E-NOTES: WHEN THE NEWS IS NOT ENOUGH. THE BLOG OF E. ETHELBERT MILLER
Monday, July 31, 2006
Well, I completed work on my next manuscript of poems: ON SATURDAYS, I SANTANA WITH YOU. Pub Date is early 2008. Look for a few excerpts from the book to appear on my website (www.eethelbertmiller.com) before September 2006. The book is dedicated to four wonderful friends: Grace Ali, Julia Galbus, Beverly Hunt and Wendy Rieger. The book is divided into seven sections, the last one contains some of the crazy prose poems I sent to my buddy Afaa M.Weaver (aka as the poet Micky to me).
Sports:
You won't find any silly baseball trade rumors on my E-Notes. I would keep Soriano.
I don't think he's a great player but the Nationals need to have a few stars in the ballpark in order to attract fans. This is major league baseball not the little league. I don't want to spend money to watch kids grow - something they won't do overnight. Talking about the little leagues, I can't keep a straight face when I see Mike O'Connor on the mound. The guy was pitching batting practice to the Dodgers in his last game. Almost every ball was hit hard. Geez. Now the Nationals are talking about having an MRI exam for the guy. What's that going to show. Bad pitches?
You won't find any silly baseball trade rumors on my E-Notes. I would keep Soriano.
I don't think he's a great player but the Nationals need to have a few stars in the ballpark in order to attract fans. This is major league baseball not the little league. I don't want to spend money to watch kids grow - something they won't do overnight. Talking about the little leagues, I can't keep a straight face when I see Mike O'Connor on the mound. The guy was pitching batting practice to the Dodgers in his last game. Almost every ball was hit hard. Geez. Now the Nationals are talking about having an MRI exam for the guy. What's that going to show. Bad pitches?
What about the damage to Lebanon's coast? Oil slicks polluting the once-pristine beaches. Fish, birds, and the earth- crying for humans to stop. Even a cease fire will not turn the waves back. Shame on all of us.
When will there be a time to love
We make time to debate religion
For passing bills and bulding prisons
For building fortunes and passing judgment
When will there be a time to love
At this point in history we have a choice to make
To either walk the path of love or be crippled by our hate
We have time to cause pollution
We have time to cause confusion
All wrapped up in our own illusions
When will there be a time to love
We have time to conquer nations
Time for oil exacavation
Hatred, violence and terrorism
When will there be a time to love
At this moment in time we have a choice to make
Father God is watching while we cause mother earth so much pain
It's such a shame
- Stevie Wonder
When will there be a time to love
We make time to debate religion
For passing bills and bulding prisons
For building fortunes and passing judgment
When will there be a time to love
At this point in history we have a choice to make
To either walk the path of love or be crippled by our hate
We have time to cause pollution
We have time to cause confusion
All wrapped up in our own illusions
When will there be a time to love
We have time to conquer nations
Time for oil exacavation
Hatred, violence and terrorism
When will there be a time to love
At this moment in time we have a choice to make
Father God is watching while we cause mother earth so much pain
It's such a shame
- Stevie Wonder
Sunday, July 30, 2006
BELTWAY POETRY QUARTERLY READING: A CELEBRATION OF DC PLACES
Please join us!
Sunday, August 20 at 4:00 pm
Part of the Sunday Kind of Love Reading Series: featuring poets from Beltway Poetry Quarterly's DC Places Issue, Belle Waring, Kenneth Carroll, Andrea Wyatt, Brian Gilmore, and Terence Winch. Followed by an open mic (please bring place poems about Washington DC by yourself or others). Hosted by Sarah Browning.
Free. Busboys & Poets, 14th & V Streets NW, U Street/Cardozo neighborhood, DC. (202) 387-POET.
The DC Places issue showcases 52 authors whose poems name specific sites in the city (streets, neighborhoods, parks, monuments, buildings), along with an interactive map. Edited by Kim Roberts and Andrea Carter Brown, the DC Places Issue is available for free on line at http://www.beltwaypoetry.com.
Please join us!
Sunday, August 20 at 4:00 pm
Part of the Sunday Kind of Love Reading Series: featuring poets from Beltway Poetry Quarterly's DC Places Issue, Belle Waring, Kenneth Carroll, Andrea Wyatt, Brian Gilmore, and Terence Winch. Followed by an open mic (please bring place poems about Washington DC by yourself or others). Hosted by Sarah Browning.
Free. Busboys & Poets, 14th & V Streets NW, U Street/Cardozo neighborhood, DC. (202) 387-POET.
