The Impetuous 30Something Cosmopolitan!

It's the 1% Doctrine, Stupid

2011-10-31T10:10:00.003-04:00

The Failure of the “I Got Mine – and Yours, Too” Theory of Governance, And What’s Next
Published on Monday, October 31, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
by John Atcheson

As week seven of Occupy Wall Street dawns, much of the media and the establishment continue to act as if everything about the protests were an ineffable mystery.

Well, it’s really not that mysterious. To paraphrase James Carville yet again, it’s the 1% Doctrine, Stupid.

When 75% of the people support raising taxes on the rich, but their elected “representatives” won’t represent them, what else can people do, but take their grievances to the streets? And this is no isolated case: on issue after issue, elected "representatives" are ignoring the people’s wishes, choosing to represent the ultra-rich and corporations instead.

When government gives banks and Wall Street some $12.8 trillion of the taxpayer’s hard-earned money in direct funds, guarantees and near zero interest loans, and the fat cats turn around and spend it on bonuses and high-risk investments rather than fixing the real economy for the 99% who have been affected, don’t ask why people are angry. Especially when not a single bankster or speculator has been busted for a plethora of real crimes, while people lose their homes to improperly documented foreclosures.

When the one-percenters and their bought-and-paid-for government pass a faux financial reform bill that doesn't actually change the way things are done in the Banks’ boardrooms or on Wall Street and people take to the streets, how can that be a mystery?

And yes, that means you, too, Clinton, Obama and the Democratic Party. Your abject collusion with the one-percenters, while spouting populist rhetoric every four years, is in some ways more worthy of disdain than the Republicans’ outright embrace of the 1% Doctrine.

When the Supreme Court is dominated by corporatists and makes corporate- friendly rulings like Citizens’ United, assuring that government can be bought by the highest bidder, it should come as no great mystery when people take to the streets.

When the press becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate America, replacing truth, facts, and accuracy with “balance” and leaving reality on the cutting room floor, don’t act mystified when the people stop swallowing corporate propaganda, and seek truth on their own.

And when, since Reagan, one-percenters have been taking all of the wealth gained from increased productivity and stuffing it into their own pockets, while stiffing workers, it should come as no great mystery when the people catch on and take to the streets.

Without a sense that government can do anything to right these gross crimes against the citizenry – indeed, when government is saddled with policies, laws, budgets and elected corporate lackeys guaranteeing it can’t address them – where else could the people turn but to the streets?

And to those who knock government as intrinsically incompetent and inept, remember, it has been made so by design since the 80’s. For more than three decades prior to that, we had sustained and widely shared prosperity thanks to regulations and programs passed in the New Deal. For five decades prior, we paid higher taxes and got great value for it. Since Reagan, we’ve been cutting taxes and all we’re getting are wars, debt, inequality and plutocratic pork.

But what do they want, the establishment whines.

The mainstream media, politicians and assorted other pundits are perplexed because the Occupy Movement has not issued a series of demands in bulletized, media-friendly sound bites.

But if you want to understand what’s going on, Mr. Jones, simply look at what they do, and how they operate.

Within the various Occupy camps, they have set up a society that emphasizes inclusion, not exclusion. They pursue the positive and affirmative issues that unite us, rather than the fear and hate-based issues that divide us. They advocate a society in which corporations serve the interests of the people, rather than people serving and being subservient to the interests of corporations.

They are rejecting the politics of us vs. them, and embracing the politics of creating a greater us. They are advocating an economic system that respects environmental realities as well as meeting the rights and welfare of the people.

The Occupy movement recognizes that a society, economy or country is neither great nor successful simply because it amasses the most wealth conceivable. No matter how high the GDP, a system that serves the interests of a scarce few at the expense of the many is a failure. A society that exploits unborn generations and the natural world on behalf of the 1%, is profoundly immoral.

Here’s the deal: for thirty years, under the 1% Doctrine, fat-cats and plutocrats have systematically destroyed peoples' faith in government so they could take over. They’ve succeeded. The result? The US economy now has the same level of income inequality as such third world countries as Uganda and Cameroon, and persistent real unemployment hovering above 20%, and we are stealing any hope of a sustainable future from our children in order to give fat cats yet another bloated bonus.

We – the people, the 99% -- are sick to death, literally, of the failed policies of the 1% Doctrine.

The future – if we are to have one worth living – belongs to us. Step aside, one percenters. The tide of history is rolling in.

Source: CommonDreams.org 10/31/11

John Atcheson's writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the San Jose Mercury News, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, as well as in several wonk journals. He is currently at work on a fictional Trilogy that centers on climate change. Atcheson's book reviews are featured on Climateprogress.org. Email to: jbatcheson@gmail.com

Steve Jobs, the Rock Star immortalized

2011-10-06T14:16:00.005-04:00

One of the best commencement speeches I've ever heard was this video below. It is aw-inspiring. When ordinary people do extraordinary things, on their own terms. They appear to become Rock Stars. He was that Rock Star. Check out his advice to Stanford students.

This video inspired me, and in spite of my regrets, this video gave me justification for the many decisions I've made; even those that didn't work out. There is hope that the lessons learned will be of great value. Hence, Steve Jobs achieved iconic Rock Star status as an innovator of the 21st century. The man who became a 21st change agent has passed away today. His charming ability to connect the dots and communicate the value of an idea was his most astounding and revered skill. Steve Jobs will be forever immortalized as a transformative figure of the 21st century. His talents and presence will be missed.

OccupyWall Street - Civil Disobedience Gone Wild?

2011-09-24T19:57:00.007-04:00

The power of messaging, riding on the back of a propaganda machine can turn a movement into a circus. The OccupyWallstreet movement was originally a protest against the financial industry, it's lobby, the US congressmen and senators who support legislation that facilitated fraud, mortgage servicer fraud, pension raiding, high risk investments, that created the credit crunch with the too big to fail approach. The movement is suppose to be the "we are not going to take it anymore and we are going to vote out congressional members that support corporations at the expense of the people". A teaparty sort; more like the french revolution, from the Marie Atwonette protester's point of view. A referendum, to illicit job creating legislation, and retribution.

Instead, the protest has become a melodramatic circus, with people jumping on the bandwagon all over the country for the sake of expressing their anger and disdain in a bubble. Without a centralized messaging strategy it has morphed into an unorganized circus of testifier's and holy ghost enactments against banks. That was displayed with this George Washington Law student who screamed and yelled like "big mama at a sad funeral", while begging to be arrested. The spectacle diminished the objective, and the message was lost in translation. That was not effective Civil disobedience.

The movement is suppose to send a message to elected officials. Those officials must comprehend the repercussions of the "people's anger". That anger will turn into votes against politicians that erode governmental protections. Oust politicians that push financial deregulation which facilitates the fraud and thievery that has destabilized the economy. Most importantly, preserve the equity of American working class by voting out politicians that push risky convoluted investment instruments, tax loopholes which give corporations moving off shore to evade taxation and exporting jobs. Or politicians that protect only wealthy Americans that legally evade taxes, while their corporations receive outlandish tax subsidies paid for by the American people.

The video below shows a George Washington law student screaming about the bank that foreclosed on his parents house. It is incredibly tragic. However, he should have articulated the actual injustices; the mortgage servicer fraud, predatory lending practices and aggressive illegal foreclosures violating mortgage regulatory laws that the government ignored.

In addition, the financial industry driven globalization has exported jobs to cheap labor countries. The loss of American jobs has driven down demand for products due to lack of consumer income from joblessness. Buffoonery does little for making change. It appears 21st century Liberals have shut Jessie Jackson out of this administration. Jessie Jackson has 50 years of human rights, equal rights, civil disobedience, social justice, logistical protests and communications. Without his participation, it appears the voice of the voiceless has been silenced. The Obama administration has had the tables turned on them by the Teaparty.

To hedge off the OccupyWallSt movement from becoming a mockery, operatives of this movement should enlist Jessie Jackson's consultation; before all this screaming and yelling falls on deaf ears. This movement needs management leadership and clear communications to be heard. Change can't happen if no one is listening. OccupyWallST has spread to Los Angeles, Austin, Portland, and Washington DC. The message must be passionately articulated in a measured disposition with a smooth delivery.

6X6 - The Art version of a NYC Music Festival

2011-07-19T18:36:00.022-04:00

What If There Were No More Art Galleries? 6x6 is the answer to that question.

6X6 is the Art Version of the Music Festival.
www.6X6NYC.com
Sept 11, 2011 thru Oct 8, 2011
547 W. 27th Street NYC &
548 W. 28th Steet NYC

Baang and Burne Contemporary was founded in 2009 by two artists: Kesha Bruce (aka Mr. Burne) and Charlie Grosso (aka Mr. Baang).

The partners named their roaming gallery after a cold-war era spy term for “covert sabotage and demolition operations" because it perfectly describes our philosophy about tearing down the barriers that are part of the old-school art buying experience and creating a new innovative art experience.

Also, the two say they love spy movies.

Simply put, Baang and Burne events are where people who love art and people who make art come together.

For details on donating to 6X6!
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Source: baangandburne.com

TrustLaw Women reports World's Most Dangerous Countries for Women

2011-06-20T13:28:00.001-04:00

Targeted violence against females, dismal healthcare and desperate poverty make Afghanistan the world's most dangerous country in which to be born a woman, with Congo a close second due to horrific levels of rape. Pakistan, India and Somalia ranked third, fourth and fifth, respectively, in the global survey of perceptions of threats ranging from domestic abuse and economic discrimination, genital mutilation and acid attack. A survey compiled by the Thomson Reuters Foundation to mark the launch of TrustLaw Woman*, puts Afghanistan at the top of the list of the most dangerous places in the world for women. TrustLaw asked 213 gender experts from five contents to rank countries by overall perceptions of danger as well as by six categories of risk. The risks consisted of health threats, sexual violence, non-sexual violence, cultural or religious factors, lack of access to resources and trafficking. The collection of images that follow were provided by Reuters to illustrate the dangers women face in those 5 countries. -- Paula Nelson (*TrustLaw Woman is a website aimed at providing free legal advice for women’s' groups around the world.)
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Source: www.trust.org 6/15/2011 Fact Sheet Worlds Most Dangerous Countries for Women

The Naked Protest in Canada

2011-06-18T08:18:00.001-04:00

Skinny Girl entrepreneur, Bethanny Frankly brought the Naked Protest movement to my attention in her twitter pics. Bethanny Frankel tweeted on 6/18/11 at Vancourver's 2011 naked Bike Ride. She said; "I think I just peed my pants. WHY is there a naked bike ride in vancouver?" Too Funny! Absolutely classic pick. Very Fire Island on the fourth of July.

Talk about making a statement. There are those who believe that removing their clothes brings attention to an issue. Well, it definately got my attention. But is this really a protest? It seems more like a statement than a protest.

Photograph by: Jenelle Schneider, Vancouver Sun

In 2009 hundreds of Vancouverites stripped down to the buff in a protest against oil dependency and car culture as they headed around the seawall from Sunset beach on their downtown Vancouver tour. Now that was an effective protest....I think it made a clear statement.

After reading about the Naked Protests, I learned it has become trending. It appears for some it may not be a protest at all. Could you imagine the Tea Party protesters butt naked screaming about taxes and healthcare. Now that would be a powerful statement. lol...

Read more about Vancouver's Canda's Naked Protests: Vancourversun.com

World Economic Collapse Explained in 3 Minutes : Are You Prepared For Financial Armageddon?

2011-05-20T01:37:00.004-04:00

What is there to say? No jobs in Greece = no income to pay backs EU loan. Period! If European Union invested in manufacturing in Greece, the Euro would not be in jeopardy.

Coca-Cola Style!

2011-04-20T18:44:00.004-04:00

When did Coca Cola get so stylish? The Atlanta company is showing it's true style. I like Pesi, but I love Diet Coke. The new packaging make me want to drink Coca Cola.

In 2009 Coca Cola light made a tribute to Fashion. Eight Italian fashion designers (only women) Donatella Versace, Alberta Ferretti, Anna Molinari for Blumarine, Veronica Etro, Silvia Venturini for Fendi, Consuelo Castiglioni for Marni, Angela Missoni and Rossella Jardini for Moschino, have teamed with Coca Cola for fund raising campaign in support of the victims of the earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. The Coca-Cola light’s bottle and have sold them at auction during the “Tribute to Fashion” show in Milan.

Eight Italian fashion designers (only women) Donatella Versace, Alberta Ferretti, Anna Molinari for Blumarine, Veronica Etro, Silvia Venturini for Fendi, Consuelo Castiglioni for Marni, Angela Missoni and Rossella Jardini for Moschino, have teamed with Coca Cola for fund raising campaign in support of the victims of the earthquake in Abruzzo, Italy. The Coca-Cola light’s bottle and have sold them at auction during the “Tribute to Fashion” show in Milan.

By, 2013, Coca-cola will have an eco friendly bottles.

The industrial designer Andrew Kim has created a new Coke bottle concept that could significantly change the sodamaker's footprint. For every 4 bottles currently shipped, the square bottle design could ship 6. This means every shipping container could hold 4,000 more bottles of Coke. Kim also considered that Americans use 2 million plastic bottles every 5 minutes, so he made the bottle itself green. It is 100% plant based, made entirely from sugar cane byproducts. But, Pepsi beat Coke by launching a plant based bottle this year. However, this new eco-friendly Coke is quite entising.

The Optimist’s Creed by Christian D. Larson

2010-12-12T06:58:00.000-05:00

I read the book The Secret several years ago. It discusses the forces in the universe that impact the trajectory of ones life. Hence, One can skew those forces by ones thinking and actions. The essential theme is focus, prayer, meditation and karma can sway the forces in the universe in the direction you will it to. It takes effort, committment and determination. The book is incredibly inspiring. I received a tweet with the Optimist Creed that I'd like to share.

In the book The Secret has an optimist creed that I am trying to live by. However, in these distressing times I do fall short.

The Optimist’s Creed by Christian D. Larson

I promise myself

1. To be so strong that nothing can disturb my peace of mind.
2. To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person I meet.
3. To make all my friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.
4. To look at the sunny side of everything and make my optimism come true.
5. To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.
6. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as I am about my own.
7. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
8. To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature I meet.
9. To give so much time to improving myself that I have no time to criticize others.
10. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.
11. To think well of myself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud words, but in great deeds.
12. To live in the faith that the whole world is on my side, so long as I am true to the best that is in me.

SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good

2010-11-21T15:03:00.005-05:00

If one has adequate operating income, Transformational Leadership out wits and trumps "Business As Usual" everytime. However, the lack there of, stunts growth and creates a vacuum effect; hobbling to the next month instead of bootstrapping. There is no greater examples of transformational leadership than the rise and fall of to big to fail corporations. As we watch startups zoom past the old gaurd, taking their marketshare in a single bound; as they slowly scurry to respond. IBM's lost opportunity has made Bill Gates the richest man on the planet, and SUPER philanthropist that's changing world. Google's arragance over Facebook provided Google a valuable lesson. One in which they will not let happen again. Frankly, it appears Google is apart of the new crowd. Therefore, they have taken note and acclimated; no resting on their laurels, and moving forward with Cloud (SaaS) and digital media properties that are leveling the playing the field for consumers and businesses. Whose being ignored now?

I love it. Transformational enterprises consists of transformational leaders that are flexible, eager to learn, and culturally considerate and diverse. Roseabeth Moss Kanters iterates these concepts in her book " SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good". This book resonates with me because while in corporate america, I was amassed in a sea of tunnel visioned monolithic "Old Guard" who beleived the corporate culture was strictly "Business as Usual". It was frustrating at the least. However, Times are changing.
I so agree with Publisher's Weekly's review of the book. Publisher Weekly wrote: Harvard Business School professor Kanter (Confidence) offers cutting-edge insights on corporate competitiveness in this timely and captivating assessment of what it takes to succeed in the face of rapid technological, cultural and economic change. Asserting that globalization increases the likelihood for shorter organizational life cycles, Kanter argues that companies must be more nimble than ever to survive. Drawing on stories of such businesses as Proctor and Gamble, Digitas and Cemex, she describes how vanguard companies exploit their strong cultures to adapt and innovate, often harnessing the momentum of change to capture market share or squash competition. Those companies that will thrive in the future, maintains Kanter, have stamina, energy, long lists of contacts, an appetite for communication, comfort with ambiguity, and a belief that the company's values and principles mean that they are part of something bigger than just a job. This dense work may be demanding for many, but the opportune lessons within are worth the effort for readers seeking to compete in a global marketplace that is changing more rapidly than ever before. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. Her strategic and practical insights have guided leaders of large and small organizations worldwide for over 25 years, through teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. The former Editor of Harvard Business Review (1989-1992), Professor Kanter has been named to lists of the "50 most powerful women in the world" (Times of London), and the "50 most influential business thinkers in the world" (Accenture and Thinkers 50 research). In 2001, she received the Academy of Management's Distinguished Career Award for her scholarly contributions to management knowledge, and in 2002 was named "Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year" by the World Teleport Association. Check her out on Facebook

THE WORLD’S FIRST DESIGNER LOW ENERGY LIGHT BULB

2010-10-01T12:29:00.002-04:00

London design brand Hulger has launched Plumen, a product it describes as “the world’s first designer low-energy light bulb”.The Plumen 001 was designed in collaboration with Sam Wilkinson. The Plumen bulb uses 80% less energy and lasts 8 times longer than incandescent bulbs, giving you the opportunity to purchase an ecological product with style. It works just like any low energy bulb but it has a lot more presence.The name Plumen comes from ‘plume’ – the bird’s decorative feather, designed to attract attention to its’ prowess and beauty. We believe our designs do the same for the neglected low energy light bulb.

