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WITNESS TO HIROSHIMA
a documentary film by Kathy Sloane

Available on DVD

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“I think that the whole world has to see this film and not just the facts, but feel the cries of the Japanese. This film made me question how I am living my life.”
– Amy Cha
10th grader

the WITNESS TO HIROSHIMA website

“Born six years before my country dropped the Atom Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I grew up in the shadow of this horrendous tragedy. My post-World War Two generation believed nuclear holocaust to be inevitable. That we hadn’t nuked Germany or Italy –Japan’s Axis partners in fascism — told us plenty about our country’s toxic color codes. I can’t take in Keiji Tsuchiya’s personal, on-the-ground, turn-by-turn testament without feeling my stomach and throat constrict. Like Mr. Tsuchiya’s faithful translator, I, too, break into tears as his story makes its point: that the horseshoe crab and all living things share with us the same water and air. For a world that knows little or nothing about this monstrous 20th century event and its stained legacy, Kathy Sloane’s 15-minute documentary is a must-see.”
– Al Young
California Poet Laureate (2005-2008)

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Keiji Tsuchiya,
Hiroshima survivor, horseshoe crab protector, and watercolorist

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When Trauma Happens, People Draw: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Unforgettable Fire
By Cathy Malchiodi
Psychology Today Blog (Healing Arts) August 2008

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Michelle Y, still in her teens, writes about another witness to Hiroshima — her grandfather

(from Teen Ink Magazine)

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The Peach Boy (Momotaro)

Second Grade Girls in Their Poetry Worlds | Kathy Sloane (May 2008)

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Courtesy photo

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Kristin Hunter Lattany
(1931-2008)

WASHINGTON POST EMAIL TO AMIRI BARAKA;
FORWARDED TO AL YOUNG & ISHMAEL REED
18 December 2008

Dear Mr. Baraka, I was recently told Mrs. Kristin Hunter Lattany died. I know that you all are contemporaries. So, I’m reaching out to you with the news. I have attached her address here if you need it. By chance, if you can, please forward this information to Ishmael Reed and Al Young. I spoke to Mrs. Lattany about them, and she had fond memories.

Thank you and all the best,
Sol

Kristin Hunter Lattany
721 Warwick Road North
Magnolia, NJ 08049

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“The world has lost yet another powerful, unheralded novelist and storyteller. Kristin Hunter Lattany’s stories, situations and characters were almost always bold and unpredictable.  She was wry and often hilarious.  My favorite novel of hers, The Lakestown Rebellion, was inspired, she said, by my 1975 novel Who Is Angelina? Whether she was writing for grown folks or children, Kristin Hunter always gave full attention to subtle worlds within worlds and psyches within psyches. Her books are a joy.”
– Al Young

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Go to the Philadelphia Daily News original

Kristin Hunter Lattany, novelist and activist, dies at 77

By JOHN F. MORRISON
Philadelphia Daily News
Posted on Fri, Nov. 21, 2008
morrisj@phillynews.com 215-854-5573

THERE IS A restaurant in Carlisle, Pa., that may still be shaking from the one and only visit to it by Kristin Hunter Lattany and her family.Her husband’s four children were in school nearby back in the ’60s, and they thought they would stop in the joint for a meal, even though it looked like a place that might not be friendly to African-Americans.

She was right. And after being ignored by waiters for 20 minutes, she quietly told her family to leave.

“They started for the door,” she wrote. “I then stood up, yanked the tablecloth and all the condiments off the table and kicked over all six chairs.

“I should have known we would not be welcome, since the meanest spirits dwell in the drabbest places.”

Kristin did not tolerate discrimination in any form, but her anger at the racism she encountered over the years was channeled more into her writing than in kicking over chairs.

The author of about a dozen books for adults and children, plus scores of stories and articles in various publications, Kristin was frequently honored and hailed as an important chronicler of the black experience in America.

She died Friday of a heart attack after collapsing in her home in Magnolia, N.J. She was 77.

Kristin had a varied career, including writing copy for a Philadelphia advertising agency, writing press releases and speeches for the Philadelphia City Representative’s Office, and teaching creative writing for 23 years at her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.

As a teenager, she wrote a column about young people and their concerns for the Philadelphia edition of the Pittsburgh Courier. That experience convinced her she wanted to be a writer.