The DC Places issue showcases 52 authors whose poems name specific sites in the city (streets, neighborhoods, parks, monuments, buildings), along with an interactive map. Edited by Kim Roberts and Andrea Carter Brown, the DC Places Issue is available for free on line at http://www.beltwaypoetry.com.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
A Major loss...another death in the family:
The Honourable Dr Louise Bennett Coverley O.M.
7 September 1919 - 27 July 2006
Miss Lou ded an gaan. Lang liv de Afrikaan Queen!
Miss Lou passed away at the Scarborough Grace Hospital, Toronto, Canada
on 27 July 2006, having collapsed at her home earlier that morning.
Her death marks the passing of a legend. Never mind historical icons
such as Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley, Louise Bennett was the
mother, father and soul restorer of the Jamaican nation. No one had
done more to assist the Jamaican people in understanding themselves and
their uniqueness as a people crafted from the ravages of slavery and
colonialism than Miss Lou. The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey focused
upon the African identity of Jamaican and other African heritage people
in the diaspora and the need for us to reconnect with Africa and reclaim
our heritage in the Motherland. Miss Lou devoted a lifetime to helping
the nation to understand who it is, where it came from, how where it
came from shaped who it is and how, in the process, ways of
communicating were forged which were unique to Jamaica and the way the
nation experienced and related to its world and to the world outside
itself.
Louise Bennett was a child prodigy where the Jamaican language was
concerned. Amazingly, while not yet a teenager, she determined that the
language she and those around her spoke was the language that should be
validated and used as a medium for expressing oneself in writing. She
had experienced that language as the one in which ordinary people gave
meaning to their lives, expressing their needs and wants, their joys and
their sorrows, their aspirations and their regrets. Yet, the medium of
teaching and instruction in school was not the language of the Jamaican
people but a foreign language which the majority of the nation could
neither speak nor write.
By the age of 14, she had written her first poem in Jamaican English,
popularly called 'dialect' at the time. Her creative abilities were
apparent even then and in her 20s she won a scholarship to attend the
prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London, graduating
as a dramatist, actress and performer. She brought the art of dramatic
expression to her exploration, interpretation and use of the Jamaican
language, validating it as a language long before it was accredited as
such in the 1960s, largely through the work of people like Frederic
Cassidy and Robert Le Page.
The bibliography in the seminal writings of both these academics,
especially Jamaica Talk (Cassidy: 1961) and Dictionary of Jamaican English
(Cassidy & Le Page: 1967) include references to Louise Bennett's work dating
back to 1942 when the Gleaner published her Dialect Verses, one of her
earliest published works.
Miss Lou worked with repertory companies in various parts of England
where West Indian ex-servicemen and students from the islands as well
as the Windrush generation of migrants would have settled.
She did more than most to develop an awareness and understanding of
Jamaican folklore, of the sayings, proverbs and philosophies, the values
and principles of the ordinary working people. Using the medium of
poetry, drama and story telling in what was predominantly an oral
tradition, Miss Lou put the Jamaican people in touch with themselves,
with their wisdom, their irony and their quirkiness. Above all, she put
them in touch with their inner selves and their connectedness to Africa
by pointing up the fact that the entire society and its culture is
riddled with African retentions. Those retentions could still be seen
today in rites of passage, in religious practices, in music, in the
vocabulary and forms of speech in the Jamaican language, in percussion,
in food, in superstitions. Miss Lou brought it all alive through drama,
poetry, prose, chants, dance and song, and through her radio and
television shows that were hugely popular with people of all ages in
Jamaican society, shows such as Laugh with Louise, Miss Lou's Views,
The Lou and Ranny Show and the television show 'Ring Ding'.
When, in the 1960s and 1970s, children started to arrive in Britain in
increasing numbers from Jamaica to join parents and entered British
schools, a major issue in the assessment of their 'intelligence' and
their ability to cope with the schooling system was their language.
Because they were not seen as having a language in its own right that
was different from English, they were deemed to be speaking and writing
broken English as a variant of 'standard' English and therefore judged
as being poorly equipped to get on in the English schooling system.
Louise Bennett's work was invaluable in that it provided the ammunition
both to counteract those damaging and erroneous assessments and to give
Jamaican speakers a sense of self and a confidence in the language that
they spoke. It also helped to demonstrate that those Jamaican children
and their parents were speaking an entirely different language and that
they were being put at an educational disadvantage and subjected to
damaging stereotyping if that were not recognised.
Miss Lou became ambassador at large for the Jamaican people,
representing their country and its cultural heritage across the world
and giving permission to those of us involved in song writing, music
making, performance poetry, theatre and teaching, to claim the language
and be assertive in our use and projection of it. As such, she inspired
and created space for other early pioneers such as Andrew Salkey, Kamau
Brathwaite, and latterly Benjamin Zephaniah and the world renowned
Linton Kwesi Johnson.
