40 years after

Read Perspective from Roldo Bartimole -- 1968 - The Year That Changed It All
Here's a reprise of America's last "nervous breakdown" 40 years ago, told from the perspective of a guy 15 years my senior (his birthday is today, by the way) who was already involved in the pursuit of a conventional lifestyle. The events of 1968 changed everything--Roldo's life, my life, all our lives. Our entire culture flipped in the matter of a couple of years, and it's never been the same since. I feel the same stirrings today. I hear the same rumblings. I sense the same undercurrents.

And I'm ready to roll with it. This time, I expect I won't have to sit on the sidelines in uniform while politicians control my destiny. I'm not planning on making the same mistakes twice.

new parlance, new symbols,

Guantánamo, Evil and Zany in Pop Culture - New York Times -- Language changes constantly. It's dynamic and living. Here's a new one; the article fleshes it all out:

But Guantánamo is no longer just a naval station or even just a detention center. It is an idea in worldwide culture — in more than 20 books and half a dozen movies and plays, with more coming out every month.

It has become shorthand for hopeless imprisonment and sweltering isolation. “The strange new Alcatraz,” one writer calls it, “the gulag of our times.”

Denison timeline

Talking about our heritage with d.a. levy and the upcoming show at Art House reminds me there's a good amount of activity swirling around 3117-3119 Denison lately.

Last Friday, August 10th, Steven Litt, the PD art & architecture critic, helped Art House executive director Sheryl Hoffman announce her move to SPACES Gallery. We're grateful to Sheryl for all she's done locally to promote the arts and the neighborhood, and for being a good neighbor over on Mack since she arrived here in the late '90s.

Then, this coming Monday, there's the section 106 review about the proposed treatment of the historic Wirth House, from which Art House originally derived its name and its mission. This second meeting of the consulting parties for the section 106 review will be held at the Cleveland Public Library's Brooklyn Branch at 3706 Pearl Road at 6 PM. The date this coming Monday is August 20th.

Then, on August 21st, Art House hosts a gala d. a. levy reprise, featuring the recently reprinted "UKANHAVYRFUCKINCITIBAK", which I was talking about in my prior post--So much happening--So little time.

Kerouac's tracks 50 years later

The beat goes on - The Boston Globe--The Boston GLOBE has a retrospective here on Jack Kerouac, who was from Lowell. Reading him, and later Ken Kesey, gave a lot of us the ideas that led to the road to San Francisco and the cultural upheaval of the '60s. And now, here is the romance of the beats cropping up again, getting aired out, helping us fall in love with America again, the real America, where "FREE" is something more than what you see on an ironic/iconic big stamp outside a neoclassical shrine to government.

Here are a few quotes from the article I wanted to spotlight, but take some time to read the whole thing. It's a trip:

"Sal, we've got to go and never stop 'til we get there."
"Where are we going to go?"
"I don't know, but we can't stop 'til we get there."

We battled traffic through Oakland and went over the bridge into San Francisco's Chinatown , where we rolled down the windows and took in the smells and sounds that drifted in the long shadows of the late afternoon.
We had arrived at the promised land of the beat generation.
This was where in the 1950s the seeds of a hip, new culture planted by Kerouac and the poets Allen Ginsberg , Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Gregory Corso formed the buds of the beat generation that would flower into the counterculture of the 1960s.

spending Sunday with LibraryThing

LibraryThing Catalog your books online --I was reading around the blogs this morning when I stumbled across LibraryThing on Derek Arnold's a subset of derek. That was probably around 1030, and it's now more than 6 hours later, and I've had a ball. I've been dragging out all the books that are easy to reach and cataloguing them online. I'm listing only the ones I've read all the way through or use fairly often. The first 200 are on the house, and it's only $25 for a lifetime of reading and cataloguing after that. There is an intermediate annual plan as well, and a blog, where there's a contest going on for $1,000 worth of books.

TNR on netroots

The netroots is the most important movement since the Christian right -- I got this heads up from The New Republic, on the subject of netroots. It's long, but it's comprehensive. Here's the editor's take; the sign-in is free:

This week's magazine also includes an essay by Jonathan Chait on the left's new organizational infrastructure--a constellation of liberal bloggers and activists called the netroots. These activists have modeled themselves explicitly on the rise of the conservative movement. In fact, Chait argues that the netroots have grown into the most important political movement to arrive on the scene since the Christian right. When historians discuss the netroots in the decades to come, they will undoubtedly refer back to Chait's elegant and erudite essay.