Ecologically energy efficient and beautiful, captured in a sustainable work of Art used as a light bulb. I love the design of the Plumen.
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Source: Dezeen.com

When was the last time you changed your mind about something?

2010-09-25T11:18:00.004-04:00

Frankly, it is never to late change. In business, the flexibility to change is a requirement. In ones personal life I'd say timing is everything. But who really has perfect timing? Although, I wish I were always right, I am not. Admitting this fact, changing course, an tweaking the plan along the way is required in life. Hence, Jeff Swartz says it best in a response to the Fast Company 30second MBA question.

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Source: 30 Second MBA
The 30-Second MBA, an ongoing video “curriculum” of really good advice from the trenches, directly from people who are making business happen.

Aftershock: The next economy and America's future

2010-09-23T01:59:00.002-04:00

Robert Reich neglected to mention the disconnect between the the great depression and the great recession was that government used propaganda to make people patriotic and loyal to our country. The position was that all people had a responsibility to the progression of the country. The country understood that America was the best country in the world to live. We were a country of immigrants then. We had a responsibility to each other.

As for the civil rights movement, it took more than fifty years to end Jim Crow. President Johnson twisted arms, black mailed and threatened congressmen to do the right thing; to be a "The Great Society". It wasn't easy then,and it won't be easy now. However, Obama plays fare and doesn't exercise mussel behind closed doors. Consequently, the GOP have no respect for him. The lack of respect has diminished his power and authority. Moreover, it has created a more determined resolve by the GOP to run the administration around in circles by attacking them from all sides; running out time for the administration to make progress on anything. Ultimately resulting in the demise of the middle class.

Funky Good Time!

2010-07-15T23:09:00.000-04:00

As the never forgotten fabulously famous James Brown said, sometimes you have to have a "funky good time". I must admit, I am closet bedroom dancer, but for sometime I have not been inspired to cut a rug. There must be an inch of dust on the acid jazz and disco CDs on the shelf. As the DJ booth has been empty some time. Dealing with the struggle of recession and life's challenges has gotten the best of me. But the video below has brought a bit of needed inspiration to snap my fingers, even though it is ridiculously humorous.

The bedroom dancing dude to James Brown in this video appears to be an exceptional exhibitionist contortionist. I must say that I so understand his joy, because James Brown also inpires me to snap my fingers and dancing in the light!

Jeramaine Clark "I AM KRITEEK'D" URBAN ART SHOW

2010-06-15T03:32:00.008-04:00

Jeramaine Clark is wonderful young artist that produces the most phenomenal Urban Pop art. A recent 2010 AAMU Alum, is making his mark on the Atlanta market. Once the world sees his work, I think he might be the next Basquait.

Born and raised: St. Louis, Mo
Recent graduate: of Alabama A&M University
Major events: Theshoegame.com 3rd year anniversary party, Nike Town Lennox Mall, Atlanta, Ga (Sold painting to prominant sneaker head “Mayor”)
Sneaker Friends ’10 Compound, Atlanta, Ga (Sold painting to platinum hip hop recording artist Rick Ross)

CONTACT INFO: www.kriteekd.blogspot.com

kriteekd@gmail.com

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Source: Mademonarchs , www.fresh-cool-dope.com and a repost on AAMU News Watch

The James Morrison effect!

2010-02-03T02:56:00.005-05:00

Something about a man singing about the love of a woman with a guitar, a smooth voice and lyics that touch the soul.
James Morrison is a scrubby little "short" british dude with a smokers version of a silky smooth Sam Cook voice, that totally touches my soul. His voice sounds like it is so telling, but I was wrong. Not that it matters because I've experienced the James Morrison effect after listening to only two songs. That CD will be a keeper. Yes, I am among the population that still appreciates CDs, even though I run and bike listening to the ipod. Two thumbs up and three bravos for James Morrison.

Veronica Chambers, HAVING IT ALL?

2010-01-02T07:12:00.009-05:00

Farai Chideya, author of THE COLOR OF OUR FUTURE said; "Veronica Chambers' HAVING IT ALL? is more than a collective biography of successful black women. The book is a history lesson about women who've transformed the cultural image from Aunt Jemima to uber-mogul Oprah Winfrey--and transformed America in turn. Most importantly, Chambers reveals the moments of self-transformation that happen in every black woman's life, through the stories of some of the most fascinating and accomplished people in America."

The Publisher Weekly wrote; In a series of interrelated essays, Chambers (Mama's Girl), explores the lives of middle- and upper-middle-class African-American women. Throughout, Chambers nicely weaves historical and literary anecdotes into her insightful narrative. While identifying this population as linchpins in the astronomical rise of a black middle class, she pursues such questions as how their "creative and indomitable spirit" translated into corporate reality while black men languish; why they no longer feel the need to choose allegiance between race and gender; what the image of Aunt Jemima declares about today's affluent African-American woman; and why they are more likely to be alone than any group of black women before them. Nonetheless, these women, Chambers says, have a strong sense of community and a renewed feeling of empowerment, which enables their transition into a predominantly white mainstream culture. Largely based on interviews of black women defying conventional perceptions, and written for those "who have crafted successful lives without role models or media coverage," the book lends a panoramic effect to such figures as former Whitney curator Thelma Golden, television host Star Jones, Barbara Bush's former press secretary Anna Perez, Anita Hill, and the growing population of African-American stay-at-home moms.

I do agree with both reviews. In addition, the book is entertaining but it lacks the multifarious dimension of the African American experience. The book is spoken from the voice of a first generation middle class African American, born during the intersect of opportunity and change. Therefore, the examples are primarily from the entertainment, media and politics of the 20th century. Of course, there is an entire history filled with African American role models found in the libraries, alumni associations and grounds of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU). Even in our failures we can find answers to the mysteries of success by going back to the base; HBCU's. Gen-X'ers are the beneficiaries of women who came before us. Those determine women who who broke down the door, allowing Gen-X'ers to walk through and catapult ones self through the glass ceiling like Super Woman. Black Women are not pop culture super heros, but dignified, intelligent, enduring souls rooted in family and the pursuit of happiness. I like this book, as I do of all Veronica Chambers books. Had she of attended an HBCU the book might have a different voice with a longer list of women from all the industries. Black women carry the weight of the world on their backs. It's utterly fascinating how Chambers unravels those truths.

World Aids Day

2009-12-01T05:53:00.002-05:00

Today, we are observing WORLD AIDS DAY, remembering the ones we lost, those who are suffering and those who are working to end it.

Started on 1st December 1988, World AIDS Day is about raising money, increasing awareness, fighting prejudice and improving education. The World AIDS Day theme for 2009 is 'Universal Access and Human Rights'. World AIDS Day is important in reminding people that HIV has not gone away, and that there are many things still to be done.

According to UNAIDS estimates, there are now 33.4 million people living with HIV, including 2.1 million children. During 2008 some 2.7 million people became newly infected with the virus and an estimated 2 million people died from AIDS.1 Around half of all people who become infected with HIV do so before they are 25 and are killed by AIDS before they are 35.2

The vast majority of people with HIV and AIDS live in lower- and middle-income countries. But HIV today is a threat to men, women and children on all continents around the world.

The theme for World AIDS Day 2009 is 'Universal Access and Human Rights'. Global leaders have pledged to work towards universal access to HIV and AIDS treatment, prevention and care, recognising these as fundamental human rights. Valuable progress has been made in increasing access to HIV and AIDS services, yet greater commitment is needed around the world if the goal of universal access is to be achieved. Millions of people continue to be infected with HIV every year. In low- and middle-income countries, less than half of those in need of antiretroviral therapy are receiving it, and too many do not have access to adequate care services.3

The protection of human rights is fundamental to combating the global HIV and AIDS epidemic. Violations against human rights fuel the spread of HIV, putting marginalised groups, such as injecting drug users and sex workers, at a higher risk of HIV infection. By promoting individual human rights, new infections can be prevented and people who have HIV can live free from discrimination.

World AIDS Day provides an opportunity for all of us - individuals, communities and political leaders - to take action and ensure that human rights are protected and global targets for HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care are met.

The red ribbon is an international symbol of AIDS awareness that is worn by people all year round and particularly around World AIDS Day to demonstrate care and concern about HIV and AIDS, and to remind others of the need for their support and commitment.

The red ribbon started as a "grass roots" effort; as a result there is no one official AIDS ribbon manufacturer, and many people make their own. It's easily done - just use some ordinary red ribbon and a safety pin!

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Source: www.worldaidsday.org

Nina Simone Memorial Project Sculpture Preview

2009-10-11T19:12:00.000-04:00

Still photography video of Nina Simone sculpture model preview in Tryon, NC on Sunday, 11 October 2009 in Nina Simone Plaza. Sculpture commissioned by Nina Simone Project and sculpted by Zenos Frudakis. JET magazine nationally previewed Frudakis’s model for the public art sculpture of Simone in its 9 March issue. The over-life-size representation of a seated Nina Simone has evoked overwhelmingly positive response from viewers.

The Eunice Waymon-Nina Simone Memorial Project (www.ninasimoneproject.org) released photographs today of the model in progress for a memorial sculpture depicting the legendary chanteuse Nina Simone. The over-life-size bronze sculpture of Simone, by Philadelphia-based sculptor Zenos Frudakis, is planned as part of a public art installation in Tryon, NC, birthplace of the world-renown singer and human rights’ activist who came to be known as the High Priestess of Soul.

Crys Armbrust, Ph.D., founder and executive director of the Nina Simone Project (NSP), remarks that “we are extraordinarily gratified by the positive response to each of the NSP’s memorial efforts—scholarship, sculpture and music festival.” Regarding the sculpture and its sculptor, Armbrust continues, “we are fortunate, as well, to have assembled an excellent team to accomplish this important phase of our endeavor.”

Zenos Frudakis’s work appears in numerous art collections both in the US and abroad. Notable commissions include the Honor Guard at the National Air Force Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, Freedom at the GSK World Headquarters in Philadelphia, PA, and Martin Luther King at the US Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa.

Frudakis’s enthusiasm for this commission is evident in his comments following. “I am delighted to share in the creation of a lasting tribute to jazz legend Nina Simone. In addition to being a fan of her work, as an artist, it is especially pleasing for me to be given this opportunity to honor another artist.”

The highly-acclaimed sculptor Frudakis is joined in this effort by Nina Simone’s daughter Lisa Simone Kelly, known to many as a seasoned musical performer in her own right. Her credits include lead roles in such Broadway productions as Aida, Rent, Jesus Christ Superstar and Les Misérables. Kelly, who performs under the single name Simone, is now on tour to promote the release of her tribute CD “Simone on Simone.”

“Lisa Simone Kelly,” Armbrust reports, “has played an integral role in the creative process, and her participation has made our efforts all the more meaningful. Beyond her valuable commentary on earlier versions of the bust study, she graciously continued on to pose for Frudakis’s full scale study of her mother. So, what we have here is, in point of fact, indeed Simone on Simone—a legend and a legacy combined together in tribute to one who was and is a powerful musical force in a global theatre and an icon of human potential realized.”

For further information about the Nina Simone Project, see www.ninasimoneproject.org.

The Big Business of US prisons

2009-04-03T10:48:00.006-04:00

Good Magazine featured video called "Jailbirds" incite interesting questions. I question the the impetus behind the significant spike in the prison population. I don't have answers only questions.

There are approximately 2.3 million inmates in state, federal and private prisons throughout the country. According to California Prison Focus, "no other society in human history has imprisoned so many of its own citizens." The figures show that the United States has locked up more people than any other country: a half million more than China, which has a population five times greater than the U.S. Statistics reveal that the United States holds 25% of the world's prison population, but only 5% of the world's people. From less than 300,000 inmates in 1972, the jail population grew to 2 million by the year 2000. In 1990 it was one million. Ten years ago there were only five private prisons in the country, with a population of 2,000 inmates; now, there are 100, with 62,000 inmates. It is expected that by the coming decade, the number will hit 360,000, according to reports.

Could it be "privatization of prisons, federal deregulation, state prison budgets, corporate prison industry lobby pushing policies like the "three strikes" to generate shareholder wealth driving the shocking spike in the prison population? Does the contracting prisoners for work create additional prison cash flows that violate labor laws? Do those contracts cannibalize the employment rates in states? Is the system self sustaining as long as the flow of prisoners continue? The system feeds itself," says a study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the prison industry of being "an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps." The prison industry complex is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. Is this systemic of where this country has been led; Bush/Chaney business of war and security? Or is this where this country is going? If so, how can we change the impact on society? How can we change this?

The Nina Simone Memorial Project (NSP)

2009-03-11T19:00:00.000-04:00

The AMAZING Nina Simone will be forever immortilized through a memorial and scholorship. The Eunice Waymon—Nina Simone Memorial Project (NSP) exists to honor the remarkable life and legacy of a native Tryon, North Carolina daughter, who achieved international recognition for her unique talent and her formidable contribution to the musical arts.

The musical talent of Eunice Waymon, who was born in 1933, evidenced itself early on. By age 4 she had begun to play piano; by age 7, she had begun to play organ as well—each of which she did for St. Luke’s C.M.E. Church. Waymon’s formal musical training began shortly thereafter under the tutelage of Muriel Mazzanovich, wife of noted artist Lawrence Mazzanovich.

That Waymon possessed a prodigious talent was recognized by many, so much so, that enthusiastic Tryonites created ‘The Eunice Waymon Fund’ to help underwrite the costs of her future studies. Those studies continued with Carl Friedberg at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, and with Vladimer Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.

Waymon’s professional career, as Nina Simone, began in 1954. Her unique musical style merged a strong classical training with an exceptionally broad range of musical genres, which run the gamut from classical, gospel and jazz to pop, folk and spiritual. That Simone asserted a powerful artistic impact upon late-twentieth-century American popular culture is evident in her expansive discography, her musical arrangements and her original compositions. She was and is a powerful musical force in a global theatre.

Your participation in the Eunice Waymon—Nina Simone Memorial Project supports the recognition of an international musical legend and an icon of human potential realized.

VISION STATEMENT

The Eunice Waymon—Nina Simone Memorial Project (NSP) exists to honor the remarkable life and musical legacy of Nina Simone, and to inspire and support talented youth to reach their full potential.

MISSION STATEMENT

The Eunice Waymon—Nina Simone Memorial Project (NSP) purposes to establish and promote educational scholarship, to commission a Nina Simone sculpture, and to establish an international music festival in Tryon, North Carolina, with supplemental venues in the broader Western North Carolina region.

GOALS

The Eunice Waymon-Nina Simone Memorial Project undertakes to accomplish four related goals.

Support a broad-based education program, including:
the creation of an endowed Nina Simone scholarship,
the development of an educational jazz curriculum highlighting the musical contributions of prominent North Carolinians to the songbook of American popular music,
the archival preservation of Simone’s material record
the promotion of Simone as an important Tryon and Polk County, North Carolina cultural and heritage resource
Commission a life-sized, memorial, bronze sculpture for a public art installation
Develop a Trans-World Music Festival in the name of Nina Simone as a signature Tryon, Polk County, North Carolina event
Provide outreach partnering opportunities for Simone’s designated charities:
Cancer research in underserved communities, arts programming in public education, prevention of abuse against women, and AIDS research, education, & care.

For more information please contact http://www.ninasimoneproject.org
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The Eunice Waymon—Nina Simone Memorial Project http://www.ninasimoneproject.org

Tantra Yoga for Transformation

2009-01-08T23:32:00.001-05:00

One of my resolutions for 2009 is to transform my life into a more purpose drive existance. For a few years I have been stuck in a rut. I will focus abit of energy into Tantric Yoga for healing and rejuvinating purposes.

Dada Shiilabhadrananda wrote that Ananda Marga teaches Tantra Yoga as a transformational tool designed to give the practitioner deep happiness, a universal perspective on life, and spiritual awakening. Ananda Marga believes that such yoga is a resource to be used for the betterment of the individual and human society.

In this flux of change and unfamiliarity it would be easy to become confused and frightened. What is the best education for my kids? How do I meet my innate spiritual needs when traditional religions seem to fall short? How can I find kinship and community in an increasingly fast-paced, individualistic approach to survival?

The ancient holistic tradition of Tantra Yoga is making an increasing impact in the thinking of people everywhere interested in new ways of living in harmony with oneself and the world.

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science."

Albert Einstein

According to the philosophy of Tantra Yoga, the Universe is a resultant of the interplay between Consciousness and Its Creative Principle. The Cycle of Creation Cosmic Cycle) is seen to be manifested in two phases: from the very subtle (Supreme Consciousness) to the very crude (inert matter) and from the very crude to the very subtle again. Within this cosmic scheme of things, the human being may be found on the upper levels of this returning cycle, as he/she approaches the final stages of the cosmic evolution. As human beings we are the most consciously evolved beings, although it may sometimes appear otherwise. It is essential that humans assume full responsibility for their unique talents and abilities and utilize them for the advancement of all beings with which we co-inhabit the planet with.

Yogic philosophy states that the creation is the result of the crudification of invisible, unqualified consciousness by the creative principles inherent within itself.

These creative principles can be divided into three categories according to their degree of influence over the consciousness. They are sometimes referred to simply as "forces of nature", for they exist at all times in all things and all beings. They are:

• Sattvic (sentient) principle: This binding quality is the most subtle. It is associated with awareness, purity, happiness, sensitivity and lightness.

• Rajasic (mutative) principle: This binding quality is less subtle than the first. It is associated with change, growth, movement, restlessness and activity.

• Tamasic (static) principle: This binding quality is the crudest of the three. It is associated with decay, degeneration, ignorance, death and inertia.

A few examples will help us understand the interplay of these constantly interacting forces. Did you ever observe a flower? Its beauty, luster and shine are evidence of the dominance of the sentient force. Its growth and development from the seed are evidence of the mutative force. When it begins to decay, shed its petals and whither, this is the manifestation of the static force.

