found at www.bluesnexus.com
Otis is the subject of a 2010 biography by George Lipsitz Midnight at the Barrelhouse and Bruce Schmiechen is directing an up-coming documentary film about Otis’ life, Every Beat of My Heart: The Johnny Otis Story.
Johnny Otis was married to Phyllis Walker for 60s they had four children; Janet, Laura, Shuggie and Nicky. The boys, Shuggie (Johnny Jr.) and Nicky are musicians as well and have recorded with their father.
Here is a complete Johnny Otis show
Hound Dog
Hand Jive - The Johnny Otis Show w/ Lionel Hampton at the end
Crazy Country Hop - The Johnny Otis Show 1958
Double Crossing Blues w/Little Esther
Barrelhouse Blues
Harlem Nocturne
Cold Shot
Low Down Dirty Dog Blues
A Conversation with IPS Fellow Phyllis Bennis and Ethelbert Miller
February 8, 2012, 1:00 pm–2:00 pm
IPS Conference Room
1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC
Today, Phyllis is a leading scholar-activist and voice of reason on the Middle East and on the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She works in the media and with broad social movements challenging U.S. wars and Israeli occupation, providing education and inspiration for a host of people and organizations.
How did she come to this work? What are her roots in the countries she works on? How does she view the past decade of anti-war activism, and what does the Arab Spring have to do with it all? How does she see the shifting debate on Israel and Palestine and the organizing in the U.S., in the Middle East, and globally on this issue?
Come and find out.
Panel Discussion on Arts Funding in DC
February 8, 2012, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
Busboys & Poets
2021 14th Street NW
Washington, DC
DC government funding for the arts has declined over 65% from Fy09 to Fy12, and private funding is down as well. Notably, the Meyer Foundation decided in Fy12 to stop making grants to the arts in the District. Additionally, the National Capital Arts and Cultural Affairs funding program for DC arts organizations with budgets over one million dollars was cut by congress from 9.5 million in Fy09 down to 1 million for Fy12. What will all of these cuts mean for the District of Columbia, its residents, youth, and tourists? Join D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities' director Lionell Thomas, Busboys & Poets founder and IPS boardmember Andy Shallal, and Ward 2 councilmember Jack Evans for a panel discussion on "Arts Funding in DC" moderated by Robert Bettmann of the DC Advocates for the Arts.The panel will be taking questions from attendees. Bring your love of the arts, bring your friends, and bring your questions. Presented by the DC Advocates for the Arts in partnership with Busboys & Poets and the Institute for Policy Studies.
- Panel discussion: 6:00-7:00 pm
- Artsup Happy Hour: 7:00-8:00 pm
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
BOVEY NEWS:
Dear friends,
Hope this email reaches you well today. I returned from Hong Kong and Shanghai last week for Hugo Boss' project. Below are links to some photos and press coverage for your amusement.
My solo exhibition is titled "BLOOM" featuring a dozen of my latest cut paper works, ten of which debuted in this show at IFC (International Finance Center) in Shanghai.
The window installation was for Hugo Boss' Year of the Dragon campaign in Asia. It was featured in 16 selected Hugo Boss' stores in 10 major cities in Asia, including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenyang, Shenzhen, Hefei, Macao, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Best wishes to you in the Year of the Dragon,
Bovey
www.boveylee.com
BoveyBlog
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
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