Courtesy decktheholidays.blogspot.com

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© Vivian Torrence | Three North Carolina country shots
>> Visit Vivian Florig Torrence’s website >>

Al Young

Jeannie’s present

Maria Syndicus

Al and Michael Young in the run-up to Christmas 2011

© Maria Syndicus

Meanwhile, oozing light, Al Young finds himself back in downtown Palo Alto at the Prez, where he resided for years.

Courtesy sf-apts.com

President Apartments in summer

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A clickable treat

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Photo: Karen Johnson

Al Young and Harry Belafonte, KPFA Benefit at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, CA | 30 November 2011

BELAFONTE FOR BEGINNERS

Three years before “I Have a Dream” got preached,

the 1960 March on Washington

propelled us into DC. Once we reached

the Saturday when you were going on,

mean horseback cops reared up to stomp us. “Stop!”

one hollered in a trembling southern drawl.

“Let them kids live!” We thanked this rebel cop

with gut sighs, then we cut straight for the Mall.

You, Harry Belafonte, sang our songs.

You let us know you came down on our side.

Green college kids, we knew what rights, what wrongs

forced us to see you, hear you, while we died.

No caving in. No turning back. Just home.

Calypso? All we heard was: “Daylight, come!”

—Al Young

© 2011 Al Young

Photo: Jan Etre

[L-R] Poet Al Young, actor Danny Glover, painter Arthur Monroe | First Congregational Church, Berkeley |

30 November 2011

Courtesy Kindness of Strangers

The poet in October

Al Young and legendary Keystone Korner club owner Todd Barkan | City Lights Books | Photo: Samuel Wooten

© Samuel Wooten

Guitarist Calvin Keys prepares to read from Kathy Sloane’s Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club | City Lights Books

Samuel Wooten

Author-photographer Kathy Sloane in triumphant, joyful City Lights book launch mode

Photo: Al Young

Rosemary Hutcherson and Bobby Hutcherson (master vibist and storyteller) | City Lights Books

© Jim Dennis

Al Young, Terri Hinte, Ora Harris, Rosemary Hutcherson | City Lights Books

© Al Young

devorah major, San Francisco’s former poet laureate, takes in author-photographer Kathy Sloane’s presentation during a jam-packed book launch for Keystone Korner: Portrait of a Jazz Club at City Lights Books. Up in the background, poet Q.R. Hand mulls it all over.

With Jeanne Houston at the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Gala

At the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Gala, Washington DC, September

Poet Natasha Threthaway, novelist-memoirist Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, and Al Young just before the PEN/Faulkner Gala dinner in Washington, DC.

Al Young

Maxine Hong Kingston speaks of her life-long friendship with James and Jeanne Houston at the Heyday book launch for The Queen’s Journey, an unfinished novel by James D. Houston.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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Photo: Al Young

Courtesy StockPhoto

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Al Young

Cool fog with moody sky and setting sun reflect on the Berkeley Hills | late August 2011

Al Young

Al Young

Berkeley’s historic Captain Charles C. Boudrow House sits around the corner and two doors down from Al’s baroque digs. Anecdote has it that the good captain, once he retired, loved to watch the boats and ships sail by on San Francisco Bay, hence the elegant cupola that tops off the princely design of his home.

Photo © 2006 by Daniella Thompson

Photographer, writer, architectural historian, music historian and critic, editor, and webmaster Daniella Thompson has captured this inviting façade in crisp midday light.

Al Young

Al’s freshly pruned date palm flourishes | August 2011

Photo © Doug McKechnie

Al Young and singer-guitarist Marc Silber — whose friendship dates back to college and the 1950s — take in a last Tuesday night in August performance by the Randy Craig Quartet at Berkeley’s popular Caffè Trieste | August 2011

A Kindness 0f Strangers photo

Suffering recent personal losses, Persis Ka and Al Young have lunched, commiserated, and now smile at how long their student-teacher friendship has lasted. The chilliness of this year’s San Francisco Bay Area summer discouraged them both from planting their customary tomatoes.| July 2011

Al Young

The Palo Alto Duck Pond | July 2011

Al Young

Writers Michael Young and Al Young revisit the Palo Alto Baylands, a favorite family stop since Michael’s toddler days. | July 2011

Al Young

Why so windy at the marshy Baylands pier, Palo Alto? | July 2011

© Vivian Torrence

Vivian’s garden rabbit; Columbus, North Carolina | June 2011

Photos: O.O. Gabugah

Al Young on Michigan Avenue in Dearborn, Michigan. Still in love with the Nissan Cube he’s driven for ten days, he must now return the updated model-T to its rental car lot at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport | Late June 2011

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Courtesy River Bend Nature Center     Courtesy National Post (Canada)  

Courtesy NHK World

clickable

Cairo women, Tahir Square 2011

© Amr Dalsh/Reuters

Robert Fisk on the Arab Spring at AdBusters.com

Arab Spring at reason.com

In a November 2007 BBC interview, before her own assassination, Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto spoke with the BBC’s David Frost about Osama bin Laden’s death

Visit Global Voices

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Photo: BJ Tierney

Al Young in surprise celebration of his 72nd birthday at Caffè Trieste, Berkeley, where he went to hear the Randy Craig Quartet. When the band struck up “Happy Birthday” and vocalists Katie Perry and Danielle Thys, the photographer’s daughter, pointed out the poet and led the crowd in song, he knew he’d been found out. The scores of birthday greetings showered upon him by email, snail mail and voice mail continue to touch him deeply.