Her first novel, “God Bless the Child,” published in 1964, was highly praised and set her course as a fiction writer. The Christian Science Monitor described the book as “a story of people who have had the doors slammed on them once too often, who have been hobbled by the deformities of a fabricated society.”

Her last book, “Breaking Away,” published in 2003, can’t help but be seen as autobiographical. It concerns a black woman who is a creative-writing teacher at an unnamed Ivy League university. The teacher’s complacent life is shaken when a group of black sorority sisters who have been harassed by white students ask her for help.

It is reminiscent of Kristin’s experience in the notorious “water buffalo” incident at Penn in 1993, when a student called a group of black women students “water buffaloes” and said they should go to the zoo if they wanted to party.

“It seemed that everybody in the university and beyond, except me, supported his right to do so,” she once wrote. “I erupted in print, in class, online and everywhere else I could erupt, and found that I had almost no support.”

She said a published protest she had written and posted on her office door was set on fire, an Aunt Jemima pancake-mix box was placed where she could see it, and a student insulted her to her face.

The incident led her to an early retirement two years later.

Her second novel, “The Landlord,” was made into a movie starring Lou Gossett Jr. and Beau Bridges in 1970. It didn’t do well at the box office and she disliked the whole Hollywood experience.

(more…)

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De la manera más cordial quiero invitarlo, respondiendo a este correo, a suscribirse a la edición virtual de la revista de poesía colombiana Arquitrave — www.arquitrave.com — que hacemos hace más de seis años un grupo de escritores. La revista se publica cada dos meses y tiene una edición impresa que podemos hacerle llegar si tiene usted interés en el fetiche del papel. Reciba un saludo cordial.

Harold Alvarado Tenorio
www.haroldalvaradotenorio.com
Revista de Poesía Arquitrave
www.arquitrave.com
Kra 13 # 27-98, Torre B/1504
1/ 812 82 14–320 306 64 54
Bogotá DC

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In the warmest way I want to invite you, in responding to this letter, to subscribe to the virtual edition of the Colombian poetry magazine Architrave – www.arquitrave.com – that we, a group of six writers, have been doing for just six years.  The magazine publishes every two months and issues a printed edition that we can make available if you have a paper fetish. Accept our warm greeting.

Harold Alvarado Tenorio
www.haroldalvaradotenorio.com
Revista de Poesía Arquitrave
www.arquitrave.com
Kra 13 # 27-98, Torre B/1504
1/ 812 82 14–320 306 64 54
Bogotá DC

Juan Felipe Herrera featured in Revista de Poesía Arquitrave #40

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The Puerto Rico-born valve trombonist Juan Tizol is best known for “Caravan” and “Perdido,” which many listeners presume were composed by Duke Ellington himself, a masterful arranger and presenter.

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Mea Culpa

ERRATA

I’ve astonished even myself by empty-headedly referring to Duke Ellington’s valve trombonist Juan Tizol as his “beloved saxophonist” in the poetic tribute I pay to Ellington in JAZZ IDIOM: Blueprints, Stills and Frames (The Jazz Photography of Charles L. Robinson).

Of course I have alerted Heyday Books, and, should a second printing occur, we’ll make amends.

It was jazz broadcaster Ron Freshley at WMUA, Amherst, MA, who spotted the gaffe (a truly inexplicable goof) and brought it to my attention following an on-air telephone interview he conducted with Charles Robinson and me in late October of 2008. Francesca Rheannon of The Writer’s Voice co-conducted the interview, later editing her portion down to a 30-minute podcast available online. I emailed Ron that I’d had the pleasure, as of a kid and young man, of enjoying Mr. Tizol’s valve trombone playing while attending live performances by the Ellington Orchestra in stage shows at the Fox Theater and the Masonic Temple and Olympia Stadium in Detroit.

– Al Young

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Juan Tizol

  Juan Tizol plays “Caravan” with a 1952 Ellington band (© Snader Telescriptions)

Juan Tizol, born in 1900, played the valve trombone. Originally from Puerto Rico, he came to the United States to work with Marie Lucas in 1920. Tizol left Lucas when that band lost its regular engagement and soon found a position with Duke Ellington’s band. He wasn’t featured in the Duke Ellington Orchestra as often as the other trombonists, but his valve trombone helped Ellington create a new sound. Since Tizol’s valve trombone was technically adept, Ellington liked to score Tizol with the saxophones – such as on “Concerto for Cootie”. Ellington would also score Tizol on passages that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to play on slide trombone, such as quick changes from B flat to B natural in the staff. Tizol, however, did not improvise jazz solos, and his most important contributions were as a section player and as a composer and arranger. He was the composer of “Caravan” and “Perdido” – both big hits for the Ellington Orchestra.

