Vivian Torrence

Wendy Rockett

 

With other friends of Reginald Lockett, screenwriter Karen Folger Jacobs and Al wait their turn at KPFA Berkeley to pay tribute to the late poet on Living Room, Kris Welch’s popular noontime show, 30 May 2008
Raymond Nat Turner

 

New Orleans, 2008 | Al Young

 

California high school student recipients of Poetry Out Loud awards and citations gather with their judges and producers in Sacramento, April 2008
Mary Beth Barber

 

Gospel Brunch, United Methodist Church, San Luis Obispo, 2008
Al Young

 

Glenna Luschei, Al, Nancy Giles, Pastor Jane Voights
United Methodist Church, San Luis Obispo, Easter Sunday, 2008
Bill Horton

Guitarist Maxwell Gualtieri, poet-teacher-producer Gwendolyn Alley, and trmpeter Louis Lopez following our evening of poetry, jazz and song for Ventura College, April 2008

 

With Cozetta Guin, California History Center, De Anza College, May 2008

 

Tom Izu, Director of the California History Center, and distinguished educator Ulysses Pichon, De Anza College, 2008
Al Young

 

Hanging with noir mystery writer Jim Nisbet at the Friends of the San Francisco Library Laureates Dinner, April 2008

 

Writers photographed at the Friends of the San Francisco Library‘s “Noir in the City” Laureates Dinner, April 2008
[Names and photographer credit forthcoming]

 

Joyce Jenkins, Mark Baldridge, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Al, Floyd Salas, Claire Ortalda, Eileen Malone, James LeCuyer and unidentifed Bulldogs T-shirter. Photographed at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Awards (13 April 2008), the Sunday they honored Al Young with the Fred Cody Lifetime Achievement Award at San Francisco Public Library’s Koret Auditorium.

 

French Quarter, New Orleans, 2008 | PC Mack

 

With popular poet and Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis Deberry at the Tennessee Williams Festival, New Orleans, 2008, where DeBerry and Al Young conversed on-stage about life, art, craft, personal history, and vision.

 

Hurricane Katrina shop window poster display, French Quarter, New Orleans, 2008 | Al Young

 

On the set at Post Modern Group Studios in Irvine, CA with Sam Reece, producer and director of The Paul Laurence Dunbar Collection, a forthcoming PBS-length documentary honoring the life and work of the enduring 19th century African American poet. Al narrates the film and reads some of Dunbar’s poems on-screen. The cast includes Nikki Giovanni, Ishmael Reed, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Mitch Capel, Charlotte Blake Alston, and Awele Makeba. 

Spring at Sea Ranch on the California Coast | Al Young

 

Adam David Miller and Al Young, respective recipients of Upsurge’s first and second Annual Bay Area Jazz/Poetry Festival Recognition Award for sustained excellence in art and community service. | Zigi Lowenberg

 

Zigi Lowenberg and Raymond Nat Turner, co-founders of Upsurge Jazz
Al Young

 

Saint Al of UCLA | Wendy Rockett

………………………………………
Visit painter & storyteller J. Michael Walker’s
ALL THE SAINTS OF THE CITY OF THE ANGELS
Official Web Site

Heyday Books publisher Malcolm Margolin and Wendy Rockett, Heyday’s director of marketing and publicity, pause to pose with Al at the 2008 L.A. Times Festival of Books on a globally heated UCLA afternoon.

 

Patty Milich, California Arts Council’s public awareness coordinator, takes orders for My California: Journeys by Great Writers, a popular and outstanding collection of memoirs and essays. Sales directly benefit the Arts Council whose state funding was slashed by 96% in 2003. | Al Young

 

With William Minor, poet, novelist, essayist, pianist and author of Monterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years. Bill’s other books include Unzipped Souls: Jazz Journey Through the Soviet Union, Jazz Journeys Through Japan: The Heart Within, Some Grand Dust, and the comic novel Trek: Lips, Sunny, Pecker & Me
Photo: Jim Schneeweis (Angel City Press)

 

Poet Jill Bialosky, W.W.Norton editor and moderator of “Rhyme and Reason,” a Los Angeles Times Festival of Books panel that featured former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, poet-translator James Ragan and Al Young.

 

James Ragan — poet, screenwriter, translator, and reader extraordinaire — holds his L.A. Times Festival of Books audience spellbound during his performance at UCLA’s Poetry Stage. Ragan commits his work to memory, which is, he says, the way he revises. | Al Young

 

Novelist and poet Joyce Carol Thomas and Eileen Callahan commiserate at the memorial service for author-publisher Bob Callahan held at Anna’s Jazz Island, Berkeley, February 2008 | Al Young

 

Carla Blank, Spain Rodríguez, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Thomas, Gary Gach pause to pose at the Bob Callahan memorial, Berkeley 2008
Al Young

 

Culver Hotel, Culver City, CA | Al Young

 

With Ivry and Cynthia Pride Glamore, L.A. cousins, lunching at Pacifico in Culver City, April 2008

 

Cousin Cynthia Pride Glamore

 

With poet-novelist-essayist Morton J. Marcus at the gala debut of Striking Through the Masks, his time-stopping memoir, Santa Cruz, March 2008 | Peter McGettigan

 

“The sea, the sky, and you, and I — we’re all blues …” | PC Mack

 

Just outside Gualala
O.O. Gabugah

 