Miss Lou married Eric Winston Coverley in 1954 and was widowed in 2002.
She was awarded the Order of Jamaica in 1974, the Order of Merit in
2001, the Institute of Jamaica.s Musgrave Silver and Gold Medals for
distinguished eminence in the field of Arts and Culture and the Norman
Manley Award for Excellence in the field of Arts. She held the
Honorary Degree Of Doctor of Letters from the University of the West
Indies and from York University in Toronto.
We in education and social and cultural life in Britain and Jamaicans at
home and in the second diaspora worldwide owe her an enormous debt and
give thanks for her long life and pioneering life's work.
Professor Gus John
The Honourable Dr Louise Bennett Coverley O.M.
7 September 1919 - 27 July 2006
Miss Lou ded an gaan. Lang liv de Afrikaan Queen!
Miss Lou passed away at the Scarborough Grace Hospital, Toronto, Canada
on 27 July 2006, having collapsed at her home earlier that morning.
Her death marks the passing of a legend. Never mind historical icons
such as Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley, Louise Bennett was the
mother, father and soul restorer of the Jamaican nation. No one had
done more to assist the Jamaican people in understanding themselves and
their uniqueness as a people crafted from the ravages of slavery and
colonialism than Miss Lou. The Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey focused
upon the African identity of Jamaican and other African heritage people
in the diaspora and the need for us to reconnect with Africa and reclaim
our heritage in the Motherland. Miss Lou devoted a lifetime to helping
the nation to understand who it is, where it came from, how where it
came from shaped who it is and how, in the process, ways of
communicating were forged which were unique to Jamaica and the way the
nation experienced and related to its world and to the world outside
itself.
Louise Bennett was a child prodigy where the Jamaican language was
concerned. Amazingly, while not yet a teenager, she determined that the
language she and those around her spoke was the language that should be
validated and used as a medium for expressing oneself in writing. She
had experienced that language as the one in which ordinary people gave
meaning to their lives, expressing their needs and wants, their joys and
their sorrows, their aspirations and their regrets. Yet, the medium of
teaching and instruction in school was not the language of the Jamaican
people but a foreign language which the majority of the nation could
neither speak nor write.
By the age of 14, she had written her first poem in Jamaican English,
popularly called 'dialect' at the time. Her creative abilities were
apparent even then and in her 20s she won a scholarship to attend the
prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in London, graduating
as a dramatist, actress and performer. She brought the art of dramatic
expression to her exploration, interpretation and use of the Jamaican
language, validating it as a language long before it was accredited as
such in the 1960s, largely through the work of people like Frederic
Cassidy and Robert Le Page.
The bibliography in the seminal writings of both these academics,
especially Jamaica Talk (Cassidy: 1961) and Dictionary of Jamaican English
(Cassidy & Le Page: 1967) include references to Louise Bennett's work dating
back to 1942 when the Gleaner published her Dialect Verses, one of her
earliest published works.
Miss Lou worked with repertory companies in various parts of England
where West Indian ex-servicemen and students from the islands as well
as the Windrush generation of migrants would have settled.
She did more than most to develop an awareness and understanding of
Jamaican folklore, of the sayings, proverbs and philosophies, the values
and principles of the ordinary working people. Using the medium of
poetry, drama and story telling in what was predominantly an oral
tradition, Miss Lou put the Jamaican people in touch with themselves,
with their wisdom, their irony and their quirkiness. Above all, she put
them in touch with their inner selves and their connectedness to Africa
by pointing up the fact that the entire society and its culture is
riddled with African retentions. Those retentions could still be seen
today in rites of passage, in religious practices, in music, in the
vocabulary and forms of speech in the Jamaican language, in percussion,
in food, in superstitions. Miss Lou brought it all alive through drama,
poetry, prose, chants, dance and song, and through her radio and
television shows that were hugely popular with people of all ages in
Jamaican society, shows such as Laugh with Louise, Miss Lou's Views,
The Lou and Ranny Show and the television show 'Ring Ding'.
When, in the 1960s and 1970s, children started to arrive in Britain in
increasing numbers from Jamaica to join parents and entered British
schools, a major issue in the assessment of their 'intelligence' and
their ability to cope with the schooling system was their language.
Because they were not seen as having a language in its own right that
was different from English, they were deemed to be speaking and writing
broken English as a variant of 'standard' English and therefore judged
as being poorly equipped to get on in the English schooling system.
Louise Bennett's work was invaluable in that it provided the ammunition
both to counteract those damaging and erroneous assessments and to give
Jamaican speakers a sense of self and a confidence in the language that
they spoke. It also helped to demonstrate that those Jamaican children
and their parents were speaking an entirely different language and that
they were being put at an educational disadvantage and subjected to
damaging stereotyping if that were not recognised.
