Archive for the ‘What’s at Stake’ Category

Conyus: THE GREAT SANTA BARBARA OIL DISASTER

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

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To skip the run-up and go straight to the poem, scroll

The oil spill and the food web

By Dan Brennan
30 June 2010
© World Socialist Web Site

The ecological destruction of the oil disaster in the Gulf is perhaps most aptly embodied in the pictures of brown pelicans made lifeless by a thick coating of toxic sludge. However, the true toll may spread far beyond these dreadful images. Scientists warn that the gravest threat, including possible ecosystem collapse, is posed by the poisoning of organisms at the base of the food chain.
Read the rest

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Lessons learned from the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of January 1969

Listen

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Ripples of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill

L.A. Times | September 7, 2008

© L.A. Times

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© 1969 Associated Press

The Great Santa Barbara Oil Disaster, Or: A Diary

a poem by Conyus

Day one

We ride down the coast hwy

through the heavy rain

to a beach that sits in a rocky cove

hidden from the eye.

I sit in the rear of the bus

where the shadows pass

over cold metal walls

& window screens,

looking through dirty glass

at the somber scenery.

A young Mexican girl stands in the muddy debris

of her home, rummaging through the mud.

The river flooded suddenly two days ago

after a torrential rain & shifted the terrain.

Overhead the clouds mount menacingly

in small squalls, prostituting themselves again

against the sky, & we turn left off the freeway

into the spent community of Carpinteria

like a funeral procession on a grey Saturday,

heading to the bone yard in tandem.

Beyond the border of thin sidewalks,

sit bleached out houses on paper stilts

with tattered venetian blinds & curtains

barely moving on the stiff ocean breeze.

We walk beneath the bleeding sky

single file to the oily beach in perfect silence;

everything around us is a chemical foundry.

Day two

The 1st. night

we arrived,

the college girls

in the dormitory

across from us

paraded before

their window in

bras & panties,

being friendly.

The people

came to watch us work,

in hip boots & work gloves,

cleaning oil & shoveling straw.

Some said, “my! don’t they look almost human?”

Others said, “a convict is a crime. don’t forget that!”

Sometimes the children’s ball

bounded in our area,

& the Spanish inmates

soccer kicked it back lightly.

We all laughed

& smiled a lot

the first day.

The sunset & the night

came on slowly.

From out of the night

came gargoyles

with church fathers

& concerned parents

to tell the children

not to play

within the border of red flags

& the fence of thick cane around us.

Because,

the sky would fall

& hell would follow,

if they instilled

licentious ambitions

in our minds.

& so

we didn’t laugh

anymore, or smile

at all the second day.

From that day forward,

we just worked,

hard & steady,

with our heads

low & our eyes

to the ground,

so the sky

wouldn’t fall,

& the people

wouldn’t know,

& the world

wouldn’t burn.

Day three

All day we work behind the sea breaker

in the black sand, shoveling straw

& thick lumps of oil

into the mouth of the skip loader,

while the cat skinner rides high

in the driver’s seat with a hole for his eye.

On the beach,

in the window

of the Santa Barbara Yacht Club,

Black servants watch us

swing picks & shovels

in the wet sand

like machetes

clearing a cane field

on their small island

in the Caribbean.

On a concrete wall

below this Diaspora

i sit & swing my legs over the ice plants

& puddles of oil where sand crabs,

& small fish lie dead

& stinking in the sun.

Beneath my work jacket

i touch the crushed sandwich

of white bread & yellow cheese

& think of the young Chinese girl

in the pink hairnet with braces.

After lunch we return with rakes & hip booths,

wading through the constant tide

of thick oil & grey foam,

to gather balls of sticky oil

stuck between rocks,

& place them in yellow plastic bags.

Along the beach

the tide falls back out to sea,

taking with it the trail of our feet

that follows us like a shadow.

I turn my back to the Santa Barbara Sound

& pull the weather jacket tight

to shield against the cold & damp air.

Over my shoulder,

past the far islands near the horizon,

someone is singing a song,

that i can barely hear,

in a voice

that i cannot recognize.

(more…)

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HANK JONES: July 31, 1918 – May 16, 2010 ~ In Memoriam

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Thad Jones | Elvin Jones | Hank Jones

© Ron Hudson Photography

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Click to watch Hank Jones’ music, conversation, and others’ stories about the magnificent pianist bring you back to life.

Courtesy photo

Henry ‘Hank’ Jones
July 31, 1918 – May 16, 2010

Slick Licks and Lazy Clichés Got No Free Ride
When He Soloed

Still growing up in Detroit, still in my teens, it was my good fortune to have met and rubbed shoulders with each of “the Jones Boys” — pianist Hank, trumpeter Thad, and little brother Elvin, a fierce drummer. Technically, they were from Pontiac, close enough to Big D for them to qualify as Detroiters. At 15 I became a regular contributor of articles and poems to Idioms, the publication of the Motor City’s New Music Society. We held meetings and edited the tabloid-sized journal at the busy bohemian home of Harold and Jodi Neal. During the day Harold climbed telephone poles for Michigan Bell, but at night and on weekends he was a serious, imaginative painter. It wasn’t unusual for musicians and other artists to attend the Sunday afternoon-into-evening meetings the Neals hosted at 824 Atkinson Street, where they were also raising their daughter Chinyere (a.k.a. Jan) and her little brother Harold, Jr. (a.k.a. Sule).

What a heady time. Even then, a non-stop reader, listener and observer of life, I seemed to understand fully how valuable this period in my development would become. Monday nights I made it to World Stage in closeby Highland Park, a theater-in-the round venue, where local and touring musicians would gather and jam on the only night that most clubs sat dark. Barry Harris, Kenny Burrell, Tommy Flanagan, Dorothy Ashby, Pepper Adams, Yusef Lateef, Donald Byrd, Doug Watkins, Earl Williams, Kirk Lightsey, Louis Hayes, Curtis Fuller, Roy Haynes, Frank Wess, Paul Chambers, Roy Brooks, Harold and Bernard McKinney, Charles McPherson, Lonnie Hillyer, Alice McLeod (the future Mrs. Coltrane), Terry Gibbs, Doug Watkins, Joe Henderson, and the Jones Boys — these are some of the musicians who showed up at World Stage or in the Neals’ diningroom, where we argued, planned and laid out Idioms.

Like saxophonist Yusef Lateef, whom I practically worshiped as a model artist, Hank Jones held a high place at my jazz altar. Born the same year as my father and the eldest of the family’s musical threesome (in all there were 10 Jones children), he had long ago emigrated from Michigan to New York, where he made a shining name for himself. But of course he would gig from time to time in the old adopted hometown. It was the strong yet gentle way did everything that stuck with me. My earliest concept of what it meant to be sophisticated flowed into me from his speaking and playing presence. His technical mastery of the keyboard, his savvy, sassy lyricism , his love and respect for the bebop repertoire as well as straight standards and popular song wasn’t wasted on me, either. Hank Jones knew what to play, what to skip, and to skip and what to leave unstated unstated. Slick licks and lazy clichés got no free ride when he soloed. Taste and class were always his signature. For me, way back then, in another troubled century, Hank Jones’ playing personified the virtues of eloquence and poise in the presence of passion. The adjective we favored was hip.

– Al Young

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