In 1944 Tizol left the Ellington band and performed briefly with Woody Herman’s band before being picked up by Harry James. Tizol played with James for seven years, returning to Ellington’s band in 1951 for a short period. The rest of his life Tizol worked for many band leaders, including Ellington, James, Frank Sinatra, and Nat “King” Cole. Tizol died in 1984 in Los Angeles.

© David M. Wilken:
EVOLUTION OF THE JAZZ TROMBONE, Part Two: The Swing Era

Source: Online Trombone Journal

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In Memoriam

Courtesy photo     | © Ray Turner

“Omar Clay, whom I’ve known and loved since our college days together at Ann Arbor, was a poet of percussion. On every gig he played his whole heart out.” — Al Young

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Go to the Marin (CA) Independent Journal original

Jazz drummer Omar Clay of Mill Valley dies at 73

By Paul Liberatore
Marin Independent Journal
December 10, 2008

“Omar Clay, a renowned drummer/percussionist who played with some of the greatest names in jazz and was a popular instrumental music teacher at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, died Dec. 4.

Mr. Clay died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, at the San Francisco VA Medical Center. He was 73.

In his illustrious career, Mr. Clay performed or recorded with a veritable “who’s who” of jazz, including John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Horace Silver, David “Fathead” Newman, Dionne Warwick and Roberta Flack, among many others.

A resident of Mill Valley, Mr. Clay taught instrumental music at Tam High from 1990 to 2000, retiring as music director. Last year, a star was dedicated in his honor in the new Caldwell Performing Arts Center on campus.

“He loved kids and they loved him back,” said Barbara Chew, Mr. Clay’s longtime partner and companion. “His passions were music and teaching.”

Tucker Kelley, one of Mr. Clay’s former students, said: “Of all the teachers I had at Tam, he remains one of my all-time favorites. “He always maintained such a cool personality, even when he was scolding us. It still amazes me. His mustaches, his hollering, the tuxedos, the football games we played. All of these are wonderful memories of Mr.Clay for me.”

Born in 1935 in St. Louis, Mr. Clay attended Xavier University in New Orleans on a scholarship before enlisting in the U.S. Army, playing in a jazz band while stationed in Germany.

After the service, he received a bachelor’s degree in music from the University of Michigan, then moved to New York, making a name for himself on the Manhattan jazz scene while teaching at the High School of Music and Arts.” He was a wonderful drummer and dear friend,” said venerable jazz pianist Marian McPartland.

Mr. Clay performed in concert with Coltrane in the early 1960s, and played with Sarah Vaughan and the Bob James Trio at a White House concert during the Johnson Administration. He was proud to have danced with Lady Bird Johnson.

He was one of the six original members of Max Roach’s all-percussion M’Boom Ensemble, playing marimba, timbales, xylophone and timpani. He also worked in the orchestra pits of the Broadway musicals “Guys and Dolls” and “Raisin,” a 1973 adaptation of the play “A Raisin in the Sun.”

In 1979, he moved to Northern California, getting a master’s degree in music education from San Francisco State University before joining the faculty at Tam High.

He was a member of the Bay Area-based Guarneri Jazz Quartet, and recorded locally with Mill Valley singer Jackie Ryan, pianist Larry Vuckovich, singers Jon Hendricks and Frank Jackson, guitarist Josh Workman and bassist Jeff Chambers.

Mr. Clay continued to play even after he was diagnosed with ALS, a neuro-degenerative disease, last summer.

In addition to Ms. Chew, he is survived by his mother, Elnora Jackson of Akron, Ohio, and a daughter, Wanda Davis of Hayward.

A musical tribute is being planned for next month.

Donations can be made to the Forbes Norris ALS Research Center, 2324 Sacramento St. Suite 111, San Francisco 94115, or the Music Department at Tamalpais High School, 700 Miller Ave., Mill Valley 94941.

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Omar Clay and Al Young at the San Francisco memorial for singer Sweetie Mitchell, 1998
© Barbara Chew

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Jesse Hamlin’s San Francisco Chronicle Obituary

Erik Yate (Hot Buttered Rum bandleader) pays tribute to his former Tamalpais High School music teacher