What about yourself? When you wake up in the morning, you fight hard to conquer the static waves that dominate your body and mind – you would just rather sleep more! During the height of the day, you don’t seem to be able to slow down – the mutative force is very manifested in you at that time. But when you retire to view a beautiful sunset or take a walk in the nature, you feel uplifted by the sentient force that dominates your mind at that time.

The word Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word yunj, which means "to unify". The unity envisioned in yoga is a mystical state of Oneness with all of Creation. It is a rare mental state realized by mystics, prophets and sages throughout history in many lands. For some it is considered the highest level of consciousness attainable. In different cultures it is known by different names: samadhi, nirvana, satori, salvation, enlightenment and so on.

But Yoga is also a path or methodology leading to the state of Oneness. Whether we believe we can ever attain those lofty heights, it is true that many people are benefiting from the many changes that they experience as a result of a systematic practice of the various components of the Yogic lifestyle. Some of those components include: observance of universal ethical principles, practice of asanas (yoga postures), deep breathing, sense withdrawal, concentration and meditation.

Although Yoga is more commonly understood today as being yoga postures (asanas), this is only one aspect of a whole spectrum of practices that gradually and subtly develop us physically, mentally, socially and spiritually.

Some people believe that the emerging relevance of Yoga practice and philosophy will assist humanity in bridging the gap between the old and new ways of looking at ourselves and our world.

Robin Thick's "Sweatest Love" video is a Marc Baptiste work of art

2008-11-19T11:48:00.008-05:00

Marc Baptiste has done it again. He directed Robin Thick’s video for the single “Sweetest Love”. It’s a great piece of work. Robin Thick’s newest CD is on heavy rotation on my ipod. The Sweetest Love single is my third most favorite song on the CD. The first is “Side Step” and the second would be “Ms. Harmony”. Hence, the “Sweetest Love” was written after Robin Thick visited Paris. Although, I’ve been to Paris only once, he penned the songs simple yet elegant melody perfectly. Moreover, Marc Baptiste captured the feel and mood of the song with perfection; simple, intense and sweet. Check out the Robin Thick’s “Sweetest Love” video below:

I love all forms of art; literary, photography, painting, sculpture, music, film, the spoken word. Superb Art is an emollient on a bad day because it touches the soul, warm the heart and leaves one wanting more. Our homes are our sanctuaries, and often represent our journey, our interests, our experiences, and simply who we are inside; no matter how kooky it may be. My very tiny house is filled with art from unknown artists whose work moves me, inexpensive prints of internationally known artists and many books from critically acclaimed authors. Hence, the books I have on my coffee table bring me great joy conceptually and visually. There is the amazing Freda Kahlo, the extraordinary Gordon Parks, the confused yet impeccable Basquait, the incredible Henry Tanner, and my favorite contemporary photographer Marc Baptiste.

Marc Baptiste, the author/photographer of the book BEAUTIFUL nudes by Marc Baptiste, exquisitively captures the Soul of women in ways few photographers have in the past. To me, Baptiste is the Herb Ritz of the millennium. His work evokes true LOVE and BEAUTY. I can only say that his work is like poetry. Robin Thick definately chose the best director for the "Sweetest Love" video. Bravo, Bravo!

Gnarle’s Barkley “The Odd Couple”

2008-11-11T11:33:00.003-05:00

The sophomore Gnarles’s Barkley album “The Odd Couple” was released on March 25th. After listening to the couple of songs, I decided it wasn’t as interesting as their debut album. Fast forward to November 11th, the single “Who’s Gonna Save My Soul” video came out and I’ve changed my mind. “Who’s going to save my soul”, directed by Chris Milk is actually a remarkable piece of art. I so love it. Cee-Lo Green’s voice is so uniquely distinctive that there is no denying its greatness. The producer, Danger Mouse is like the acid house version of Kenye West. The collaboration between multi-instrumentalist producer Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo Green’s vulnerable vocals and clever lyrics is a match made in heaven’s eclecticism. Check out the video below:

Tantra: The Science of Liberation

2008-11-08T19:42:00.001-05:00

The journey to complete freedom through liberation and enlightenment has opened my view to Tantric Devotion in loving relationship. To fully explain Tantric Devotion, one should first read the history tantric summerized by Dada Shiilabhadrananda. Tantra is the original spiritual science first taught in India more than 7000 years ago. Tan is a Sanskrit root which signifies, "expansion", and Tra signifies "liberation." Thus, Tantra is the practice which elevates human beings in a process in which their minds are expanded. It leads human beings from the imperfect to the perfect, from the crude to the subtle, from bondage to liberation.

The development of Tantra is intertwined with the development of civilization in ancient India. During the time when Tantra emerged as an important spiritual practice, India was passing through a crucial historical period. In the Northwest nomadic tribes from central Asia, the Aryans, began to enter the country which they named Bharata Varsha (the land which nourishes and expands human beings). Although the Aryans were a nomadic warrior culture, amidst them there were certain sages known as Rishis who began to ask the basic questions about the origin and destiny of the universe.

These sages presented oral teachings, which were later compiled in books known as The Vedas. In these teachings they put forward the idea of a Supreme Consciousness, advancing beyond the previous concepts of a world in which many deities were thought to animate the forces of nature. They also developed a system of prayer and worship in order to enter into a relationship with this Supreme Consciousness, but their practices were mostly of an external, ritualistic nature.

In India the Aryans encountered and began to fight with the indigenous peoples - the Austrics, Mongolians, and Dravidians. They considered these races to be inferior to them, and in the epic tales of India such as The Ramayana, these races are depicted as monkeys and demons.

However inferior these races were considered to be, the Aryans were very much interested in the spiritual practices which the indigenous peoples of India were practicing. The spiritual approach of the non-Aryans was Tantra and it differed from the Vedic practices of the Aryans because it was fundamentally an introversive process rather than an external ritual. Many Aryans began to learn the Tantric system of spiritual development, and later Vedic books were influenced by Tantra.

During this epoch of warfare between the Aryans and non-Aryans, a great personality was born. His name was Sadashiva which means "he who is always absorbed in consciousness and one whose only vow of existence is to promote the all-around welfare of living beings". Sadashiva, also known as Shiva, was a great spiritual preceptor or Guru. Although Tantra was practiced before his birth, it was he who for the first time gave humanity a systematic presentation of spirituality.

Not only was he a great spiritual teacher, but he was also the founder of the Indian system of music and dance, which is why he is sometimes known as Nataraj (the Lord of the Dance). Shiva was also the founder of Indian medicine, and presented a system known as Vaedyak Shastra. In the social sphere too Shiva had an important role to play. He introduced a system of marriage in which both partners accepted a mutual responsibility for the success of the marriage, irregardless of caste or community. Shiva himself was of mixed parentage, and by marrying an Aryan princess he helped to unite the warring factions of India and gave them a more universalistic social viewpoint. Because of these social innovations Shiva has been called the father of human civilization.

Shiva's greatest contribution to the birth of civilization was to introduce the concept of dharma. Dharma is a Sanskrit word which signifies the "innate characteristic" of something. What is the innate characteristic and specialty of humans? Shiva explained that a human being wants more than the pleasure provided by sensory gratification. He said that the human being is different from plants and animals because what he or she is striving for is absolute peace. This is the goal of human life, and Shiva's spiritual teachings were aimed at enabling any human being to attain this goal.

Like most ancient teachings, Shiva's ideas were first taught in an oral form, and only later were they transcribed into books. Shiva's wife, Parvati, used to ask him various questions regarding the spiritual science. Shiva replied to these questions, and the compilation of these questions and answers are known as the Tantra Shastra (Tantric scriptures). There are two types of Tantric scriptures. The principles of Tantra are found in books known as Nigama while the practices of Tantra are contained in books known as Agama. Some of these ancient books have been lost and others are indecipherable due to their having been written in a code language designed to keep the secrets of Tantra away from the uninitiated; thus the ideas of Tantra have never been clearly explained.

In his commentaries on the Tantra Shastra and in his book about the life and teachings of Shiva, Shrii Shrii Anandamurti has presented some of the basic ideas found in the ancient teachings. One of the most important elements in Tantra is the relationship of Guru and disciple. Guru means “one who can dispel darkness" and Shiva explained that for spiritual success there must be a good teacher and a good disciple.

Shiva explained that there are three major categories of Guru. The first type is a teacher who gives a little bit of knowledge but does not follow up the lessons. That is, he or she may leave and the disciple is then left alone without guidance. The second or middle level is one who teaches and then guides the disciple for a little while but not for the complete period needed by the disciple to reach the final goal. The best type of teacher according to Tantra is one who gives a teaching and then makes continued efforts to see that the disciple follows the instructions and finally realizes the ultimate state of human perfection.

The qualities of this highest guru are further enumerated in the Tantra Shastra. The guru is one who is tranquil, can control his mind, is humble and modestly dressed. He earns his living in a proper way and is a family man. He is well versed in metaphysical philosophy and established in the art of meditation. He is one who knows the theory and practice of imparting the teaching of meditation. He loves and guides his disciples. Such a guru is called Mahakaola

But even if there is a great teacher, there must also be someone who can absorb his lessons. The Tantra Shastras describe three different categories of disciples. The first type is compared to a glass which is placed in the water with the mouth facing downward. While it is in the water it appears to be full but if it is lifted out of the water it becomes empty. This is like a student who practices well in the presence of the teacher, but after the teacher leaves, the student discontinues the practice and cannot apply the teachings to his or her every day life. The second type of disciple is like a glass placed in the water at an angle. It also appears to be full when it is immersed, but when it is raised out of the water it loses most of the water. This disciple is one who practices in the presence of the teacher but after a while he or she practices less and less and finally discontinues the spiritual way of life. The third kind of disciple is the best of all and is symbolized by a glass which is immersed in the water in an upright position. While in the water it is completely full and when it is taken out of the water it remains full. This kind of student practices in the presence of the master and continues the practice even if he or she is physically separated from the teacher.

The relationship of guru and disciple is very important and is a key feature of Tantra. The path of spirituality has been described as being as thin as a razor's edge. At any moment it is possible to deviate from the path and then it is very difficult to reach liberation. The guru is always there to love and guide the disciple at all stages of the practice.

Shiva was a Mahakaola, but after his death there was a lack of teachers of the same stature and Tantra fell into decline. Some of the teachings were lost and others were deformed. Today Tantra is shrouded in mystery and there are many misconceptions about it. To understand the source of these misconceptions it is important to examine the 5 Ms. These are spiritual practices beginning with the letter M. When Shiva first taught he gave teaching according to the development of the student. He saw that certain people were at a level in which they were dominated by animal passions and others were at a higher stage of development. He gave different practices depending on the qualities of the disciple.

The first M is known as Madya. It has two meanings. One meaning of madya is "wine". For those people who were dominated by physical instincts Shiva instructed them to continue drinking wine, but he showed them how to control the habit and then finally leave it. For those at a higher level of development Madya has another meaning, it refers not to wine but to a divine nectar. Each month the pineal gland secretes a fluid known as amrta. A yogi who has purified his mind and practices fasting can taste the fluid and experience the profound effect of the fluid on his whole being, which has been described as a state of bliss. Thus, there is both a crude or material interpretation of Madya and a subtle or spiritual understanding of the term.

Another of the five Ms is Mamsa. One meaning of Mamsa is meat. For those who ate much meat, Shiva told them to continue to take it with a spiritual idea and finally to control the urge and quit the habit. For the subtle practitioner of Tantra, mamsa refers to the tongue and the spiritual practice of controlling one's speech.

Matsya, the third of the Ms, refers to fish. For the physically minded practitioner Shiva applied the same instruction regarding fish as he did with wine and meat. In spiritual or subtle Tantra the "fish" refers to two subtle nerves which run up the body, starting at the base of the spine and crisscrossing each other and ending in the two nostrils. These nerves are known as the ida and pingala. By the science of breath control, Pranayama, the currents of the nerves are controlled and the mind becomes calm for meditation. This is the Matsya of the spiritual practitioner.

Another of the Ms is Mudra. Mudra has only a spiritual significance and there is no physical or crude practice associated with it. Mudra means to maintain contact with those who help us to make spiritual progress and to avoid the company of those who might harm our development.

The last of the Ms, Maethuna, is the one which has caused the most confusion regarding Tantra. Maethuna means union. In its crude sense it means sexual union. For those who were dominated by the sexual instinct Shiva told that the sex act must be done with a spiritual idea and that gradually this instinct must be controlled. For the more advanced practitioners, those who were practicing subtle or spiritual Tantra, Shiva taught another practice of Maethuna. In this case "union" refers to the union of individual consciousness with Supreme Consciousness. In this case the spiritual energy of the human being, lying dormant at the base of the spine, is raised until it reaches the highest energy center (near the pineal gland), causing the spiritual aspirant to experience union with the Supreme.

The Ananda Marga yoga of today is based on the spiritual and subtle interpretation of the 5 Ms.

One of the distinctive aspects of subtle Tantra is the introversive method of meditation. The concept of mantra is of key importance in the Tantra idea of meditation. "Man" means "mind" and "tra" means "that which liberates", thus mantra is a particular vibration which liberates the mind.

The ancient yogis experimented with sound vibration and began to utilize special sounds which they found useful in the process of expansion of mind. They found that there are seven principle psycho-spiritual energy centers in the human body. They further learned that there are 50 sounds which emanate from the centers. These sounds are found in the alphabet of Sanskrit, and certain combinations of the sounds were used in ancient processes of concentration and meditation. During Tantric meditation the meditator is concentrating on the mantra and trying to keep only one sound vibration (and its associated idea) in his or her mind. Constant repetition of the mantra leads a practitioner to higher states of consciousness.

Not any sound can be chosen at random for use in meditation, rather there are certain qualities which the mantra must possess in order for it to be effective. First of all the mantra must be pulsative, that is, there will be two syllables which are repeated in synchronization with the inhalation and exhalation of breathing. In addition the mantra must have an idea associated with it. The general idea of the mantras used in meditation is that "I am one with the Supreme Consciousness". The mantra thus helps the individual to associate his or her own individual consciousness with the totality of consciousness in the universe.

The final characteristics of the mantra is that it must create a certain vibration which acts as a link between the individual vibration of the meditator and the vibration of the Supreme Consciousness. As people are not all alike, the mantras which are used in meditation are also not all alike. The meditation teacher chooses a mantra which matches the particular vibration of the individual and can link this individual vibration with the universal rhythm of the Supreme Consciousness.

Tantra is more than just a collection of meditation or yoga techniques. There is a particular world-view associated with it. According to Tantra, struggle is the essence of life. The effort to struggle against all obstacles and move from the imperfect to the perfect is the true spirit of Tantra.

In this movement from imperfection to perfection, there are three basic stages an individual passes through. In the first stage, the person is dominated by animal instincts, but in the next stage he or she gains control over these instincts and reaches the state of true human development. Finally, by constant struggle and effort, a state is reached where the human being becomes godlike. Tantra thus has an optimistic worldview. It shows how each individual is moving in a cosmic circle from a state of less developed consciousness to the most highly developed status.

President-Elect Barack Obama on Election Night

2008-11-04T23:58:00.001-05:00

Kudos America! Congradulations America, you did it!! You really did it!!!
A CHANGE IS COMING!

John McCain is a Class Act!

2008-11-04T23:39:00.001-05:00

John McCain is a class act. He gave the speech of his career with honor, dignity and grace. The speech guarantees he will continue to be re-elected as an Arizona Senator. Senator McCain, you are truly a winner, my friend.

Obama speaks to Virginia before election day

2008-11-03T23:59:00.000-05:00

November 3, 2008

Obama speaks to Virginia the day before the vote. He speaks from heart logically and sincerely. Check out the speech.

Obama ahead in four key states as voters fret over the economy

2008-09-23T13:39:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama is ahead in four battleground states, according to a Quinnipiac University poll out Tuesday that suggested Obama could be benefiting from turmoil on Wall Street.

Republican White House rival John McCain has not been able to wrestle the banner of change from Obama, and voters in three of the four states see Obama as better on economic issues, the polls showed.

"With a lousy economy, an unpopular war and an even less popular Republican president, it's difficult to find voters who don't want change," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac's University's Polling Institute.

In Colorado, Obama leads McCain by 49 to 45 percent. Last month, McCain was ahead one percentage point in Colorado, 47-46 percent, Quinnipiac said.

In Michigan, Obama leads McCain 48 to 44 percent, compared to 46-42 percent on July 24.

In Minnesota, Obama is holding on to a two percentage point lead of 47 to 45 percent, compared to 46 to 44 percent in late July.

In Wisconsin, Obama leads by 49 to 42 percent, although his advantage has narrowed from 50 to 39 percent in July.

"The Wall Street meltdown while these polls were in the field probably fed the public desire for change and seemed to benefit Senator Obama," Brown said.

Obama is widely perceived as the candidate of change in the four key states, by 19 to 24 point margins, Quinnipiac said.

Voters in all four states named the economy as the top issue in the November 4 election and said Obama has a better handle on it, except in Minnesota where voters were equally divided on which candidate best understands the economy (45 to 45 percent).

By contrast, voters were convinced McCain has a better grasp on foreign policy, by margins of 34 percent and higher in all four states.

Voters in the four states view the running mates -- Delaware Senator Joe Biden for the Democrats and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for the Republicans -- as good choices.

But they would rather see Biden as president, by margins of four to nine percent.

Quinnipiac questioned 1,301 likely voters in Minnesota between September 14-21; 1,313 in Wisconsin; 1,364 in Michigan; and 1,418 in Colorado. The polls had a 2.7 margin of error except Colorado, where the margin of error was 2.6 percent.

The polls were conducted in partnership with The Wall Street Journal and washingtonpost.com, the university said.

