Oh, please! NO Mayor Nagin is talking about a "plot" to keep Blacks away from New Orleans. If this guy would do his job folks would return. Maybe the mayor of New Orleans position should be a volunteer one. Control the economics of your city and you don't have to whine. Incompetence is not a blueprint for success.

Quote of the Day:

Consider the facts: Islamic revivalism has spread across the globe in the past 30 years from the Middle East to parts of Africa. In Egypt, it is hard to find a woman on the street who does not wear a headscarf. Islamic political groups and movements are on the rise - from Hezbollah in Lebanon, to Hamas in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Even in the United States, more and more American Muslims, particularly the young, are embracing Islam and religious symbolism in ways their more secular, immigrant parents did not.

- Geneive Abdo
Washington Post Op-Ed (3/17/07)

I ordered a couple of movies for the weekend:

Casino Royale
Man of the Year
Babel
Running with Scissors

So I saw 20/20 and it was just what I thought. Did you really want to know how many cups of coffee Hugo Chavez drinks? Walters also did the same thing she did with Fidel many years ago. She asked Hugo to speak to the American public in English. Hugo was slick and quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.

My friend Azalea dropped by my office today. She had a copy of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL COMPLETE PERSONAL FINANCE GUIDEBOOK by Jeff Opdyke. This book sells for $ 14.95 and should be included in every young person's briefcase and pocketbook. So many of us (me included) would benefit from a refresher course on handling finances.

Wilson Lives:

"Radio Golf" the 10th and final installment in August Wilson's Pittsburgh cycle will open on Broadway in May, two years after it started making the regional-theater rounds. This is the one Wilson production I've yet to see or read. I'm looking forward to it.

UK author Courttia Newland will be giving a series of readings around town:

Tuesday, March 20
Georgetown University
McShain Lounge, McCarthy Hall
SW Quad 4PM



Thursday, March 22
George Washington University
Funger Hall, Room 220
2201 G Street, NW
8PM


Saturday, March 31
Busboys and Poets
Newland will be reading with Dinaw Mengestu
2021 14th Street, NW
4 PM



Courttia Newland's visit is made possible by the British Council: www.britishcouncil.org/usa-arts

Get ready for Maddy. She will be the character in the Walt Disney annimation released in 2009. The title of the film is "The Frog Princess" and the story is set in New Orleans. Co-directors are John Musker and Ron Clements. Randy Newman is doing the musical score.

Barbara Walters interviews Hugo Chavez on 20/20. How silly will the questions be? I have to watch this tonight at 10 PM (Channel 7 in DC).

Thousands of demonstrators are expected in DC tomorrow for an antiwar march from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon. The march begins at 12:30 PM.
40 years ago people marched on the Pentagon in protest of the Vietnam war.

Tonight Christian peace activists plan to march on the White House. The event is sponsored by Sojourners/Call to Renewal along with The American Friends Service Committee, Lutheran Peace Fellowship, Sisters of Mercy of the Americas...

Peace Route:
There will be a 7PM service at the National Cathedral (3101 Wisconsin Avenue. At 8:15PM people will proceed downtown on Massachusetts Avenue, NW, then south on 16th Street NW to Lafayette Park.

I'm back to reading THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS by Dinaw Mengestu.
This first novel looks like it could be a finalist for the next PEN/Faulkner Award. No one has written this well about DC since Edward Jones.

I come into the office and I set my computer on: www.johncoltrane.com
I highly recommend this. Begin your day listening to A LOVE SUPREME.

How come no one ever recovers the heart of a suicide bomber? Is the heart not a black box that should survive? Without love there is no forgiveness but how can we love if the heart of one man is lost?

Maybe it was ironic to be reading the work of Carson McCullers last week. Are we not all lonely, iolated people? I held the hand of a friend yesterday and held nothing.