Photo: Danielle Thys

Photographer Barbara J. Tierney and Al Young: long-time email pals meeting for the first time in real-time.

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© Pornchai Kittiwongsakul / AFP/ Getty Images

© J. Ruth Gendler

Magenta Bowl and Silver Moon

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© Susan Slapin

© Susan Slapin

© Susan Slapin

© Vivian Torrence

An orderly orchard nest of praying mantises (mantis religiosa) springs to life in North Carolina

© Vivian Torrence

Spring lizard

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Photo: Firehouse Theater

Al with Nancy and Richard Bartholomew, old friends, at the 4th Annual Pleasanton Poetry, Prose & Arts Festival, late March 2011

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Cellist-composer Clovice Lewis with Al Young at Galilee Lutheran Church in Kelseyville, CA right after  Spring Awakening, a benefit performance for KPFZ-FM, Lake County’s community radio station

Poets Rafael Jesús González, Sandra Wade and Al Young in post-concert pose, Lake County, CA, April 2011

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Photo: Josie Talamantez

Al Young and Malissa Feruzzi Shriver, two of five judges for California’s Poetry Out Loud 2011; photographed March 20 at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento, where Round One of this year’s recitation competition took place.

Photo: Al Young

Josie Talamantez, Chief of Grant Programs, California Arts Council

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Courtesy http://poetlaureateblog.org/

Sally Ashton, newly appointed poet laureate of California’s Santa Clara County

Melinda Cervantes   | Alan Soldofsky   | Diem Jones

Al Young

Celebrating poet Nils Peterson at San José State University: Melinda Cervantes, Santa Clara County Librarian and 11th Senate District Woman of the Year, at the podium; seated behind at her left: poet-producer and host Alan Soldofsky, SJSU’s Director of Creative Writing; to her right: poet/musician co-host Diem Jones, Deputy Director of Arts Council Silicon Valley | Click here or directly on image to magnify

Al Young

Nils Peterson

… A phone rings – a barista calls out

‘Tall vanilla soy latte.’

Strange talk to one who grew up

with a nickel cup of joe.

There are fewer and fewer

native speakers of one’s born language.

You learn to live with translations.

from “Coffee Shop in the Late Afternoon” | © Nils Peterson

Nils Peterson, Santa Clara County’s poet laureate emeritus, addresses an audience gathered at San José State University’s Student Union Ballroom to celebrate his life and work | March 18, 2011

Al Young

On a rain-crazed night in San José, Nils Peterson and cohorts regale the poet’s dining admirers with a mini-concert of barbershop quartet favorites at Flames Eatery & Bar.

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CNN’s responds to Gadhafi and fiery conflict in Libya

Photos: Al Young

A wet spring Saturday night, I Street, downtown Sacramento

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Courtesy photo

Photos: Al Young

© Catherine Bowen Stern

La Tigresa (Dona Nieto) (top) tripping on the poetry of Arthur Sheridan (below) at the monthly poetry bash he produces at A Taste of Rome in Sausalito, CA

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page under construction

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© servingthesierra.com

The upper Truckee River in winter

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Courtesy Dan I. Slobin Archives
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Gigging since mid-20th century: Al Young at piano, age 16; Detroit, Winter 1956

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Photo: Joyce Jenkins

L-R | Contributors Geri Digiorno, Michael McClure, M.L. Liebler, Al Young, Sue Doro say cheese to more than one camera at Diesel|A Bookstore, Oakland, following a reading for WORKING WORDS: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams (Coffee House Press), 16 January 2011

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Photo: Al Young

Sunset bridge (Oakland-SF Bay Bridge shot from Skates on the Bay, Berkeley Marina, early January 2011)

Al Young

Slow fade to the Berkeley Pier at sundown

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A Glacial Night in January Warmed by Sunset Poetry

Courtesy still from Sausalito Art Gallery slide show

Studio 333 at 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito, CA 94965 | Click here to view poetry events at Why There Are Words

Photo: Zelda

L-R | Indigo Moor, Dona (La Tigresa) Nieto, Al Young, host/emcee Martin Hickel, Tracy Wynn, Giovanni Singleton (back to camera), Gini Savage, Adam David Miller

Photos: Al Young

Photographer Bill Klemens kindly repairs Al Young’s eyeglasses for the evening reading | Zelda (Suzanne Becker) all set and ever-ready to shoot up the night with her light

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Writer/therapist Katie Amatruda and Al Young

Al Young

La Tigresa in sacred idiom

© Zelda

Poets Indigo Moor, Dona Nieto (La Tigresa) and Al Young featured at Studio 333′s Sunset Poetry series in Sausalito, CA, 5 January 2011

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Photo by Waitress

Painter Elizabeth Hack, creator of the blog Peace, Hope & 9/11: Voices from San Francisco, web designer Niya Sisk, and contributing poet Al Young meet in Oakland’s Rockridge district on a December Saturday to discuss the site’s new format and look.

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December 21, 2010
Winter Solstice and a total lunar eclipse converge for the first time in 372 years.

The total lunar eclipse of Y2K 2000

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December 20, 2010
Photographs of the December 21, 2010 lunar eclipse taken by novelist Joanne Meschery as she watched it from her valley home in the High Sierras.

© Joanne Meschery

The northeastern side of the novelist-photographer’s High Sierras valley, looking towards Reno

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