Password Party Fundraiser hosted by Black MBAs for Obama

2008-09-17T14:09:00.002-04:00

Pasword Party fundraiser hosted by Black MBAs for Obama invitation

2008-09-16T14:08:00.000-04:00

Palin and Corruption in Troopergate

2008-09-15T08:16:00.001-04:00

Is Sarah Palin apart of the power wielding republican corruption machine? You be then judge.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - A campaign spokesman says Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin won't speak with an investigator hired by lawmakers to look into the firing of her public safety commissioner. Palin is accused of firing the former Public Safety Commissioner Wat Monegan because he refused Palin’s demand to fire a state trooper who had divorced Palin's sister.

Tina Fey as Sara Palin on Saturday Night Live!!!

2008-09-14T20:54:00.002-04:00

This skit is hilarious. Tina Fey is the spitting image of Sara Palin. Sadly it actually embodies the true essence of Sara Palin, and pokes fun of Hilary Clinton. Palin is an embarrassment to every educated capable women. Moreover, Palin's lack of deptha and low rate performance has made her the poster child for middle age "ditzy brawds".

Sadly, Palin might receive the unsuspecting, uninformed “vagina vote”, as a retaliation due to Hilary Clinton not being chosen as the Dems VP. Hillary Clinton is a smart, accomplished, strong, educated, political veteran, and seasoned diplomat. There is ABSOLUTES NO comparison between Palin and Clinton. If Clinton had not voted on the war that tarnished the US’s international image which sunk the economy, she might be the Dems presidential candidate. However, the country is looking for change. The current President’s lack of intelligence has caused the country’s current decline. The United States can not afford another “dumb” president or vice-president. A waffle house waitress could articulate better than Palin. She appears to manage her governorship like student club president. Palin like Bush, doesn’t show that she understand the lasting generational repercussions of the presidential decisions. Her support of offshore drilling is just one example. Palin allowed Lobbyists to influence her policy on Alaska drilling. Polar Bears could become extent by 2030 as a result Alaska ice glaciers melting at an astronomical rate due to off shore drilling, and global warming. Palin has no clue as to the impact of species extension, due to the deteriorate of the ecological landscape. The “Ditzy Brawd” image is cute if one is a waffle waitress but ineffective and irrational as a vice-presidential candidate. John McCain compared Barak to Paris Hilton but McCain chose middle aged Paris Hilton as his running mate.

Question: Who is Sara Palin? Answer: A Ditzy Brawd.

2008-09-12T21:20:00.001-04:00

It appears; Mrs. Palin did not put forth any effort to perform any research on the domestic and international political issues. Therefore, Sara Palin’s ABC interview with Charlie Gibson was a disaster. It clearly revealed her inability to simply answer the questions intelligently. I was embarrassed for her. The interview below shows what a true liability she would be to the United States. Considering all the stress the next president will be under, it’s very likely that McCain could have a heart attack or die from his cancer. Consequently, Sara Palin would not have a clue as to what to do. Therefore, she would rely on republican advisors which might be another George W. Clearly, we need competent and compassionate leaders who will move us forward not continue to drag us down. The fall out from the Republic regulatory deregulations of the banking industry, environment, FDA, managed care deregulation, and heir support for NAFTA has resulting in a slow pain market crash, ozone erosion, unbalanced ecosystem, toxic oceans, unregulated tainted foods from other countries, diseased beef, low air quality, bank collapses, low investor confidence, and thousands of lost jobs. Obviously, Sarah Palin is an excellent candidate to be manipulated by the GOP machine because she is unprepared, ill-equipped and incompetent.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin uses Republican Tactics of Stretching the Truth to create "herstory"

2008-09-03T23:14:00.000-04:00

George W. and Cheaney created "history" (his story) by munipulating the public through fear, and now the GOP vicepresidential nominee Sarah Palin is stretching the truth to creast "herstory" (her story). Is it me or are Republicans dishonest spin doctors that will stop at nothing to win? Here is Jim Kuhnhenn of the Associated Press's analysis of Sarah's growing nose from misrepresenting the truth and misleading GOP viewers.

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 3, 11:48 PM ET
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families. He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.
FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

A Companion To Tantra

2008-08-15T23:13:00.001-04:00

I am often asked about tantric devotion and other yoga sutras. I am still learning the principles and discipline of yoga sutras myself. Hence,the book A companion to tantra is a great guide to trantic sutras. It breaks down the principles and methodologies simply. It is a great read for beginnings and for those interested in Tatric Devotion. The following is an explaination to Tantric according to A.C. Banarji.

From The Jacket
Tantra is a distinct philosophical system. Many feel eager to know about it, but few love the time and energy to understand. The intricacies of Tantra. So, a short-cut is necessary.

In the present work, an attempt has been made to set forth the highlights of the Tantra works and their authors. A bibliography, intended to help further reading, has been added.

The author, a lifelong researcher in Sanskrit, has been a teacher of the subject. He has some 60 works to his credit. His only aim is to propogate Sanskrit learning.

Preface

The elements of Tantra are found in the Atharvaveda and, in a lesser degree, in the Rgveda. These relate to the mundane life of the people, and reflect their aspirations for material well-being. We see, in them, how people wanted to have long life, keep off diseases and thwart the activities of ghosts, supposed to cause harm to them. Magic, both beneficial to themselves and harmful to their enemies, figures prominently.

In course of time, side by side with the elitist works, Tantras having a populist appeal came to be composed. It seems that Tantras arose as a protest against the traditional scriptures which insisted on self-mortification and austerities, etc. as means to the attainment of emancipation of the soul from the bondage of rebirths. In doing so, they prescribed rituals which were denied to women and the Sudras who were in the lowest rung of the social ladder.

Tantra had a different approach to life and salvation. It sought to show the way to liberation here in life not by denial of worldly pleasures. For the followers of Tantra, the body was the microcosm and was to be kept fit for Tantric devotion. Women and Sudras were given by Tantra many facilities for religious practices. The rigours of caste-system were considerably relaxed. The acquisition of virtues was considered more important than the accident of birth.

In the modern society of India, the traditional scriptural injunctions are yielding place to rational thinking. Those, who do not know much of Tantra, are vociferously decrying ancient Indian values categorically. For reforming the society in keeping with modern ideas, the Tantra-sastra should be cultivated. But, in the busy life of today, with tension and turmoil, it is not possible for one to delve deep into Tantra.

The present work is designed to give, in a succinct form, the reader an idea about the highlights of Tantra. In the introduction, we have briefly dealt with the important matters relating to this literature. It is followed by short accounts of the important authors and works on Tantra. In a glossary, the difficult words and technical terms have been explained. A separate glossary of scientific terms has also been added. The bibliography is fairly exhaustive.

The labours of the author will be rewarded if the work goes some way in familiarizing the readers with the contents of Tantra, both Hindu and Buddhist.

Contents
Preface 7
Abbreviations 9
Important Dates 10
I Introduction 11
II Tantric Elements in Post-Vedic Sanskrit Literature 33
III Tantric Saivism of Kashmir 39
IV Tantric Lexicons 61
V Science in Tantra 65
VI Society Reflected in Tantra 81
VII Authors of Tantras and Commentaries 89
IX Hindu Tantras 117
X Buddhist Tantras 233
Appendix I: Phthasthanas 247
Appendix II: Miscellaneous Tantric Works and Commentaries 248
Glossary (General) 251
Glossary of Scientific Terms 298
Select Bibliography 307
Index 341

Smith takes rightful place among top actors with 'Hancock'

2008-07-08T06:41:00.003-04:00

This is my take on Ryan Kathman’s review of the Will Smith’s movie Hancock.
First, I must say that I completely, unequivocally, and absolutely LOVED the movie. The dramatic twists and turns in the movie made it even more enjoyable, as life is full of surprises. Hence, after more than twenty years of acting, (Jason) Batman got his do. Hancock appears to be a defining moment for Jason Batman as a movie star; finally. The consummate professional and movie star Mr. Smith has brought creditability to the superhero genre for us 30Somethings in the way Robert Downey, jr. brought it to the 40Somethings in Iron man. I’ve posted the review because Ryan expressed my sentiments about the movie exactly. Surprisingly, the critics were split. However, with $107 million at the box office, it’s clear the public loved it. It appears…the people have spoken.

Ryan Kathman wrote in the DailyNabraskan.com news:

Now that Tom Cruise has officially become irrelevant, Tom Hanks has settled nicely into middle age, Johnny Depp continues to explore only quirky territory (thankfully) and Brad Pitt's love life seems more important than his screen life, is there truly any bigger marquee actor than Will Smith?

Sure, George Clooney is a "movie star" in the classic sense, and Steve Carell or Jim Carrey definitely have the comedy genre locked down, but when it comes to the summer blockbuster, popcorn movie-you've-been-waiting-for, Hollywood's been telling us for years that Smith is the hot ticket and we seem happy to agree.

But unlike the Cruises and Keanu Reeveses whose stars have ultimately faded due to a lack of range and/or appeal, Smith proves again in his latest July 4 tent-pole flick "Hancock" why he actually deserves to be the undisputed king of the box office.

First of all, Smith turns a potentially one-note concept cooked up by two TV writers (Vincent Ngo and Vince Gilligan) into a flesh-and-blood character.

Instead of just a misanthropic superhero who makes all of L.A. angry with him because of the damage he causes while saving the day, in Smith's hands, Hancock is a hilariously bitter and reluctant hero who turns to liquor not as an amusing plot device, but as a refuge to numb his confusion over his own identity (if you mixed Jason Bourne with Superman - minus the tights - and TV's House, you'd have Hancock). The reason all those previews seem a bit stilted is because the caustic Hancock is generous with the expletives and the likable Smith delivers his most "colorful" lines with verve.

Secondly, the star knows how to pick good projects with pedigreed collaborators. Peter Berg - the brilliant actor-turned-auteur behind both film and television versions of "Friday Night Lights" as well as last year's excellent Iraq War pic "The Kingdom" - has joined fellow thesp John Favreau (who helmed "Iron Man," the new superhero standard) as a new crop of filmmakers who will hopefully dethrone Michael Bay and Brett Ratner so our future blockbusters will actually have substance as well as style.

Berg's hand-held, overlapping dialogue technique lends an authenticity to the film that helps it stand apart in the superhero genre by giving us a recognizable world instead of Metropolis or Gotham.

Berg and Smith have some help, of course, from great supporting turns by the reliably hilarious Jason Bateman as a PR consultant who offers to help clean up Hancock's image, and the unfairly beautiful and talented Charlize Theron as Bateman's wife. It's nice to see Bateman really start to carve out a niche on the big screen in his largest film role yet and Theron holds her own against Smith while letting her beauty be secondary to her acting.

The team manages to highlight the mediocre script's strengths - Smith and Bateman's scenes as well as Hancock's early verbal sparring with ungrateful citizens - while downplaying its weaknesses such as the occasionally corny theme about trying to change the world. As for those who might complain about a plot twist that seems a bit telegraphed, I would argue that the reveal is all the more rewarding for its expertly placed foreshadowing.

Ultimately, the movie works because of Smith's unique blend of the everyman qualities he's had on display since 1994's "Independence Day" (his first blockbuster), the colorful comic timing that made "Men In Black" and "Bad Boys" great rides, and the dramatic chops he flashed way back in "Six Degrees of Separation" only to fully realize in "Ali" and "The Pursuit of Happyness."

In last year's grossly underappreciated "I Am Legend," Smith was the movie, delivering a powerhouse performance that made Hanks' "Cast Away" look like a day at the beach. There's a stoic sadness that bridges his "Legend" character to "Hancock," making it even harder to remember that this is the same cocky young kid who introduced rap music to the mainstream and sometimes looked wide-eyed and awkward in his cheesy early 1990s sitcom.

But because he transcends racial barriers while never failing to embrace his own roots, because he actually shares his scenes with other actors instead of demanding the spotlight, and because he hasn't yet had a meltdown on Oprah or got into a screaming match with Matt Lauer, Smith has earned his place atop the list of marquee male stars.

Let's just hope all those Scientology rumors aren't true.

Source: Reviewed by Ryan Kathman’s in the Dailynabaskan.com

AP tally: Obama effectively clinches nomination

2008-06-03T16:55:00.002-04:00

By DAVID ESPO and STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, becoming the first black candidate to lead a major party into a campaign for the White House. Vanquished rival Hillary Rodham Clinton swiftly signaled an interest in joining the ticket as running mate.

Obama arranged a victory celebration at the site of this summer's Republican National Convention — an in-your-face gesture to Sen. John McCain, who will be his opponent in the race to become the nation's 44th president.

The 46-year-old Obama built a grass roots campain that outlasted and outcampaigned Clinton in a historic campaign that sparked record turnouts in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.

In a campaign of surprises, Clinton's comments about joining the ticket rated high.

According to one participant in an afternoon conference call among Clinton and members of the New York congressional delegation, Rep. Lydia Velasquez said she believed the best way for Obama to win over Hispanics and members of other key voting blocs would be to take the former first lady as his running mate.

"I am open to it," Clinton replied, if it would help the party's prospects in November, said the participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was a private matter.

Obama sealed his victory based on public declarations from delegates as well as from an additional 18 who had confirmed their intentions to the AP. The count also included five delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 15 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination.

Clinton stood ready to concede that her rival had amassed the delegates needed to triumph, according to officials in her campaign. They stressed that the New York senator did not intend to suspend or end her candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in New York. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to divulge her plans.

Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy — all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a campaigner.

With her husband's two-White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready, she said, to take over on Day One.

But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became something of an overnight political phenomenon.

"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one people and our time for change has come," he said that night in Des Moines.

A video produced by Will I. Am and built around Obama's "Yes, we can" rallying cry quickly went viral. It drew its one millionth hit within a few days of being posted.

As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger still. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state's May 20 primary.

The former first lady countered Obama's Iowa victory with an upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a campaign marathon as competitive as any in the last generation.

"Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own voice," she told supporters who had saved her candidacy from an early demise.

In defeat, Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in favor of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa's choice.

It was not a mistake they made again — which helped explain Obama's later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball hoops and American Legion halls in the heartland.

Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.

As other rivals quickly fell away in winter, the strongest black candidate in history and the strongest female White House contender traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to settle the nomination.

But Clinton had a problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she could not answer.

Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to run up his delegate totals.

At the same time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsed the young senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.

In a reference that likened former President Clinton to Harry Truman: "There was another time, when another young candidate was running for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely respected in the party."

Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations.

But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he never relinquished, and proceeded to run off a string of 11 straight victories.

Clinton saved her candidacy once more with primary victories in Ohio and Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won primaries in six of the final nine states on the calendar, as well as in Puerto Rico.

It was a strong run, providing glimpses of what might have been for the one-time front-runner.

But by then Obama was well on his way to victory, Clinton and her allies stressed the popular vote instead of delegates. Yet he seemed to emerge from each loss with residual strength.

Obama's bigger-than-expected victory in North Carolina on May 6 offset his narrow defeat in Indiana the same day. Four days later, he overtook Clinton's lead among superdelegates, the party leaders she had hoped would award her the nomination on the basis of a strong showing in swing states.

Obama lost West Virginia by a whopping 67 percent to 26 percent on May 13. Yet he won an endorsement the following day from former presidential rival and one-time North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

Clinton administered another drubbing in Kentucky a week later. This time, Obama countered with a victory in Oregon, and turned up that night in Iowa to say he had won a majority of all the delegates available in 56 primaries and caucuses on the calendar.

There were moments of anger, notably in a finger-wagging debate in South Carolina on Jan. 21.

Obama told the former first lady he was helping unemployed workers on the streets of Chicago when "you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."

Moments later, Clinton said that she was fighting against misguided Republican policies "when you were practicing law and representing your contributor ... in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago."

And Bill Clinton was a constant presence and an occasional irritant for Obama. The former president angered several black politicians when he seemed to diminish Obama's South Carolina triumph by noting that Jesse Jackson had also won the state.

Obama's frustration showed at the Jan. 21 debate, when he accused the former president in absentia of uttering a series of distortions.

"I'm here. He's not," the former first lady snapped.

"Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes," Obama countered.

There were relatively few policy differences. Clinton accused Obama of backing a health care plan that would leave millions out, and the two clashed repeatedly over trade.

Yet race, religion, region and gender became political fault lines as the two campaigned from coast to coast.

Along the way, Obama showed an ability to weather the inevitable controversies, most notably one caused by the incendiary rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

At first, Obama said he could not break with his longtime spiritual adviser. Then, when Wright spoke out anew, Obama reversed course and denounced him strongly.

Clinton struggled with self-inflicted wounds. Most prominently, she claimed to have come under sniper fire as first lady more than a decade earlier while paying a visit to Bosnia.

Instead, videotapes showed her receiving a gift of flowers from a young girl who greeted her plane

Obama's political team out-organized Clinton

2008-05-24T14:05:00.002-04:00

By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Call them Kool-Aid drinkers. Political romantics. Starry-eyed dreamers.

But as the marathon Democratic primary campaign nears an end, Barack Obama's staff is on the verge of vindicating its belief that the eloquent black freshman senator from Illinois was a unique candidate who could win the Democratic nomination in one of the biggest upsets in presidential politics.

The band of Obama loyalists who imagined that could happen have stunned even themselves with their success against Hillary Rodham Clinton, who appeared to have wrapped up the nomination last year, before any votes were cast. Now, they face a new challenge with the impending nomination and campaign against Republican John McCain.

If they succeed, many team members could be helping run the country eight months from now. Presidents often appoint campaign advisers to top administration jobs.

The team was led by calm and focused campaign manager David Plouffe; their strategy was inspired by the candidate's experience as a community organizer. They built a campaign designed to accomplish what other political sensations like Gary Hart and Howard Dean failed to do — turn the energy and excitement of the Obama phenomenon into long-term results.