Miss Lou became ambassador at large for the Jamaican people,
representing their country and its cultural heritage across the world
and giving permission to those of us involved in song writing, music
making, performance poetry, theatre and teaching, to claim the language
and be assertive in our use and projection of it. As such, she inspired
and created space for other early pioneers such as Andrew Salkey, Kamau
Brathwaite, and latterly Benjamin Zephaniah and the world renowned
Linton Kwesi Johnson.
Miss Lou married Eric Winston Coverley in 1954 and was widowed in 2002.
She was awarded the Order of Jamaica in 1974, the Order of Merit in
2001, the Institute of Jamaica.s Musgrave Silver and Gold Medals for
distinguished eminence in the field of Arts and Culture and the Norman
Manley Award for Excellence in the field of Arts. She held the
Honorary Degree Of Doctor of Letters from the University of the West
Indies and from York University in Toronto.
We in education and social and cultural life in Britain and Jamaicans at
home and in the second diaspora worldwide owe her an enormous debt and
give thanks for her long life and pioneering life's work.
Professor Gus John
The Seattle attack at the Jewish Center is another indication of why we can't assume geography is a cushion or buffer. Don't walk around beliving events in the world won't snatch your Ipod. Ideas, beliefs, wars can impregnate a person in the morning right after breakfast. A person can watch the news on television, arm themselves and make tomorrow's news with one simple act of hatred or violence. Jews and Jewish organizations around the world will have to take safety measures. So will all Americans traveling abroad. People will hold you responsible for the actions of a government you may or may not support. Religious lines seem to be the problem of the 21st century. If DuBois thought the Color Line was an issue, wait until the Holy Wars begin to gather more steam as we move beyond 2015. A return to the Crusades and everything else that has a Middle Age smell. This stinks.
Do you remember right before Bush was elected the first time, and Condi was asked about the Middle East by a reporter, she responded by saying she was reading up on it. Hmmm. Well, what page is she on? Who has the study notes to share? Oh, and when did the Old Middle East become the New Middle East? Does this mean Palestinians are Indians? Once again we see labels peeling off the back of a can.
In the next presidential election we need to have a Peace candidate. A person needs to run on a Peace campaign...nothing about bringing home troops or even talking about Iraq and Afghanistan. Simply a Peace campaign in which the person is running to promote a new world view and vision. Let's ask the average American how they feel about Peace. Would they vote for it? I'm not talking about "ending" a war, I'm talking about trying to prevent new ones. Can we get some consensus around that?
I'm heading to Oslo soon. Maybe I should bring back a Peace Prize for someone Any takers?
Talking about Presidents - what do Carter and Clinton have to say about the crisis in the Middle East? Where are their OP-ED essays?? Did I miss something?
I'm heading to Oslo soon. Maybe I should bring back a Peace Prize for someone Any takers?
Talking about Presidents - what do Carter and Clinton have to say about the crisis in the Middle East? Where are their OP-ED essays?? Did I miss something?
The light flickers. The AC unit stops. The power is gone. I'm reading a book in the sun room so I still have sun. It's early afternoon. 90 degrees outside. But this is not Beirut or Gaza so I expect the lights to go back on - soon. It's not Liberia so I won't have to wait 14 years. Why are we so blessed? Think of grandparents sitting in a shelter - maybe 80 years old and having the wartime experience. Grandchildren on a boat back to America while they descend into hell. Somewhere the light no longer flickers...it's gone.
Sports:
Ichiro watch. 2 hits last night. The AL Batting title race might be decided by who remains hot in August. This might just come down to a battle between Ichiro and Jeter. I expect Mauer's average to drop. It already has. At .373 he maintains a 26 point lead over Ichiro. This is down from what was almost a forty point lead. I think Ichiro is good for one more amazing how streak. It would mean hitting over .500 for about three weeks. If he can get to .381 by the end of August - then it will be only Septmber preventing him from hitting .400. Not impossible. With everyone talking steroids - Ichiro represents the essence of the game right now.
Ichiro watch. 2 hits last night. The AL Batting title race might be decided by who remains hot in August. This might just come down to a battle between Ichiro and Jeter. I expect Mauer's average to drop. It already has. At .373 he maintains a 26 point lead over Ichiro. This is down from what was almost a forty point lead. I think Ichiro is good for one more amazing how streak. It would mean hitting over .500 for about three weeks. If he can get to .381 by the end of August - then it will be only Septmber preventing him from hitting .400. Not impossible. With everyone talking steroids - Ichiro represents the essence of the game right now.