33

Touring Warhol’s Space, and 32 Other Art-History Sites - New York Times -- Of the 33 NYC places where artsy and hip started, bloomed, and flourished, the "33 spots around the city where art history was made", I wonder how many had tax-abatement, got county dollars by harnessing smokers, or were intentionally located in preexisting, institutionally ordained art districts. What do you think? Which is the tail, which is the dog? What's wagging around here? If I recall, back in the day it used to be enough for a place just to be cheap, cool, and relatively hassle-free.

"Love words, agonize over sentences. And pay attention to the world."

Susan Sontag: Pay attention to the world Review Guardian Unlimited Books -- here's a good preview of a book on Susan coming out in April. I'm not suggesting these are practices to which bloggers should subscribe, but this certainly does throw some light on how some of us find fun and fulfillment in working with words. Note the "unconventional proposition" from Doctor (not Doc) Johnson : "The chief glory of every people arises from its authors." Blog on.

Drew Gilpin Faust: wisdom comes early

In Faust, early bold streak - The Boston Globe -- here's a good personal-interest article giving a good recounting of the background of a remarkable lady who's recently assumed leadership at Harvard. There are lots of life lessons here, and a glimpse into the study of character.

People who knew Faust as a down-to-earth young woman were amazed to hear that she would become the first female president of Harvard. Yet they are not surprised to see her embrace the challenge.

"She was always looking ahead and reaching as high as she could. She was an amazingly strong kid," said Mendenhall . "She was smart enough to see opportunities and brave enough to seize those opportunities in a quiet sort of way."

fasting & abstinence

I talked to my friend Jay up in Boston this morning, and happened to ring him up as he was getting ashed at church before work. He reminded me that this was one of the two remaining fast&abstinence days we still have to contend with, and then told me a story about his father, and the old rule about not eating meat on Friday.

In the '60s sometime, the Friday abstinence-from-meat rule was suspended, which gave relief to many of us tired of PBJ and baked fishsticks, and prompted Mr. R. to say, "There, I knew it, I was right all along."

another HeyYa from cousin Dan on the other coast

glumbert.com - Navy does Hey Ya--Good to see our boys and girls in uniform aren't much more normal than we were--rejoice, the country is safe. Watch through to the very end; some of the dance routines are worth it.

alternative investments and a moral imperative

For Yale’s Money Man, a Higher Calling - New York Times -- Here's a good read about a guy who revolutionized portfolio management in general by looking beyond the traditional mix of stocks and bonds, making Yale's endowment the standard against which all others are measured. The article also gives you a glimpse of the philosophy behind Yale, and an idea of why so many Yale graduates focus on quality of life issues and wind up in positions of public service. Around here, a cataloguing of Yalies who serve includes the Morrison brothers, Ed and Hunter; David Pogue; Sherrod Brown; and Oliver "Pudge" Henkel. On a national level, we have Garry Trudeau and Sir John Templeton, William F. Buckley and Bill Clinton, George Pataki, and the current president and his most recent competitor. It seems to be an interesting school, and Mr. Swenson has made it possible for everybody who qualifies to receive an education there. It's a long article, but take time to read the whole thing. Here's the section on the move to alternative investments:

Yale has every reason to want him to stay. After joining the university’s investment office when he was just 31, Mr. Swensen moved Yale’s portfolio away from a strict menu of stocks and bonds, favoring instead more diverse instruments like hedge funds, commodities like oil and timber, and private company investments.

That strategy revolutionized endowment investing, and other schools have followed suit. Mr. Swensen’s track record and his growing cachet have helped Yale attract donors who believe that their gifts to the university will be well deployed. Although his two books, “Pioneering Portfolio Management” and the more recent “Unconventional Success,” have helped raise his profile as an investment guru, he remains ambivalent about promoting himself. He notes that there are thousands of university professors who have also forgone more lucrative careers to put their skills to work in the academic world.

nifty poster, reminiscent of Bill Graham's 1960s San Francisco productions

Here's a really neat poster I found in a sidebar over at Cleveland.com leading to the Rock Hall and their Black History Month calendar

Fat Tuesday revival

The Reverend Dr. David Bahr is reviving (his actual term was "resurrecting") an old Archwood-Denison neighborhood tradition, Fat Tuesday or Pancake Day, over at Archwood UCC, and I told him I would let all the rest of you know, too.

Click on the image to the right to make it bigger. Print it out, share it with your friends.

The Archwood United Church of Christ has a long tradition (I can think back to attending meetings there as early as 1979) of supporting our community gatherings, and we should all reciprocate to assist a good neighbor. David Bahr is a community builder.

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Fat Tuesday
PANCAKE SUPPER
Tuesday, Feb. 20th, 5-7 pm
Mardi Gras beads free to the first 100 patrons!