"I think everyone knew realistically that he was starting as an underdog," said longtime friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett. "But I don't think he would have started down this path with a team that didn't think he would win. It was going to be an uphill battle, but in the end I think we were all confident that it could be done and that he could do it."

Matching Obama's organizing background, the team has roots in conducting on-the-ground congressional campaigns across the country. Many top aides were groomed by former House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt and former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle instead of by the Clinton wing of the party. Clinton's team was built with Washington and New York operatives.

From its experience in congressional races, the Obama team understood firsthand the extent of Clinton fatigue in the heartland and the lesson of the 2006 midterm elections: America wants change.

Obama's chief directive for hiring the more than 700 staff members who eventually came to work for him was: No Drama Allowed. Obama's even demeanor is reflected in the advisers closest to him. While Clinton's campaign divided into conflicting power centers whose emotional disputes leaked publicly, any fights in the Obama campaign were kept in the family.

Plouffe embodies Obama's vision — a steady and unemotional number cruncher averse to the limelight, able to tune out noise and focus on the moves needed to reach the end game. Plouffe was the mastermind of Obama's long-range campaign plan that looked beyond the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday primaries that Clinton had predicted would deliver the nomination to her. He dispatched staff to states that Clinton's campaign overlooked, particularly small caucus states where intensive organization produced wins that swelled Obama's delegate lead.

A Gephardt guy, Plouffe had worked on campaigns that went broke, so he was notoriously cheap. Obama attracted a talented staff willing to work for much less than they could have made with Clinton. Plouffe carefully minded the bank account to preserve enough money to keep running after the wildly expensive Super Tuesday contests while Clinton's campaign went broke. She had to lend it $11.4 million to stay afloat.

In the month after Super Tuesday, Obama won 11 straight contests and took a delegate lead that Clinton has not been able to erase.

That's not to say Obama's campaign plan worked flawlessly. The initial plan was to turn a win in Iowa into a win in New Hampshire that would make his nomination unstoppable, but Clinton defeated him in New Hampshire and the campaign dragged on for months.

Now the team must reunite the fractured party and introduce Obama to a whole new swath of voters as he takes on a well-known war hero with bipartisan appeal. The campaign is rapidly adding new people, like experienced communications strategist Anita Dunn, who is married to campaign general counsel Bob Bauer and recently joined Obama's inner circle.

Obama's other closest advisers:

• David Axelrod, a former newspaper columnist who shares Obama's talent with words, is the most experienced and visible political strategist. An idealist who exudes enthusiasm for his candidate, Axelrod helps buck Obama up on the road. Also from Chicago, he can play down-and-dirty politics with a Midwestern smile.

• Jarrett, who has helped guide Obama's entire political career, brings blunt assessments only a longtime friend can provide. Jarrett has known the Obamas since before they were married, when she hired Michelle to work for Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Known to be cool under pressure, she stepped up her campaign role last fall when Obama was a distant second to Clinton. Bringing a fresh outsider perspective, she held staff accountable.

• Pete Rouse, who has run Obama's Senate office, is known for loyalty and a self-effacing manner. Rouse brings expert knowledge of Washington to a team based in Chicago. He protects Obama's standing in the capital city and has brought in other D.C. operatives, particularly from the Daschle fold where he used to run things.

• Robert Gibbs, who has been at Obama's side since his Senate campaign, is communications director. A Southerner and tough fighter, Gibbs is a passionate defender and can channel the candidate's thoughts. He's also among a few who can frankly tell Obama what needs to improve.

• Michelle Obama, the candidate's wife, is his closest confidant. She often says, "I'm not his senior adviser, I'm his wife." But she also talks about how dinner conversations about their family are what's in his mind when he's crafting policy. She's the ultimate truth teller to the candidate; he calls her for feedback after debates. She has led the campaign's outreach to female voters: As a lawyer and hospital executive, she provides evidence that Obama respects strong women even as he's campaigning against one.

Another crucial adviser is Steve Hildebrand, who oversaw state-by-state efforts to run up Obama wins. Other key team members are finance chairwoman Penny Pritzker, finance director Julianna Smoot, policy director Heather Higginbottom, scheduling director Alyssa Mastromonaco, deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer, national press secretary Bill Burton, economics adviser Austan Goolsbee and foreign policy aides Anthony Lake and Susan Rice.

Gagosian has become a work of Art in Love

2008-04-07T20:30:00.006-04:00

Shala Monroque and Larry Gagosian at the Brooklyn Ball. They honored developer Bruce Ratner at the Brooklyn Museum’s annual Brooklyn Ball this past Thursday night and marked it with the opening of the Takashi Murakami retrospective.

Left: Shala Monroque and Larry Gagosian. (Photo: Stefanie Keenan for Patrick McMullan) Right: Artist Ellsworth Kelly. (Photo: Brian Lindensmith for Patrick McMullan They honored developer Bruce Ratner at the Brooklyn Museum’s annual Brooklyn Ball this past Thursday night and the marked it with the opening of the Takashi Murakami retrospective.

Shala Monroque, Larry Gagosian, and Andy Valmorbida front row at "Warhol Factory X LEVI'S X Damien Hirst" Spring 2008 Collection at Gagosian Gallery. Fashion Week. The entertainment/social budgets get bigger every year. After the runway shows which are ostensibly in the Bryant Park tents, but are actually all over town, there are the parties

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Gagosian the great
Aug 18th 2007
From Economist.com
Master of all he surveys (then sells)

THE king of the art world—a superlative title, perhaps, but Larry Gagosian just may deserve it. Each year ArtReview, an art journal, publishes a list of the industry’s top 100 movers and shakers in an attempt to assess who has the greatest impact on art’s value and reputation. Museum directors, auction-house owners, private collectors, dealers and even, occasionally, artists jostle for the top position. Mr Gagosian topped the list in 2004, and has lingered near the peak since.

In that triumphant year Mr Gagosian, New York’s leading dealer, had just opened his fifth gallery, in London’s Britannia Street, to balance his three in New York City, the one in Beverly Hills and his smaller space in London’s Mayfair. At 1,400 square metres, it is the largest and most splendid commercial gallery space in London. Its opening—Cy Twombly, a distinguished American artist, had been persuaded to create new work specially, and even Charles Saatchi predicted it would transform London’s art world—firmly established Mr Gagosian’s transatlantic dominion.

So what makes a successful dealer, and what is the nature of his power? Mr Gagosian is famous for his bold business dealings and glamorous lifestyle. He has a penchant for fast cars and beautiful women, and a vast home in East Hampton called Toad Hall.

Yet beneath this predictable exterior lies a true entrepreneurial instinct for the buying and selling of art. Mr Gagosian started his career, in Los Angeles, by buying posters for $2, framing them and selling them for $15. His energy in exploiting the possibilities of the secondary fine-art market in the early 1980s—buying and then reselling work by blue-chip modern and contemporary artists for a considerable profit—established his reputation, earning him the nickname “Go-Go”. Starting out in downtown New York in the mid-1980s doing historical shows, it was the lull in the art market in the early 1990s that offered Mr Gagosian his next opportunity. He began to represent living artists.

Driven and a workaholic, unafraid to bid aggressively at auction, he has a legendary capacity to drive up prices: fellow dealers enviously explain that he is consistently ahead of the game, always thinking about the next deal. Cristina Ruiz, editor of the Art Newspaper, has a judicious summation: “He loves the art—but he is one of those dealers who absolutely loves to sell, and he is very successful at it. Yes, he employs aggressive selling techniques, but that’s how dealers get stuff done.”

Todd Eberle

Cultural revolutionaryPerhaps his greatest achievement has been to win the trust of both artists and collectors. He represents the cream of contemporary American and many British artists. His arsenal of big names includes Richard Serra, Walter De Maria, Jeff Koons, Ed Ruscha, Howard Hodgkin and Rachel Whiteread. In New York he shows Damien Hirst, Douglas Gordon and Jenny Saville. Mr Gagosian also represents the estates of Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein and David Smith. Alongside these stars, he continues to show the work of lesser known artists, fostering the next generation.

As Mr Gagosian admitted in a rare public speech, one steady priority has been “to find or create a great space, a beautiful space, in which to show the art. You have to draw attention to yourself, to the gallery and to your artists.” Three of his galleries are by world-class architects—Richard Meier in Beverly Hills, Richard Gluckman in Chelsea and Caruso St John in Britannia Street—and the shows he creates in these remarkable spaces are knowledgably curated, equal in quality to fine museum exhibitions.

Another key priority has been the establishment of long-term relationships with serious collectors. As he has described it, he is averse to “transactional sales”, the one-off arrangement, and prefers “working steadily, over time, with collectors, and helping create or expand their collections.” He works closely with big-name collectors such as Charles Saatchi, Eli Broad, Si Newhouse and David Geffen.

Mr Gagosian is a master not just at selling, but, even more importantly, at selling to the right collector at the right price; for it is not just the deal that is at stake but the global market perception of that artist. For this reason Mr Gagosian avoids what he calls “impatient money”, which sees art only as a quick investment. It is this ability to understand art as a matter of love as well as money that has given Mr Gagosian so much power—not just to make himself a fortune but to shape the taste of a generation.
http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=9673257&fsrc=RSS

Artmosphere Cafe

2008-04-05T09:45:00.005-04:00

Meet Friends, Have meetings, See live Entertainment, Eat good and more, at our café in Metropolitan Washington DC. Come join us at 3311 Rhode Island Avenue Mount Rainier, Maryland 20712. Mount Rainier’s Atmosphere Café is a great place for Artist and community to merge coffee with creativity. Music and poetry is a delight to my ears. To Artists, by Artists for the community; it’s like bringing a taste of Brooklyn to Maryland.

DIFFA Dining by Design

2008-04-05T02:31:00.006-04:00

David Patrick reported, DIFFA: Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS, launched its 2008 dining by Design National Tour at Skylight on 275 Hudson Street in NYC. This is the 11th National Tour of Dining by Design. Conde’ Nast Media Group has joined the 2008 tour as national media partner. DIFFA brought together a talented and intriguing cast of designers, artists and personalities to put a spotlight on stylish and outlandish trends in design. Following New York, Dining by Design will tour seven cities nationwide including Kansas City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Atlanta, San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston. Apparently, the designers were not impressed with décor and presentation. The dinner party had all the makings of frump, if not for the company at hand. I am sure it was a wonderful dinner party, however, Conde' Nast has a reputation of being associated with only the best design presentations. The dinner party looks as if it were put together by a child. It certainly doesn’t appear that the designers and artists sitting around that table were pleased. Although, a dinner party is about connecting with friends through good conversation, good food, good wine and good humor, the culinary experience has a visual and esthetic aspect which artists have particular sensitivity. Not to worry, they will get over it; maybe the dinner parties in Chicago or San Francisco will meet their standards, and possibly warrant a picture in a Conde’ Nast publication.

On April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis TN

2008-04-04T07:14:00.001-04:00

Double click bottom arrow to remember Dr. King's humanity & sacrifice.

Whopper Bars could be the Starbucks of Burgers

2008-03-29T05:33:00.002-04:00

Burger King has re-invented itself, with the Whopper Bars. Oh Dear, what is this world coming too? This presents a really serious problem for me, because I already should attend cheeseburgers anonymous. This will only further feed my addiction to cheeseburgers. For years, I have tried to kick the habit, but keep relapsing. There are 36 addictive carcinogenics in beef, I am almost positive that must be the reason I keep going back to cheeseburgers. I am now on a diet. After a year of being cheeseburger free, as a result of stress, six months ago I begrudgingly but eagerly picked up a double cheeseburger at McDonalds. Hence, 20+ lbs later, those burgers are still calling my name. Therefore, I am trying to reduce my intake, detox and exercise. Frankly, it’s incredibly frustrating. The BK is changing its décor and adding a new experience. If I’m walking through the airport I may not be able to resist the Whopper Bar. Thankfully, they won’t be in malls or open urban venues like a Cosi’s where one could pop in to check email and pick up a burger, because I would be doomed.

The Wallstreet Journal announced Burger King Holdings Inc. plans to start building a new version of its restaurants this year called the Whopper Bar that will sell a wider variety of its signature hamburger in a hipper setting. See Wallstreet Journal for complete article.

Playing the Changes, Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photophraphs

2008-03-25T00:02:00.006-04:00

Remarkable! I saw the award winning documentary of Keeping Time: The Life, Music and Photographs of Milt Hinton, on PBS. I absolutely must get this new book, Playing the Changes. I will sit it on my coffee table next to my Gordon Parks book "Half Past Autum". I think both books are great coffe books because they capture american culture in in it's actuality; which evokes moving conversation. Jazz is the only American art form originating in the United States. As a cultural tradition, I collect jazz prints, jazz music and am trying to learn more about the history and tradition of Jazz. Milt Hinton is the most accomplished and influential base player in the history Jazz, and has become the historian of traditional Jazz. Thankfully his documentation of the artform exists for the Museums, as it is a pivotal part of American history. Thankfully David Berger helped put Milt's massive collection of pictures together and published the work. As it might be the only historical document of the history of jazz, candidly, as it really was. Interestingly, after viewing the documentary, Keeping Time, I realized I have one of Milts pieces; Billy Holiday; the Last recording session. I bought the print in New Orleans 14 years ago. It's framed on my living room wall, but I didn't know the story behind the picture. If you can hear me heaven, thanks Mr. Hinton for describing the story behind that powerful picture; it now has even more meaning to me. I can not waite to get Playing the Changes.

The Words, Images, and Music of One of the Greats In American Jazz New book and cd chronicle the artistic and personal journey of extraordinary bassist Milt Hinton

The life story of Milt Hinton is rooted in hard times, rising from segregated backwater clubs to elegant concert halls, offering a perspective on the African American experience that is unique in its mix of humor and wisdom.

The publication of PLAYING THE CHANGES: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs (Vanderbilt University Press, January 2008) not only tells Milt's compelling story, in his own inimitable style, but also exquisitely reproduces 260 of his incredible photographs. He began taking pictures in the 1920s and continued documenting the world that he knew, in and away from the spotlight, up to his death in 2000 at age 90.

These photographs, more than 140 of which are published here for the first time, burst with life--and some would swear sound--revealing candid and often intimate moments of both the famous (Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington) and the not so famous who played alongside them, such as 400-pound arranger/bandleader/organist “Tiny" Parham.

Included with the book is a CD of music and interviews with Milt Hinton, along with a discography and a filmography.

This remarkable book reveals as well that Hinton possessed a gift of narrative. Blessed with a storyteller's facility, he leads the reader back to his first memories as a child in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and even beyond, to his father's African birth and elements of that legacy that lingered in his grandmother's cooking. Through his recollections we feel these times and places, down to the lynching he witnessed at age seven and, nearly as horrible, the surreal stillness of the town the morning after.

Interweaving photos and prose, the book traces Milt's path from Mississippi to Chicago, where he polished his music through the famous Wendell Phillips High School program and earned money running errands for the Al Capone organization. Committing full time to music, Hinton crossed paths with people who seem cut from a mold that was broken long ago. Many have left vivid marks on history, from the legendary boxer Jack Johnson to the incomparable Cab Calloway, with whose band Hinton traveled for many years. Others have been forgotten or died too young, like the tough-talking and brilliantly gifted singer Ann Robinson, whose rise toward fame ended suddenly one night in a Harlem alley.

Combining an acute observational eye with an ear sensitive to music and conversation, Hinton casts these characters in revealing light. He was there to witness a legendary and nearly fatal encounter between Calloway and a knife-wielding Dizzy Gillespie, to help remove the great Charlie Parker, passed out on heroin, from under a table in a bar, and to see the King of Swing, Benny Goodman, playing pinball alone in a Broadway arcade. Whether huddling in the basement of a backwater club as a race riot raged overhead or shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy at a swank soiree, Hinton registers these moments and summons them back to life on every page of Playing the Changes - and in so doing, preserves an important part of America's culture and history for posterity.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS: In 1955, when he was 14, David G. Berger asked Milt Hinton for bass lessons -- thus beginning a friendship and professional partnership that would last more than 40 years. Berger, though, did not follow in his friend's footsteps to become a professional musician; instead he completed a doctorate in sociology and taught at Temple University for 30 years. In 1979, Holly Maxson began organizing Milt's photographs for Hinton and Berger's first book, Bass Line. Maxson and Berger co-direct the Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection, and in 2002 they completed their award-winning documentary about Milt's life, Keeping Time: The Life, Music and Photographs of Milt Hinton. (Photograph courtesy of The Milton J. Hinton Photographic Collection)

BOOK INFORMATION
PLAYING THE CHANGES: Milt Hinton's Life in Stories and Photographs
By Milt Hinton, David G. Berger, and Holly Maxson
Foreword by Clint Eastwood; Preface by Dan Morgenstern
384 pages, 11 x 9.5 inches, 260 black & white photos, with a CD of interviews and music, discography, filmography

Trade cloth w/CD $75.00 (ISBN 978-0-8265-1574-2)
To be published January 2008 by VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS

Visit the Milt Hiton website

Milt Hinton at All About Jazz.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings on Letterman

2008-03-21T09:37:00.000-04:00

Etta James, Patti Labelle, James Brown, Mahalia Jackson and Sharon Brown!

Thank you Sharon Brown for keeping that Funking Soulful fealing in music that moves spirit and touches the depths of our hearts.

Obama’s response to Reverend Wright Controversy

2008-03-20T15:43:00.000-04:00

Starbucks to Buy Clover

2008-03-19T19:01:00.003-04:00

Wow, such synergy. I just read on Conde Nasts Portfolio.com that Starbucks reported in their Annual Shareholders meeting that Starbucks plans to buy the company that makes the Clover. The clover is the rose royce of coffee machines at a price of $11,000. I guess that justifies Starbucks $6 per cut cup of coffee.