I was reading some comments by Arundhati Roy and she spoke about "an insanity in the air."She was talking about India but it could be the entire world. I just received a map of the world from Doctors Without Borders( www.doctorswithoutborders.org) and looked at it and wept. A world where no place is without crisis. How much potential does man now hold? How easy it would be to withdraw into comfort if one could find it. I look at the map of the world and wonder how many bodies have been tortured and hidden. How many jails consist of bars of bones. There is no place for an angel's descent.

John Edwards was at Howard yesterday. Why this guy is not the frontrunner is beyond me. Don't let the media pull a Hillary or an Obama over you. Listen and look for specifics. Becoming president is not a personality contest.

Oh, and Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party was also on the HU campus. Hmmm. Nuff said. Some people still like to party like it's 1969. Go figure.
www.bobby-seale.com

I just read a good profile of Howard Dean in THE POLITICO newspaper (Vol. 1, N0.22). This guy is really changing the power picture as chairman of the Democratic Party.
http://www.politico.com/pdf/frontmarch15.pdf

Tomorrow (March 15th) I'll be giving a talk on my memoir FATHERING WORDS at the Strathmore Hall Arts Center Mansion at 11:30 AM. It's a luncheon and book signing.

I still like to walk into the Melody Record Shop on Connecticut Avenue and look at CDs. I just love the experience especially when the weather is warm like it was today. I purchased a copy of Bob Dylan's MODERN TIMES. I can't stop playing his "Spirit on the Water." A catchy tune due to its beat. I love it.

I came home to mail and goodies:

CD from The Academy of American Poets - reading by Robert Lowell and John Berryman

A signed copy of STELLAR PLACES by Jeffrey Renard Allen. He included information about his Pan African Literary Forum in Ghana next year: Panafricanliteraryforum.com

A Pitt Poetry Series catalog. Check the new titles: www.upress.pitt.edu

I went down to NEA today and recorded commentary for the BIG READ- material that will be packaged for THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. It was fun working with Adam Kampe. NEA has a cute little recording studio which made me feel as if we were broadcasting to the troops overseas. Adam and I had a good discussion about the Carson McCullers novel. Prior to the afternoon recording I had lunch with dear friend Molly Hicks who works at NEA. We ate at the new Central restaurant located at 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW. Hey - these guys cook delicious shrimp burgers. Worth a trip downtown. They also have lobster burgers but those babies cost more.
www.centralmicheirichard.com

Richard Wright: The Centenary Celebration

The American University of Paris announces the International Richard WrightCentennial Conference.

It will be held 19-20 June 2008 at The AmericanUniversity of Paris and at the Musée des années trente (Museum of the NineteenThirties), in Boulogne-Billancourt.

The Conference will encourage broad international and interdisciplinaryexplorations of Wright's life and writing, with a special emphasis on the Paris heinhabited (1947-1960), both what it was and what it is today as a result ofthe marks he left behind, and on his experiences in Africa.

Stressing theimportance of Richard Wright, the conference hopes to be an international point ofintersection for all those interested in Wright's work from literary andcultural critics, to political activists, poets, musicians, publishers andhistorians.

We seek the widest range of academic and public intellectual discussionaround Wright's work which has influenced so many and so much.Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Wright in the Black Atlantic: Transnationalism and Transatlanticism
Wright and expatriate ParisWright as exile and travel writer
The reception of Wright's work in various non-U.S. settings
Wright and African American Satire, Irony, and Comedy
Wright and the African American Literary Canon
Wright, Whiteness, and Black Masculinity
Wright and African American Confinement Literature
Wright, Gender, and the Political Use of Modernism
Wright's Cultural Criticism
Wright and Literary Friendships and Influences
Wright and FilmsWright and Teaching Pluriculturalism
Wright's Influence on the World Today

Paper/presentation proposals should include:1. A brief (250-300 word) abstract.2. A brief (1-2pp.) vita.

The deadline is January 15, 2008.

Submit abstracts to:Alice Craven atAlice.Craven@aup.frORWilliam.Dow@wanadoo.fr