Savoring morning sea air, bassist Dan Robbins measures and scores the sky’s mood | Al Young

 

Al Young

 

Sleepy Train at Sunset
Al Young

 

LISTEN NOW | Distinguished poets Glenna Luschei and Jean Pumphrey read and discuss their own and each other’s work as they speak with host Rafael Alvarado about poetry in general on ‘The Moe Green Poetry Hour’
90 mins

Jean Pumphrey and Glenna Luschei enjoy a holiday luncheon with Al Young in San Francisco, December 2007

 

World Wide Word Radio Network

To listen to any of our shows click below
Listen live or later
Feel free to download any of our archived shows
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/onword/
Call-in number: 718.508.9717

Join host, Roy K. Johnston and his lovely co-host Stacey Mangiaracinaas
as they speak with
David Haven Blake and Michael Robertson,
editors of
Walt Whitman, Where the Future Becomes Present

 

Go to the original truthout|Report

Net Neutrality

By Christopher Kuttruff
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 5 May 2008

The Federal Communications Commission has recently encountered mounting scrutiny in response to its broad deregulatory practices. Public frustration regarding the FCC has peaked at a time of fierce debate on net neutrality.

In a memo obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post, 30 current and former commission employees complained about the leadership of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Staff members observed that “the FCC process appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with Chairman Martin.”

The memo, written to chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee John Dingell and chairman of the House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Bart Stupak, increases pressure on the FCC chairman, who, in particular, has been accused of a rigidly anti-regulatory, pro-corporate approach. Many critics assert that his approach has contributed to a lack of oversight over network providers.

For those not familiar with this sometimes complex issue, network neutrality involves the idea that internet users should control how they use resources online and broadband providers should not be allowed to abuse their influence on the market to favor certain content, applications or services over others.

An egregious example of violating this principle could entail an internet broadband company impeding access to certain web sites that run counter to their own business or political interests. This could be achieved by filtering search results to favor certain web sites or by slowing bandwidth to other sites or services.

One can quickly see the significance of maintaining a balanced, unrestricted network.

In August and September 2007, reports started surfacing from Comcast customers that their BitTorrent transfer speeds were being slowed or even blocked. BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer protocol that allows internet users to transfer large files quickly and efficiently. BitTorrent has become an extremely popular tool because it allows many internet users to download and upload non-contiguous pieces of files simultaneously. Comcast’s techniques for inhibiting such transfers, not too dissimilar from censorship methods used by the Chinese government, prompted a barrage of complaints from consumers as well as pressure from the FCC.

(more…)

A Poet’s ‘Hardheaded’ Reflection on Life

LISTEN NOW | Go to the NPR ‘Fresh Air’ original
14 min 57 sec

Click on image

Photo © Chip Cooper

Poet Cornelius Eady’s new book is titled Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems. Putnam Books

Fresh Air from WHYY, May 5, 2008 · In his new collection, Hardheaded Weather: New and Selected Poems, poet Cornelius Eady writes of his transition from urban renter to rural homeowner and the encroachment of middle age.

Eady’s previous collection, Brutal Imagination, was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry. He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of musical theater including “You Don’t Miss Your Water” and “Running Man,” which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999.

Andrés Segovia
Sits in a small room.

In the next room
The CIA reads ads
To his guitar.

Segovia
Asks for a glass of water.
No, old man,
Only when your guitar
Decides to reason with us
Then you’ll get a glass of water.

Segovia
Dreams of blue fish
As he sleeps
In his chair …

– Cornelius Eady
(from “U.S. Involvement in ‘Latin America’”)

BRIEFLY NOTED

“This collection of both new and previously published poems showcases Eady’s enormous range as a chronicler of contemporary American life—class, race, family, gender, jazz and blues, and the distinctions between urban and rural environments all play a role in these impeccable lyrics. Eady’s plain-spoken, pragmatic voice is accessible yet distinct, and the experiences he describes (being a victim of discrimination, watching a tough-minded father die, surviving prostate cancer) manage to seem both intimate and universal. Eady writes of being “a black, / American poet” whose “greatest weakness / is an inability / to sustain rage.” But, given the breadth and nuance of his palette, perhaps that is his greatest strength.”

The New Yorker (May 12, 2008)

A Marian Wood Book
Pubished by G.P. Putnam’s Sons
a member of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
April release: 224 pages
$24.95 US hardcover | $14.00 US trade paper

Photographed by Kathy Sloane

On assignment for Haas Jr. Fund, I photographed a classroom of one of my oldest and closest friends, Maria Rosa Keys. She is probably the best teacher I have ever seen, and teaches 2nd grade at Thousand Oaks School in Berkeley.

April in her classroom is Poetry Month. Her room is filled with books of poetry and the morning starts off with the children finding and reading poems. Each day there is a “poet of the day,” who can, at any time — when the spirit moves him/her — interrupt the class by ringing chimes to read aloud a poem. During the two hours I was there, the poet of the day read three poems at different intervals. It was marvelous! I have never witnessed such intensity around poetry among 7-year-olds!
– Kathy Sloane

 

 

 

 

 

© 2008 by Kathy Sloane

Kathy Sloane is completing a book about Keystone Korner, the fabled San Francisco jazz club, which she photographed lovingly during the 1970s and 80s.

Kathy Sloane Photography