Here is what Liz Gunnison reported on Portfolio.com:

Live-Blogging the Starbucks Annual Meeting: Starbucks Buys the Clover
We should have seen it coming with the Pike Place Roast announcement . Not only is Starbucks directing its attentions towards a super-premium coffee blend, but the newest super-premium way to brew it.

Starbucks closed the annual meeting by announcing it would be acquiring The Coffee Equipment Company, the makers of the Clover Brewing System.

What is the Clover? It's a coffee machine - for lack of a more sophisticated term - that is all the rage in the coffee community these days (check out the New York Times article from earlier this year).

Up until now the astronomically expensive machines - which provide a commercial way to produce coffee akin to what's made at home in a french press - have only been in use in only a handful of coffee shops, which charge a large premium for the brew that they make.

Coffee wonks go nuts over this machine, as the brewed coffee it creates is supposedly leaps and bounds above all else in terms of flavor. No specifics out of Starbucks in terms of when and how widely these babies will be rolled out in stores.

The DC Metro Urbanistas Have Claimed The Cork Wine Bar in Logan Circle

2008-03-10T19:48:00.004-04:00

Would one be considered a “wino” if one preferred wine to mixed drinks or liquor all the time. If so then call me “willie the wino”, because I prefer Kendall Jackson chardonnay over an apple martini any day. A new wine bar popped up in Logan circle; the Cork Wine Bar. Interestingly, it is very much like the Cork Wine Bar in Ohio. Nevertheless, the DC urbanotic scene seems to love it.

The food is delicious, small plates only, simple foods, and lots of flavor. The wine list is extensive, more than 100 wines by the bottle, focusing on Old World selections, including many organic and sustainable produced wines. Prices range from $6 to $14 by the glass. Tasting wines by the glass can add up, flights are more economical and the bottle could be an even better value. The service is great as well, and staff is well versed in the very wide range of French and Spanish wines available.

The Cork Wine Bar’s crowd consists of the laid back 30something urban dwellers packing in the place with a New York/East Village ambiance. . Hence, Cork wine bar is a cool place to chill out with friends and catch up. It’s extremely crowded which makes it more fun to have “sex in the city” moments with friends. Like Arnold says, “I’ll be back”. Absolutely.

Ben Afflect on Obamawood

2008-02-29T19:17:00.004-05:00

Obama + Hollywood = Obamawood

Ben Affleck articulated, Obama's approach to leadership is to address the issues in a very measured, deliberate, thoughtful and diplomatic way. Obama is a listener who is altruistic to the people, and is willing to admit fault and mistakes, which reflects strong character. In effect, Obama's approach might help to heal the country socially, economically and patriotically. Finally, his integrity will build trust internationally.

Funky Feeling Wes Felton

2008-02-23T19:55:00.000-05:00

I Love Wes Felton’s Funky Feeling. Wes Felton is without question, one the coolest alternative neosoul Artists to come out of DC. I’ve often wondered, what is it that keeps him trapped on the underground scene? Does he lack the tenacity of Common or booking power of the Roots to build a following outside of DC? I haven’t a clue. Like Raheem Devahn, Meshell Ndegeocello, Mya and JC Chauvez, he should climb from the obscurity of the underground to a nationally recognized musician. For more than 15 years Wes Felton has been on the DC indie neo soul underground scene making great music, opening for neo soul artists whose tours stop in DC like Eryka Badu, the Roots and Omar at the 9:30 Club. Yet there has been little traction. With the use of a creative college PR team Wes Felton could be as well known as the Black eye peas, however, the lack of national media buzz has trapped him on the DC underground scene. When he ever take that Leap? Only time will tell. Until then, check out that Funky Feeling below.

BRAIN WAVE:COMMON SENSES

2008-02-16T23:54:00.000-05:00

Bravo and Kudos! Must see! To preview, click Brainwave.

EXIT ART CHALLENGES ARTISTS TO MAKE CONSCIOUSNESS VISIBLE
IN EXHIBITION AT CENTER OF CITY-WIDE FESTIVAL

New York, NY - One of New York City's leading outposts for vanguard art showcases an array of artworks inspired by recent advances in the understanding of the brain beginning Saturday, February 16, 2008. On view at Exit Art at Tenth Avenue and 36th Street through April 19, BrainWave: Common Senses is part of the city-wide festival BRAINWAVE, which explores how art, music, and meditation affect the brain.
In organizing Common Senses, Exit Art co-directors Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo looked for artists who are creating powerful visualizations of the activities of the mind. Works run the gamut from mechanical objects-including a roving robot-to videos, multiple-screen slide projections, sculpture, and painting.

"In sending out an open call to artists, we hoped to find works of art that captured the mystery of the mind, rather than works that merely illustrate scientific insights. We have succeeded in this, I believe, by gathering artworks that are of the moment-innovative as art, current as science," says Ingberman.

Visitors to Common Senses will spy a 15" tall robot navigating Exit Art in directions determined by data derived from artist Fernando Orellana's REM-sleep brainwave activity. Sleep Waking (2007), created by the Troy, New York-based Orellana in collaboration with Brendan Burns, of Schenectady, New York, is one of a number of ambulatory and interactive works in the exhibition. Another is Swarm (2008), by David Bowen of Duluth, Minnesota, a roaming device shaped like a broomstick, capped by a bulbous plastic chamber filled with 500 buzzing houseflies. Digitally, the motion of the flies determines Swarm's direction and momentum. As well, New Yorker Jamie O'Shea contributes his mad machine, the Alvin sonic incubator (2005), wherein a visitor can set an electronic neural-like network in motion by connecting his or her forehead to Alvin's hardware.

Brilliantly colored images evocative of a dense forest are conjured from the layering of light projections in Andrew Carnie's Magic Forest (2002). The result of the artist's collaboration with Dr. Richard Wingate of the Medical Research Council Centre for Developmental Neurology, Kings College, London, the 15-minute-long installation piece takes as its subject the process of data collecting in an ever-growing cluster of neurons in a developing brain. The beauty of the images derives in part from the fluorescence used in staining of individual neurons, which in turn produces the images under a microscope.

The New York-based artist Suzanne Anker also is represented by beautiful, lyrical imagery arising from careful extrapolation of neurological processes. Here, three-dimensional Rorschach tests resemble fossils from a lost world and brain scans and images of butterfly wings suggest the organic complexity of the brain and archetypes from the natural world.

Windows of the Soul (2008), a video by New York artist Phil Buehler, invites the question of whether or not one can read madness in another's eyes. Three hundred close-up black and white photographs of the eyes of actual mental patients, taken in the '50s and recently recovered from an archive, speed by in a riveting five-minute-long montage.

For BrainWave: Common Senses, New Yorker Devorah Sperber constructs what will appear to be a random arrangement of 875 spools of colored thread in the Exit Art gallery. Remarkably, the spools coalesce into a seemingly sharp focus replica of Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" when viewed through a small sphere that mimics the functioning of the human eye.

Other works on view include a sculptural installation by George Jenne of Brooklyn, New York, that incorporates a variety of objects that the artist calls "tokens," which are designed to trigger associations with adolescence; two sculptures created by casting the brain cavities of whales into brass by Dustin Wenzel of Ottawa, Canada; a single-channel video by Naho Taruishi (New York, New York) meant to be seen "blindly" with eyelids closed (functioning as a pair of internal projection screens); a mural-size painting by Steve Budington of Burlington, Vermont, depicts the dangers of a political candidate favoring one sense over another; a video by Daniel Margulies (New York) and Chris Sharp (Milan, Italy) coupling Kant's Third Critique of Judgment and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring with brain scans; and Reodorant (2008), a multisensory installation by the four-member artist collective, SERU.

BrainWave: Common Senses is the second in Exit Art's Unknown Territories series exploring the impact of scientific advances on contemporary culture. It follows Paradise Now: Picturing the Genetic Revolution, a landmark exhibition of art and biotechnology that brought art and science audiences together at Exit Art in 2000. Opening December 6, 2008 will be the third presentation, of biotechnology based artworks. Organized by Boryana Rossa, Corpus Extremus (LIFE+) will assemble work by many of the major artists working in this medium, including Adam Zaretsky, Stelarc, Bioteknica, Kathy High, Dmitry Bulatov and SymbioticA Research Group, an Australia-based collective that will produce a wet laboratory in collaboration with scientists for the exhibition. Corpus Extremus (LIFE+) will travel to Russia in 2009.

PUBLIC EVENTS / BrainWave: Common Senses

Joseph Ledoux
The Amygdaloids
Friday, February 29, 2008, 6-8 pm

Pioneering researcher Joseph LeDoux, the Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at NYU's Center for Neural Science and the director of the Center for the Neuroscience of Fear and Anxiety conducts a walk-through of BrainWave: Common Senses, discussing brain-related issues along the way. His band The Amygdaloids plays afterwards. Free.

A Night of Trance Music
Friday, March 14, 7-10 pm

Exit Art presents a night of "trance" music with Zach Layton's real-time sound manipulation of an electroencephalograph (EEG), Wind-Up Bird's quadraphonic drone rotations, and Raphael Lyon's hypnotic "cinema-in-the-dark," Psicklops. Free.

Matt Mullican
Wednesday, March 19, 7-9 pm
*Date Change - TBA

Artist Matt Mullican screens a video of his performances made while under hypnosis and discusses his work in relation to perception, the subconscious, and his personal cosmology of symbols. Concurrent with the artist's presentation in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. Free.

Kent and Kevin Young present
'A Monozygotic Experiment Using Telepathic Conveyance'
Friday, April 11, 2008, 6:30-8 pm

Los Angeles-based artists Kent and Kevin Young will make a 'painting' by trying to solve a crossword puzzle from clues telepathically sent from one twin brother to the other. Free

EXHIBITION SUPPORT
Brainwave: Common Senses is supported by a grant from the Greenwall Foundation. Additional exhibition support provided by Carnegie Corporation, Jerome Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, Starry Night Fund at The Tides Foundation, Exit Art's Board of Trustees, our members, Union College and the Albany Regional Sleep Disorders Center. Public programs support provided by The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

ABOUT EXIT ART
Exit Art is an independent center for contemporary culture that aims to react immediately to important issues of the day. The center mounts experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues from the perspective a multiple disciplines. Founded 25 years ago by directors Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo, Exit Art has grown from a pioneering alternative art space into a model artistic center for the 21st century committed to supporting artists whose quality of work reflects the transformations of our culture.

Exit Art is located at 475 Tenth Avenue, corner of 36th Street. Exit Art is open each Tuesday through Thursday, 10 am - 6 pm; Friday, 10 am - 8 pm; Saturday, noon - 8 pm. Closed Sunday and Monday. There is a suggested donation of $5. For more information please call 212-966-7745 or visit www.exitart.org.

LOVE /WAR/SEX

2008-01-10T00:12:00.004-05:00

LOVE / WAR / SEX
December 1, 2007- Janurary 26, 2008

Opened Saturday December 1, 7-10pm with The Rude Mechanical Orchestra a click to view 5 minute video of the Gallery opening of LOVE/WAR/SEX

Exit Art tell you the war stories through the vision of 9 international artists. Love/War/Sex considers memory, history, weapons and personal stories. As a cultural center, it is Exit Art's mission to reflect what is going on in our society. The installation reveals how war images are so common that it makes us immune to death. This art work is a chapter of the history of power. The present exhibitions deal with the current global conflicts and the countries fascination and addition to war. The title demonstrates the paradox of what war really is and it contradictions of emotions, passions, idealisms and convictions. The installation of Love/War/Sex includes real weapons of war in the show, while telling the stories of the relationship between love, war and sex and its brutality and insensitivity to humanity. It provokes surprise and shock with the realization of war. Click her to view LOV/WAR/SEX at Exit Art.

Zadie Smith

2008-01-06T01:37:00.001-05:00

Thus far, Zadie Smith is one of the great writers of my generation. I read White Teeth and On Beauty. I love that she envelops who she is in the story line. The dysfunction and inadequacies which permeate through her family structure are often woven into the character she creates. Hence, the perils of the human experience make for good fiction. I am amused at her amazing comparative cultural antitheticals which seamlessly convey the symbiotic mural of life(one planet, one people, with cultural differences). Her British dry wit, clever sarcasm, illusive charm, and exhaustive imagery makes for great humor and a well develop plot leaving the reader wanting more. Zadie definitely exemplifies the typical Impetuous 30Something Cosmopolitan.

JANICE SIMPSON wrote in April 2006 TIME magazine wrote Zadie Smith's books. They arm wrestle, get in one another's faces and climb into one another's beds. Smith's precocious debut novel, White Teeth, published in 2000, just three years after she graduated from Cambridge, centers on two World War II buddies—a white working-class Brit married to a Jamaican Jehovah's Witness and a Muslim immigrant from Bangladesh who imports what he thinks will be a traditional wife from the old country. But it's also the story of their children, who grow up, as Smith did, in a post-postcolonial London where the old gentlemen's agreements about class and race are being shredded. The book earned lavish critical praise, was turned into a TV mini-series and established a model for how to make sense—and art—out of the complexity, diversity and pluck that have defined the beginning of this century.

Smith, 30, likes to work big. Her narratives sprawl with Dickensian swagger. Her cultural references leap the high-low divide from John Milton to Eminem. Plus she's funny. Refugees from the era of political correctness and others who are easily offended probably should stay clear. Last year Smith published On Beauty, a novel set in the hothouse of American academia and scheduled to be made into a movie produced by Scott Rudin, who has adapted such provocative works as The Hours and Closer for the screen. Like White Teeth and her second novel, The Autograph Man it is simultaneously intellectual and visceral, a panoramic view of the way we live now.

Interview with Zadie in Stockholm 2006
Double click bottom arrow to view an interview with Zadie Smith in Stockholm the summer of 2006 when her book On Beauty had been translated into Swedish.

James Lasdun's review on the Novel "On Beauty" (Source: The Gaudian UK)
I completely agree with the James Lasdun's review of Zadie Smith’s newest novel On Beauty.
He wrote: among the many tasks Zadie Smith sets herself in her ambitious, hugely impressive new novel is that of finding a style at once flexible enough to give voice to the multitude of different worlds it contains, and sturdy enough to keep the narrative from disintegrating into a babel of incompatible registers. Its principal family alone, the Belseys, comprises its own little compact multiverse of clashing cultures: the father a white English academic, the mother a black Floridian hospital administrator, one son a budding Jesus freak, the other a would-be rapper and street hustler, the daughter a specimen of US student culture at its most rampagingly overdriven. Still more worlds open up beyond them as their lives unravel out through the genteel Massachusetts college town to which they have been transplanted: Haitian immigrants, hip-hop poets, New England liberal intelligentsia, reactionary black conservatives .

White Teeth had a similarly heterogenous cast, but whereas in that novel Smith kept it together by keeping it light, with a knockabout comic style (Dickens, by way of Rushdie and Martin Amis), here the intent is to live more inwardly with her characters, and the model, alluded to throughout, is EM Forster.
Forster's style, which looks simultaneously backward to the epigrammatic polish of Jane Austen and forward to the looser, more discursive amplitude we favour today, resonates strongly in the leisured cadences and playful figuration of the many beautiful descriptions and gently ironic authorial interjections that frame and connect the bright pieces of Smith's mosaic. You can hear it in everything from the stately scene-setting passages (particularly where rooms or houses are being evoked) to the most incidental moments, for example where the lovelorn elder Belsey boy joins his mother and her middle-aged friends at an outdoor festival: "Jerome, in all his gloomy Jeromeity, had joined them. The ill-pitched greetings that compassionate age sings to mysterious youth rang out; hair was almost tousled then wisely not ... "

More specifically, the plot of Forster's Howards End, ingeniously re-engineered, underpins much of the storyline of On Beauty. The unruly Belseys, like Forster's Schlegels, become embroiled with another family whose conventional household seems the stolid opposite of their own. In both cases the wives form a surprising friendship that leads to a valuable legacy being bequeathed by one woman to the other. And in both cases the family of the deceased woman conceals the legacy from her surviving friend.

Orbiting in this capacity around the Belseys are the Kippses, presided over by Sir Monty Kipps, an orotund West Indian intellectual who delights in provoking liberals with his ultra-conservative views on homosexuality, affirmative action and so on. Sir Monty has written a popular appreciation of Rembrandt which Howard Belsey, himself an art historian, though of a more highbrow bent, has denounced for its retrogressive stance. Unfortunately his attack was marred by a factual error which Sir Monty has wasted no time in exploiting to maximum humiliating effect, and vague dislike on Howard's part has turned to boiling resentment, exacerbated by the fact that he has been unable to complete his own book, Against Rembrandt. To this self-inflicted injury the opening chapters add two choice insults: first Howard's elder son falls in love with Sir Monty's daughter Vee, and then Sir Monty is offered a visiting celebrity appointment at Wellington, the very college at which Howard himself teaches.

With the self-righteous Kippses thus plumped down on the doorstep of the self-sabotaging Belseys, the situation has the makings of a small-scale campus comedy with scope for all the familiar farcical posturings so dear to the heart of academe. But while Smith does indeed deliver a superbly wicked example of that genre, this is only a small part of her achievement. Large, Forsterian themes of friendship, marriage (the Belseys' is in crisis following Kiki Belsey's discovery that Howard has been unfaithful), social tension, artistic expression (from Rembrandt to Tupac) are meditated on with an unguarded seriousness rare in contemporary fiction, and to some extent the book could be seen as a rather heroic attempt to dignify contemporary life with a mirror held up in the grandly burnishing Bloomsbury manner.