Celebrate the night before Ash Wednesday with traditional fare:
Pancakes, Sausage, Syrup, Applesauce
Milk/Juice, Coffee/Tea
Adults $5, Children (6-12) $3, Children under 5, Free
Eat In or Take Out ~ For info call: 351-1060
Archwood UCC — The Steeple Vigil Church
2800 Archwood Ave (Pearl Rd & Archwood) — Cleveland

MTB's discounted tickets for tomorrow's Zappa thing

CoolCleveland.com - Party--I just bought a couple of tickets discounted through my affiliation with MeetTheBloggers as a newsletter subscriber. Each ticket was $2 below the already discounted $21 offered by CoolCleveland itself. If you want to go to both the party and the event for $19, try this link, where it says "here":

Discount tix for MTB newsletter subscribers here.

Celtic rock: ignition, illumination

Upcoming.org: Whiskey Island Ramblers at Sullivan's Irish Pub (Saturday, February 10, 2007)--I got this from Jeff Schuler over on Upcoming.org. Looks interesting. Might be something to do in conjunction with Jim Morana's opening tonight just down the street.

The Whiskey Island Ramblers have been on a tear since '04 from Cleveland to Europe and back again playing original Celtic Rock and "Ramblerized" traditional songs. Fueled by drink and Celtic Rock their audiences tend to ignite at some point during the performance. Joe and Ed Feighan have been performing Traditional Irish songs since they were kids. The Feighan Brothers formed the Whiskey Island Ramblers as a Celtic Rock band for their favorite traditional songs and their original material. Most of their own songs are about real people and real events. Occasionally they venture into the Irish "other world" where ghosts, sprites, wraiths and the like dwell. Whiskey Island, at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, is where the Irish ancestors of the Feighans settled as immigrants from the famine and just in time for the industrial revolution. Cops, bus drivers, chimney sweeps, bartenders, gabbers, hot dog vendors, sailors, judges, mayors, parents, drinking buddies, girlfriends, lawyers, bumbling bureaucrats and musicians who drive around in junked up cars make their apearance on Whiskey Island and the surrounding industrial landscape. The Whiskey Island Ramblers illuminate these characters in song keeping in stride with the legacy of their storytelling ancestors who arrived on Whiskey Island nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. Check out the band at www.whiskeyislandramblers.com and www.erintel.com.

Homepage
http://www.sonicbids.com/epk/epk.asp?...

"the fish rots from the head down"

I was just thinking, given the messes we have in governments, in corporations, their boardrooms, and hierarchical systems in general, might it be possible to name a blog "the fish rots from the head down" and keep it full of content effortlessly?

the day the music died

My friend Jay up in Boston just informed me that I missed a lick this past Saturday in not observing a moment of silence for an event that occurred on February 3rd back in 1959, The Day the Music Died. Join with me now as we remember, or at least commemmorate, three wild guys with a vision and a purpose.

revisiting Flannery O'Connor country

In Search of Flannery O’Connor - New York Times--One of my favorite writers gets play in the TIMES today. I found Mary Flannery O'Connor fascinating in the middle '60s, first reading her right after she died and before I ever lived in Georgia, and then even more trenchant after my "tours of duty" in Columbus/Phenix City and Atlanta. This is a long article, but worth it. Here's a sample:

Somewhere outside Toomsboro is where, in O’Connor’s best-known short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” a family has a car accident and a tiresome old grandmother has an epiphany. The fog of petty selfishness that has shrouded her life clears when she feels a sudden spasm of kindness for a stranger, a brooding prison escapee who calls himself the Misfit.

Of course, that’s also the moment that he shoots her in the chest, but in O’Connor’s world, where good and evil are as real as a spreading puddle of blood, it amounts to a happy ending. The grandmother is touched by grace at the last possible moment, and she dies smiling.

“She would of been a good woman,” the Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

revisiting Kurosawa's Seven Samurai

Seven Samurai - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia--I haven't seen this flick in over 40 years but decided to experience it again this weekend. Warrior things have been on my mind lately. The film still holds up; it's a remarkable and incredible piece of work. Actually, it's even better now because you can watch it on DVD and concentrate and appreciate it. The last time I tried to view it was in a movie theatre packed with others who, like me, were afflicted with cases of raging adolescent hormones and did lots of strange things during the subtle scenes. If you have 3+ hours for the show itself and another 2-3 for the commentary, it's a great experience for a snowy day. We didn't realize, back in the '60s and before the advent of the spaghetti Western, how much the lead samurai, Takashi Shimura, looked like Lee Van Cleef.