Category: Entertainment
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Six to Eight Black Men by David Sedaris
In keeping with our tradition here of the Best Christmas Stories, I’m reading Six to Eight Black Men by David Sedaris. I have Andy Nash to thank for showing me this one. It’s a story about how the Dutch dress up in blackface to accompany Santa Claus — and why we too might have such offensive and…
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Best Christmas Stories : Annual Christmas Readings
Every year, I add some more of the best Christmas stories to my backlog of Christmas readings. This year, I’m a little more organized: I’ve streamlined my recording equipment (by which I mean my iPhone uploads a whole heck of a lot faster than that thing which plugged into my old iPod nano as well…
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Mother of Exiles
Eight-hundred. Their open mouths Similarly sing songs we all know Though know not: their tongues — they show No face cards. Nimble, demure, go ghosts Of the Mind of God, mad sod made sad, Triangle eyelids, squares and trundle sides, But they’re still eyes, you know. Stopping together They see as one. Smell as one though…
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Guantanamera
You sing it. Yourn — they mourn, they Wring it over, ragdolls and wine, Listening somber, listening longer Than anyone else in the “N” train’s crowd. Others ignore you, mothers note the Boredom born in baby faces. Teens spend their braincells as tender On turn-based games in their tiny screens. You sing it. Yourn — they mourn,…
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Our Tools Shape Us
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.” —Father John Culkin According to McLuhan Galaxy: [This quote] is often mistakenly attributed to Marshall McLuhan. It does NOT appear in “Understanding Media”, as Wilson Miner confidently asserts in the presentation below, indeed it does not appear in any published…
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Buffalo Flower Laura Burnhenn
My sister Lauren graciously gave Tara and I tickets to William Fitzsimmons last night for Christmas and we discovered the wonderful, moving protest songs of Laura Burnhenn. She played Buffalo Flower for us last night and I don’t think any song in my life — any hymn, any protest song, anything I’ve written only for…
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Punk folk — what is it?
I recently sent the following picture to Kyle and Doug Welch as well as Mark 9: You read that right. The name of this band we met in Salem, Massachusetts during Uncon 2016 is: Scrummy the Dirtbag & his shitty kids Now. Turns out that the lead man “Scrummy” is an economist by day. Kiel…
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Myth Stories Map: Queens Museum Exhibit on American Folklore
As a student of American myths, American folklore, American tall tales and American legends, I loved this myth stories map from the Queens Museum: There’s a great piece over at Slate on the map. They say: This map, by social realist artist William Gropper, was created to showcase the diversity of national myths and folk stories…
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Harry Rides THE DANGER
Around this time of year some five years ago, I rode some carnival rides with a kid named Harry: He’s a pretty particular kid with a set way of doing everything: …and if you watch his arms on this kiddie coaster, you can see that he gets excited. REALLY excited. And he expresses his…
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Artistic Resistance :: Reflections
IN Aids to Reflection, Samuel Taylor Coleridge says the following (he often enjoyed employing the use of all-caps): READER!—You have been bred in a land abounding with men, able in arts, learning, and knowledges manifold, this man in one, this in another, few in many, none in all. But there is one art, of which…
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To Della Beyond the Veil
You yearned for your homeland. Always do. After the era passes you, you pass too. Music styles wane as moons, Norwood’s fiddle when new knew you, knew grandkids too, never me though or the little themes that we know, millennials make do. My how the strings request of me: “Play.” Can resonance reach across a…