But that isn't quite it either. The word "liminality", which a student of Howard's has to look up at one point (she would have found that it has to do with thresholds and boundaries), perhaps best expresses the driving idea of the novel and the source of its most powerful passages. These occur some way along, after the plot has been laid and the book begins coasting on its own momentum. They consist of a series of encounters in which the discrete worlds incarnated in these highly diverse characters start colliding and breaking each other open. At its most basic, the illumination that results is simply that of the surprise perspective - Levi Belsey applying his hip-hop worldview to a casual thought about Richard Branson: "Levi liked the way the mythical British guy who owned the brand was like a graffiti artist, tagging the world ... " But in its more sustained form this collision principle becomes a way of taking apart and investigating elemental human configurations: parent and child, teacher and student (some of the most sensitive writing I've read on what actually goes on in this particular relationship), black and white, employer and employee.

A degree of psychological violence is always implicit in such mutual broachings: Kiki Belsey's gravitation toward Carlene Kipps is a betrayal of her own husband; minor, but forceful enough to set off a cascade of reappraisals of both Howard and herself in her own mind. Sometimes the impact sets off a whole ricocheting chain of further encounters. Howard Belsey, usually armoured with a sneer (or a snore) against anything overtly "sublime" in art, becomes unexpectedly overwhelmed when a choir breaks into Mozart's Ave Verum at Carlene Kipps's funeral in London. He reels out of the church, the shock of mortality reverberating in his head, and finds himself wandering toward his childhood home in Cricklewood, where his father, whom he hasn't seen for years, still lives. Here, as the conciliatory impulse gives way to ancient antagonisms, a still more devastating confrontation takes place, and Howard careens off again, first to a pub, then to Carlene's wake where, drunk and dazed, he allows himself to be seduced in an upstairs room by ... well, by about the last person on earth he should be allowing himself to be seduced by.

A further pleasure of these charged encounters is the extraordinary vividness with which they have been imagined. Beautifully observed details of clothing, weather, cityscapes and the bustling human background of drivers, shoppers and passers-by are constantly being folded into the central flow of thought, feeling and action, giving even the most mundane moments - Levi riding a bus into Boston, Howard setting up a projector - a dense, pulsing life.

There are flaws, of course (and not just the portentous title). The beginning feels awkward: remnants of an older style full of grabby italics and wisecracking dialogue sit uncomfortably alongside the richer, more complex tone that takes over. Fussily choreographed bits of physical action (such as Howard showing off hip-hop moves to the gleeful horror of his kids) give some of the early family scenes a sitcom feeling - not so much visualised as televisualised. The plot clunks a bit at first, too: a laboriously contrived trip to London premised on some unconvincing business about a lost address book; the convenient coincidence of Sir Monty being offered a job at Howard's college. More seriously, some of the characters appear blurry or under-drawn - especially Kiki Belsey, who seems intended to embody a kind of feelingful alternative to Howard's hyper-intellectuality but never quite comes out from behind the enormous bosom with which her creator has a little too symbolically endowed her. Also Sir Monty, who's fun, but too cartoonish for his inevitable exposure as a hypocrite to pack much of a punch.

But with so much done so extremely well, it seems ungrateful to dwell on imperfections. Numerous virtues more than make up for them: characters such as Claire Malcolm, an east coast poet/intellectual portrayed with a stunningly accurate feeling for the type. Or Carl, a sharp, touching study of a ghetto teenager making good, done with all the volatile political and sexual currents set in motion by such a progress. Or Howard Belsey himself, who starts out like an escapee from a Malcolm Bradbury novel but whose limitless capacity for folly keeps deepening and strangely sweetening his character. Above all, just the sheer novelistic intelligence - expansive, witty and magnanimous - that irradiates the whole enterprise.

James Lasdun's The Horned Man is published by Vintage

=======>About the Author======>(Source: Wikapedia)
Zadie Smith was born Sadie Smith (she changed her name when she was 14) in the northwest London borough of Brent – a largely working-class area – to a Jamaican mother, Yvonne McLean, and an English father, Harvey Smith. Her mother had grown up in Jamaica and immigrated to England in 1969. It was her father's second marriage. She has a half-sister, a half-brother, and two younger brothers, one of whom is the rapper Doc Brown. Her parents divorced when she was a teenager.

As a child she was fond of tap dancing; as a teenager she considered a career as an actress in musical theatre; and as a university student she earned money as a jazz singer and wanted to become a journalist. Literature, however, came to be her principal interest.

Smith attended the local state schools, Malorees Junior School and Hampstead Comprehensive School, and King's College, Cambridge University where she studied English literature.[1] In an interview with the Guardian in 2000, Smith was keen to correct a recent newspaper assertion that she left Cambridge with a double First. "Actually, I got a Third in my Part Ones", she said. At Cambridge she published a number of short stories in a collection of student writing (see Short stories) called the May Anthologies. These attracted the attention of a publisher who offered her a contract for her first novel. Smith decided to contact a literary agent and was taken on by the Wylie Agency on the basis of little more than a first chapter.

White Teeth was introduced to the publishing world in 1997, long before it was completed. On the basis of a partial script an auction among different publishers for the rights started, with Hamish Hamilton being successful. Smith completed White Teeth during her final year at Cambridge. Published in 2000, the novel became a bestseller immediately. It was praised internationally and won a number of awards (see Novels).

In interviews she reported that the hype surrounding her first novel had caused her to suffer a short spell of writer's block. Nevertheless, her second novel, The Autograph Man, was published in 2002 and was a commercial success, although the critical response was not as unanimously positive as it had been to White Teeth.

After the publication of The Autograph Man, Smith visited the United States as a 2002–2003 Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Fellow at Harvard University. [1] She started work on a book of essays, The Morality of the Novel, in which she considers a selection of 20th century writers through the lens of moral philosophy.

Her third novel, On Beauty, was published in September 2005 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. The book won the 2006 Orange Prize for Fiction.

Smith met Nick Laird at Cambridge University. They married in 2004 in the Chapel of King's College. Smith dedicated On Beauty "for my dear Laird." Laird has published a collection of poems, To a Fault, and a novel, Utterly Monkey, early in 2005. The couple lives in North London, UK.

Tom Byrne Paintings in Paris

2008-01-05T23:08:00.000-05:00

Tom Byrne is an Ireland born Parisian painter with 20 years of painting of his belt. Tom's day job is as a freelance illustrator who specializes in creating award winning illustrations for media campaigns, outdoor advertising campaigns, web communication, packaging, large posters, point of sale and F.M.C.G promotion, corporate portraits. Tom's work exudes a spirit that speaks to viewer, with impeccable creative expression. Tom's work will be on display in a NYC galary in beginning of 2008. More of his work can be viewed Tom J.Byrnes Studio
Contact: tj@tjbyrne.com and view updates on Living Painting

Erns 2
The Erns is a beautiful portrait with details the angles of his chiseled face. Many painters focus on the eyes to display a moving subject. I believe an artist must have depth to their soul to be able capture the essence of a subject and project an image that moves the viewer. So delicately achieved in the nape of the subject’s neck. Title: Erns 2
Media: Oils and Tempera
Location: Paris
Size:H 24 inches (61cm) x W 19 inches
©T.J.Byrne

The Cry of the Earth
Tom Byrnes describes this surreal piece…. "This image came to my mind several years ago and I made a drawing. It has continued to come to my mind as the terrible effects of man made climate change wreck havoc on the world. The planet will survive ultimately but as it attempts to cleanse itself of the cause of the damage a lot of ecosystems and species will be destroyed. Something to ponder. Tempera and oils on board."
Title: Earths Cry
Media: Tempera and Oils
Location: Paris
Size:
© T.J.Byrne

Title: Amelie with Green
Media: tempera and Oil
Location: Paris
Size:
© T.J.Byrne

NYC's uber-groovy APT Lounge is 8 years old

2008-01-01T06:06:00.000-05:00

Why does acid jazz, disco house and trance music sound so much better, and feel so better when one listens to it in an aesthetically exquisite surrounding, with reasonably priced drinks and small prortioned treats? Is it just me, or does the thought of going to a lounge that plays the music you like, no matter how esoteric, bring you immense joy also? If so, check out the APT lounge located in NYC meat packing area.

The apartment has been a staple in New York since the 2000. When the APT lounge opened, there was nothing else in the neighborhood, but the meat packing industry meat lockers. APT has maintained its low key identity as a haven of high quality, diverse music in a superbly designed setting with phenomenal sound system. The club has played host to everyone from Luke Vibert to Grandmaster Flash, Nicky Siano and Laurent Garnier and held residence with Bobbito Garcia, Rick Medina, Theo Parrish, Dirtybird, Jazzy Jeff and many others.

When APT first opened, the address was anonymous. People would walk up and down W. 13th Street for any signs of this nightlife location. It was an interesting idea, if you found the secret buzzer. Once in, one can go to the upstairs restaurant or the downstairs which was a quintessential New York bar with its DJ’s and beautiful people. It looks like a trendy furnished apartment. It’s been there for eight years, the secret is out, a nd it’s still uber-groovy.

The Pink Project - Brad Pitt Interview with Larry King

2007-12-20T18:01:00.000-05:00

Brad Pitt on Larry King podcast (1)

Brad Pitt on Larry King podcast (2)

Brad Pitt on Larry King podcast (3)

Brad Pitt on Larry King podcast (4)

Brad Pitt on Larry King podcast (5)

Brad Pitt busy making it right in the Lower 9th Ward

2007-12-18T17:48:00.000-05:00

Brad Pitt is my hero.
At the center of a buzzing construction zone in the heart of the worst-ravaged corner of the Lower 9th Ward, movie megastar Brad Pitt took a break Sunday afternoon to imagine the future.

Strewn around him a half-mile in every direction were hundreds of enormous pink blocks, 8-foot-high boxes and huge triangular wedges, representing the uprooted foundations and dislocated roofs that littered the area beside the Industrial Canal for months after Hurricane Katrina.

"Right now there are scattered blocks, like they were scattered by fate's hand, symbolic of the aftermath of the storm," Pitt said as crews installed more of the metal-and-tarp structures. "But we will be flipping the homes, essentially righting the wrong."

In his first extensive one-on-one interview since moving his family to New Orleans last year, Pitt shared with The Times-Picayune on Sunday details of this next phase of his $12 million "Make It Right" project: a vast public art display to be unveiled today as a fundraiser to expand the project beyond its initial goal of 150 homes, and possibly into other neighborhoods and parishes.

Pitt, 43, also spoke of his years-long love for New Orleans, which he thinks will thrive again despite the propensity of some public officials to let the city "die on the vine," and his hope that national leaders will use the ongoing disaster as an impetus to retool public policy with an eye toward the poor.

Katrina "illuminated the brutal truth that there's a portion of our society that we're not looking after, that we are marginalizing. And that shouldn't be," said Pitt, who watched the horrific televised images of the flooded city in 2005 from Calgary, Alberta, where he was filming the 2006 movie "The Assassination of Jesse James."

Green-friendly homes

• Hear the interview

Steering the conversation away from himself, Pitt focused on Make It Right's efforts to build affordable, environmentally friendly, storm-safe houses for residents of the Lower 9th Ward on the same lots where their old homes once stood. In announcing the project in September at a meeting of world leaders on global warming, Pitt and philanthropist Steve Bing pledged $5 million each to jump-start the project.

"This cannot be about me," he said Sunday from inside a trailer at the project site. "I am fortunate to have a big spotlight in my hand, and I can point it in a direction."

Today that place will be the section of the Lower 9th Ward best-known as the spot where a barge came to rest after floating through a fractured levee. Pitt is slated to lead news reporters on a tour around the area's conglomeration of pink art pieces, then to issue a public call to corporations, foundations and church organizations around the world to "adopt" the blocks, for $150,000 each, to support his project.

Donors also will be invited to make smaller gifts -- from $5 to $45,500 -- to sponsor the individual elements of the houses' eco-friendly designs, such as fluorescent bulbs, low-flush toilets and solar-panel installations. More information is available at the project's Web site, www.makeitrightnola.org.

With the average house slated to cost between $100,000 and $174,000, planners expect participants to contribute some money, including insurance and Road Home proceeds, toward construction. But they expect most homeowners will fall about $70,000 short of paying off their new homes. To fill the gap, Make It Right plans to offer forgivable loans of as much as $100,000, with the caveat that applicants must have owned a home or lot in the Lower 9th Ward before Katrina.

Pink 'screams the loudest'

Eventually, Pitt said, planners will turn the all-natural pink fabric covering into novelty items, such as bags, that will be sold to raise more money.

"Why pink? For me it screams the loudest," Pitt said. "It says that this place, where so many people thrived, is still sitting there like a barren wasteland, and we can change that."

In addition to being a tool for fundraising, the giant pink pieces will, Pitt said, become the ornamentation for a nightly driving tour in the style of City Park's annual "Celebration in the Oaks" festival, albeit with a more somber focus. Expected to open to the public Tuesday evening and extend for five weeks, the tour will feature the large pieces interspersed with 1,000 smaller bulbs representing the residents who died in Katrina. All the lights will be solar-powered, he said.

In addition, the whole installation will be laid out in the precise pattern of the constellations as they glowed on the night of Aug. 29, 2005, he said.

Though the vast work of art aims to draw attention to the Make It Right project, Pitt said it also reflects the "vitality" of the city that he first visited in 1994 during the filming of "Interview with the Vampire" and adopted as his home a year ago, when he and his partner, actress Angelina Jolie, bought a house in the French Quarter.

New Orleans is "the only place that we could do something as crazy as what you see out there and it not be considered so crazy, that it (could) actually be fun," he said. "This is the place of Mardi Gras. This is the place where I had a parade going by my house yesterday. I have no idea what for. It was at noon. I have no idea, but it made me smile."

'We love it here'

Saying he plans to spend the next several weekends in the city, Pitt reiterated a point he has made before: that New Orleans offers himself, Jolie and their four children uncommon tranquillity.

"We love it here," he said. "And for some reason we can have some semblance of a normal life here. The folks treat us so well and give us space and let us be a family. We don't have that luxury in other major cities."

A prime focus of Pitt's work in the coming months will be helping a team of nearly 200 planners, many working for free, turn Make It Right plans into reality. Tom Darden, the project's executive director, said 13 architecture firms from around the globe that lent their efforts pro bono have finished schematic designs and are working on blueprints.

Eight pilot families have been chosen, all with lots in the three blocks of Tennessee Street between North Claiborne Avenue and Galvez Street, Darden said. Construction is expected to begin by the end of March.

"I am telling you, there are going to be families returning into homes, they'll be spending Christmas here next year," Pitt said. "They won't have to spend another Christmas away from home. Next Thanksgiving: turkey dinner."

Pitt acknowledged that even as Make It Right nears groundbreaking on its pilot homes, the project he first pitched to residents in February has faced hurdles, including the deep skepticism of a community where residents lived for years amid abandoned properties, failing public schools and escalating crime fueled by the illegal drug trade.

Cautiously optimistic, residents demanded full participation in the project. And they got it by way of weekly meetings in their neighborhood with architects and planners. Each time architects returned from their drawing boards, residents have said, their plans included more of neighbors' suggestions, from the inclusion of backup fuel sources for solar-powered appliances to wheelchair ramps to reach elevated first floors.

"I come from Missouri," Pitt said. "They call it the Show Me State. I grew up with the same nature. When you know the story here, (can you) question that the locals here would question some outsider coming in?

"Look at the way the freeways are laid in," he said. "They're just laid right on top of neighborhoods. It's so clear some of them were laid out for the needs of a few and not the needs of many."

'A social justice issue'

Aiming to even the balance, Pitt -- a professed "technology junkie" -- has steered his curiosity about advances in environmental design into a requirement that any Make It Right house incorporate such items as energy-efficient appliances, south-facing roofs laden with solar panels, outdoor space for composting, and interior finishes made from products that are not harmful to residents' health or the environment.

"This to me is a social justice issue, too," he said. "They're not getting the crap materials that give your kids asthma, increase your health bills. They're not getting the cheap appliances that are going to run up your bills and keep that burden on you. It's a respectful way to treat people."

Broadly, Pitt said he hopes such issues will be raised during the 2008 presidential campaign. He also wants candidates to address directly the ongoing struggle of hurricane victims across the Gulf Coast.

"I would challenge all the candidates to focus on what's going on down here, what's not going on here," he said. "We're going to build some houses here, but there are bigger issues that need to get answered here, such as education and health. These need to be major factors of the campaign.

"My point is: If you can't get it right down here, you're not getting it right anywhere. This is the place to do it, and there's definitely a need for it right now. I hope to see it become one of the major issues of the upcoming campaign, not as a tool to beat the past administration but as a real focus on the problems of this country."

Even as Make It Right revs up, Pitt said he remains concerned about New Orleans' future and criticized the failure of local leaders to make clear decisions, such as which parts of the city will be rebuilt and how.

"Someone said that it was like it was being left to die on the vine, and I couldn't put it any better than that, meaning there's no real effort either way," he said. "There's just been no clear line drawn."

Public officials say, "'We want you to come back, but we're only going to give you a little bit (of money) to come back.' It just hasn't been a strong enough, clear plan of direction," he said.

Nevertheless, Pitt said residents' resilience will pull the city back to its feet.

"The thing is, I don't believe it will ever die on the vine," he said. "There's just too many seventh-generation families. They're not letting this place go under."

Michelle Krupa, staff writer December 02, 2007
Michelle Krupa can be reached at mkrupa@timespicyune.com or (504) 826-3312.

The Long Journey of Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings

2007-12-16T09:29:00.000-05:00

Sharon Jones "It's a Man's World" Encore!!!!!

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings are a funk/soul band. They are signed to Daptone Records, where the Dap-Kings are the house band. They are widely thought to be spearheads of a revivalist movement that aims to capture the essence of funk/soul music as it was at its height in the mid-1960s to mid-1970s. Part of the way this is achieved is to shun modern digital recording methods in favour of using traditional analogue recording equipment. The type of instruments used by the band may also be considered limited to those that would have been available up until the mid seventies.

Daptone: a new label and the birth of the Dap-Kings
In 2000, due to a growing difference of opinion, Lehman and Roth decided to go separate ways and both set up new labels. Philip Lehman set up Soul Fire Records (now defunct, the back catalogue is handled by Truth & Soul Records). Gabriel Roth went on to start Daptone Records with Sugarman 3 saxophonist Neal Sugarman. The Soul Providers split and a new band, the Dap-Kings formed. The band was consisted of label owners Roth AKA Bosco Mann on bass and Neal Sugarman on Saxophone, plus original Soul Providers: guitarist Binky Griptite, organist Earl Maxton, percussionist Fernando Velez and trumpeter Anda Szilagyi. Joining them were original members of the Mighty Imperials whose album, Thunder Chicken, was the last release on the Desco label: tenor saxophonist Leon Michels and drummer Homer Steinwess.
Having secured a summer residency at The Boite, a club in Barcelona, Spain, the band recorded an LP, Dap Dippin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in 2001. A few hundred copies were pressed, so that sales during the residency would provide financial backing on what would have otherwise been a financially disastrous trip. With promotional copies reaching notable funk DJs and reviewers, the album gained a significant reputation and was officially released as the first LP and CD on Daptone Records in 2002 to universal acclaim amongst enthusiasts. In their review at the time, quarterly hip-hop and funk magazine Big Daddy (defunct) suggested that it might be the best new funk album ever, credited Roth with being "one of the best analogue producers there is" and stated "this LP is a major triumph and a new standard has been set".

An exhausting schedule of international shows then followed to promote the album and it quickly became clear that promotion of Sharon Jones would be key to the success of the Daptone label. Whilst trying to build upon the revue style stable showcasing and trying to record other groups and artists on the label, other projects have to a certain extent been sidelined in favour of building on the success of Sharon Jones. Expected albums from Lee Fields and Naomi Davis have so far been victim to a lack of time, funds and energy a small independent label has. Neal Sugarman's own band Sugarman 3 who have themselves released several popular albums including one on the Daptone label, Pure Cane Sugar, have also been somewhat sidelined.

Following the album, three 45's of note, not included on the album where also released. "What If We all Stopped Paying Taxes", released in 2002 just ahead of the U.S. Election, was a militant anti-war statement denouncing the Iraq War. "Genuine (parts 1 & 2)" in 2004 was an uncompromisingly hard funk record which firmly kept the interest of enthusiasts and their cover of "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)", released in 2005 but which was apparently recorded for a KFC commercial in 2002 but was never used.

Desco: the early years
The original incarnation of the band, the Soul Providers, were formed in the mid nineties by Philip Lehman and Gabriel Roth AKA Bosco Mann. The Soul Providers began recording an album consisting of James Brown inspired instrumentals and vocal collaborations with Deep Funk legend Lee Fields. It was during these sessions that Roth and Lehman discovered vocalist Sharon Jones after she recorded backing vocals for one of the Lee Fields tracks. They were impressed enough to record a solo track with Jones entitled "Switchblade", a track that had originally been intended for a man to record. This track along with another Jones solo, "The Landlord", were included on the Soul Providers debut release Soul Tequila, released circa 1996 on the French label Pure Records (defunct). Lehman and Roth then started a new label in Brooklyn, New York. Desco Records was born taking its name from Desco Vacuum, a vacuum cleaner store in West 41st Street underneath which they utilised the basement as studio space and an office to administer and distribute the label. Sugarman 3 organist Adam Scone just happened to live upstairs in the same building. The Soul Tequila album was then reissued as a vinyl only LP renamed Gimme The Paw. The record, which featured Lehman's pet dog Spike on the cover, only kept one of the Sharon Jones collaborations, "Switchblade", omitting "The Landlord".

Having established a scene in New York of performers, Desco aimed to showcase a stable of artists with revue style shows and concentrated on releasing vinyl 45 records by a number of artists including Sugarman 3, The Daktaris, The Mighty Imperials, Naomi Davis & The Knights of 41st Street, Lee Fields, Joseph Henry and Sharon Jones, who backed by the Soul Providers who had become the Desco house band, released three 45's on the label. Desco Records were gaining intrigue and reputation for quality amongst soul/funk collectors and enthusiasts. Many people who bought the early records were unsure that they were modern recordings as recording dates were deliberately omitted from the labels and were often marketed as being released in the 1970s. Two other Soul Providers albums were released, an instrumental soundtrack to a mysterious Sam Lung Kung-Fu film, The Revenge Of Mr Mopoji, credited to Mike Jackson And The Soul Providers and a Lee Fields solo album Let's Get A Groove On where the Soul Providers provided the backing.

Personnel changes
By this time there were a few personnel changes, as organist Earl Maxton and trumpeter Anda Szilagyi officially became members of Antibalas, a New York based afrobeat band. Whilst Maxton was not replaced on organ, Trumpeter David Guy was recruited on trumpet. Also from the Budos Band, Thomas Brenneck, a second guitarist was added. In 2003 the Daptone Recording Studio, complete with a sixteen track analogue tape machine was open for business. It was originally intended to record two albums back-to-back to speed up the next release process. However during the final sessions of the first of these albums, Gabriel Roth suffered serious eye injuries in a car crash on his way home from the studio. This led to a break in the recording process and ultimately plans to limit the sessions to only one album. Their second LP and CD, Naturally, was then released in 2005. This album was a more broad based album than the first (which almost completely consisted of funk numbers) and included a mix of both soul and funk influences. The sleeve notes, written by Gabriel Roth, provided some insight into the vision behind the music, "Somewhere between banging on logs and the invention of M.I.D.I. technology we have made a terrible wrong turn. We must have ridden right past our stop. We should have stepped down off the train at that moment when rhythm and harmony and technology all culminated to a single Otis Redding whine. That moment of the truest, most genuine expression of what it means to be human." The production and recording values of this album were also noticeably crisper than that of the first - attaining a sound similar to the kind of production standard achieved by James Brown at his height, rather than the slightly duller "scratchy 45" sound of the original album. With, again, international acclaim amongst enthusiasts and a steadily growing base of both fans and now imitators, the band embarked on more extensive international tours and promotion of the album.

Leon Michels left the band soon after the release of Naturally to help start a new label Truth & Soul Records on the back of a solo LP that was originally intended to be released on Daptone, Sounding Out The City, credited to El Michels Affair. The label would also fill the void left when Philip Lehman closed the Soul Fire label and moved to the Bahamas, leaving the scene altogether. The back catalogue of Soul Fire would then be handled by Truth & Soul Records who, along with Soul Fire often used many of the same artists in their stable, such as Lee Fields, Homer Steinweiss and Thomas Brenneck but of whom Leon Michels had been the biggest collaborator. Michels replacement in the Dap-kings came as Ian Hendrickson-Smith, a local saxophone player who has released several jazz albums under his own name.

Collaborations
The Dap-Kings were then hired as session musicians on a number of projects associated with New York based DJ/producer/recording artist Mark Ronson. Most notable of these is their extensive inclusion and somewhat unheralded contribution to Amy Winehouse's album Back to Black (2006). Six of the album's eleven tracks feature various members of the Dap-Kings with two notable hits from the album, "Rehab" and "You Know I'm No Good", extensively featuring the Dap-Kings. A further engineering credit goes to Gabriel Roth and several tracks recorded at Daptone Studios are mis-credited as "Dapking Studios". Again various members of the band feature on Ronson's second album, Version (2007), providing contributions on all but one of the album's fourteen tracks. The Dap-Kings then became the backing band used on Amy Winehouse's first U.S. tour. In 2007 the Dap-Kings worked with British singer Ben Westbeech to record a new version of his song "So Good Today"; it was released to mark the first anniversary of Brownswood recordings, the label Westbeech is signed to in the UK.

Charity: Water

2007-12-15T16:58:00.000-05:00

charity water ball with adrian grenier and jessica stam

Estelle - Wait A Minute [Just A Touch] (live at Later...)

2007-11-30T11:26:00.000-05:00

Estelle Live!

John Legend on Radio One
Estelle. The British singer-rapper-songwriter-producer's "Shine" will be the first release on Legend's HomeSchool label through Atlantic Records.

"Wait a Minute (Just a Touch)" is the lead single from the project, slated for release Feb. 12, 2008. Executive-produced by Legend, "Shine2" features production by Wyclef Jean, will.i.am, Swizz Beatz and Mark Ronson as well as Legend, who also has a cameo in the "Wait" video. Guests include Kanye West (on the track "American Boy") and Cee-Lo.

Asked about other artists on the HomeSchool roster, Legend tells Billboard.com that no one else is signed yet and the label is non-exclusive. "This isn't a blanket imprint. There will be some artists a label partner may like and some they don't. I'm doing this one at a time."

Estelle, whose music draws comparisons to Lauryn Hill, was born in West London. She's previously released material through her own label, Stellar Ents, including the album "The 18th Day" and two "Da Heat" mixtapes. She first met Legend several years ago at Roscoe's chicken and waffle eatery in Hollywood; he and West were taking a break from working on the latter's "The College Dropout" when Estelle came up to their table and introduced herself.

The now New York-based Estelle will be visiting major cities starting in November, according to Legend. She tosses aside concerns raised about the failure of many British R&B/rap artists to connect with stateside audiences, saying "I'm just going to be me, and keep my mind on what I do. I think people will get it."

Legend agrees. "It's all about the songs and music. British soul artists haven't come with the right music. Estelle has the right music and producers; her music will speak for itself. She's undeniably a star."

As for his next album, Legend says he's three songs (one of which features will.i.am) into what he's planning as a summer 2008 release. In the meantime, he's just returned from Zanzibar and Tanzania where he shot the video for his latest single, "Show Me." It was directed by Lee Hirsch, the filmmaker behind the 2002 South Africa documentary "Amandla!: A Revolution in Four-Part Harmony."
________________________________________
Gail Mitchell, L.A., Copyright 2007, Billboard/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved

James Blunt - 1973 (live at Later...)

2007-11-29T12:37:00.000-05:00

Michael Slezark, from “Snap Judgment”, wrote a scathing review of James Blunt’s ‘1973’ single which was hilarious. He wrote: Granted, there's a strong chance I'm still suffering from a case of post-"You're Beautiful" Stress Disorder (PYBSD), but hearing Blunt's slippery mewl on this mid-tempo track makes me want to snap my ears off.

It appears Michael may not be suffering from PYBSD, but WMHD (Whining Male Hater Disorder). It’s baffling how some men can turn a blind eye to misogyny but have a whining fit when other men express their sensitive adoration towards a woman. Sure, there is no problem with a man crush submissive towards an athlete, but the adoration or frustration due to a woman is their Achilles heel. Seems to me, Michael was channeling Vincent Van gogh, and James Blunt is his Rachel/Paul Guaguin. Never the less, it’s beautiful music to my ears, even if Michael might be deaf. James Blunt’s Ode’s to his loves are like icing on the cake, which makes me salivate. Keep it coming and coming and coming James.

James Blunt

4STARS

Barak Obama Speech Covered on Hardball

2007-11-25T02:41:00.000-05:00

Change and Hope has become something Americans have forgotten. Most Americans understand that we must preserve the planet, improve our economy, increase the value of the US dollar, and rebuild global trust as a country. It’s ironic that we are less safe today, because interest groups and corporations have utilized our government has bully and oppressed other nations with little regard for diplomacy or respect. It is clear that our government’s efforts to ensure our nation’s security have more to do with corporate greed than national security. It appears there is a need for leadership that will help preserve the planet, preserve the freedoms and wealth of the country and not allow it to continue to erode, as the world turns against us for our infamous deeds.

I agree with Obama, engaged citizens working at the grassroots level can change the world. He said, “It’s not the magnitude of our problems, it is the smallness of our politics” the pettiness and greed. I too still believe that with all of America’s faults, there isn’t a better country on this planet. I’d like to keep it that way. In the past 6 years we have allowed the country to slowly topple; fewer jobs that pay the entire mortgage, bad healthcare coverage, no retirement and Trojan horse congressional acts which have become inadequate laws to protect our liberties. Essentially, we are becoming Russia. We can not allow this to continue to happen, as men and women have died for our liberties, great grandparents left their mother countries to come to the US for their liberties. We need change. The Chris Matthews Obama coverage in the clips below brings HOPE.

Barack Obama gives speech, Hardball interview (part 1)

Barack Obama gives speech, Hardball interview (part 2)

Barack Obama gives speech, Hardball interview (part 3)

Interviewpoint with Charity: water's founder Scott Harrison

2007-11-22T20:20:00.000-05:00

Scott Harrisson is the founder of Charity:water. Through awareness Charity: water will becom a movement. A movement for stainable life on this planet. One bottle at a time.

CHARITY: MISSION
Charity: is a nonprofit organization stimulating greater global awareness about extreme poverty, educating the public, and provoking compassionate and intelligent giving.

Charity:Water
1. EDUCATION & AWARENESS CAMPAIGNS
charity: believes both widespread education and awareness are essential for global change.

charity: campaigns present issues like water and sanitation, hunger, AIDS, and preventable disease in compelling ways to promote higher understanding. Through field research and the use of new technology, charity: produces multimedia exhibitions, events, public service announcements, and grassroots activities. Through a strong web presence, charity: creates and empowers a growing community of compassionate citizens.

2. PRODUCTS THAT GIVE.
charity: believes education and awareness are not enough.

charity: seeks to spark giving by restoring faith in low-level donations. Campaign-related products are developed and sold. 100% of all proceeds directly fund humanitarian programs. In an age of billion-dollar philanthropy, charity: believes that even small gifts can have great impact when spent wisely in the developing world.

3. CLOSING THE LOOP - PROVING ITcharity: believes there is power in showing results.

charity: proves the work done in the field, using Internet technology and volunteers with cameras to bring stories of transformed lives and communities back home. In real time, donors are able to see the difference their gifts have on those in need.

Scott Harrison on The Inteviewpoint pt 1

Scott Harrison on The Inteviewpoint pt 2

Scott Harrison's Story
Just more than two years ago I left the streets of New York City for the shores of West Africa. I'd made my living for years in the big Apple promoting top nightclubs and fashion events, for the most part living selfishly, thoughtlessly. Unhappy, I desperately needed a change in my life.

I asked myself.... What did the opposite of my life look like?

Service aboard a floating hospital with Mercy Ships, a humanitarian organization which offered free medical care in the world's poorest nations. Through surgery ships. They'd been doing it for more than 25 years, producing astonishing results and I'd never heard of them.

Top doctors and surgeons from all over the world left their practices and fancy lives to operate for free on thousands who had no access to medical care. The organization I soon found to be full of remarkable people. The chief medical officer was a surgeon who left Los Angeles to volunteer for two weeks - 19 years ago. He never looked or went back.

I was offered the position of ship photojournalist, and immediately traveled to Africa. At first, being the Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court felt strange. I traded my spacious midtown loft for a 150-square-foot cabin with bunk beds, roommates and cockroaches. Fancy restaurants were replaced by a mess hall feeding 400+ Army style. A prince in New York, now I was living in close community with 350 others. I felt like a pauper.

But once off the ship, I realized how good I really had it. In new surroundings, I was utterly astonished at the poverty that came into focus through my camera lens. Often through tears, I documented life and human suffering I'd thought unimaginable. In West Africa, I was a prince again. A king, in fact. A man with a bed and clean runningwater and food in my stomach.

I fell in love with Liberia - a country with no public electricity, running water or sewage - Living in a leper colony and exploring remote villages, I put a face to the world's 1.2 billion living in poverty. Those living on less than $365 a year - money I used to spend on a bottle of Grey Goose vodka at a fancy club. Before tip. Our medical staff would hold patient intake "screenings" and thousands would wait in line to be seen, many afflicted with deformities even Clive Barker hadn't thought of. Enormous, suffocating tumors - cleft lips, faces eaten by bacteria from water-borne diseases. I learned many of these medical conditions also existed here in the west, but were taken care of - never allowed to progress. The amount of blind people with no access to the 20 minute cataract surgery that could restore their sight - all part of this new world.

Over the next eight months, I met patients who taught me the meaning of courage. Slowly suffocating to death for years and yet pressing on, praying, hoping, surviving. It was an honor to photograph them. It was an honor to know them.

CHARITY:

For me, charity is practical. Sometimes easy, sometimes inconvenient, always necessary. It is the ability to use one's position of influence, relative wealth and power to affect lives for the better. charity is singular and achievable.

There's a biblical parable about a man beaten near death by robbers. Stripped naked, lying roadside - people pass him by, but one man stops. He picks him up and bandages his wounds. He puts him on his horse and walks alongside until they reach an inn. Checks him in and throws down his Amex. "Whatever he needs until he gets better."

Because he could.

The dictionary defines charity as simply the act of voluntarily giving to those in need. The word comes from the latin "caritas," or simply, love. In Colossians 3, the Bible instructs readers to "put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness."

Although i'm still not sure what that means, i love the idea. To wear charity.

Join us as we explore living differently.

– Scott Harrison

Tracy Reese 2008 Spring Collection

2007-11-19T00:35:00.000-05:00

Tracy Reese’s mastery of the dainty chiffon creation has become her signature style. Like the “little black dress”, Tracy’s collection evokes the beautifully simple pleasures of being pretty. Her signature style is fresh, crisp with perfect lines and as utterly identifiable as Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, or Donna Karen.

I absolutely love her use of retro organic colors, extraordinary texture and clean geometric silhouettes. Her remarkable use of chocolate, canary yellow and taupe colors made the garments ravishingly sophisticated. The Lavender swim suites brought a sense of Zen to the runway. The Tracy Reese 2008 spring collection was absolutely impeccable.

In the Elle interview below, Tracy describes her customer as adventurous, a lady whose personal style is noticed as it shines, and she appreciates the care and detail in her wardrobe. I think the Tracy Reese collection exemplifies the classic style of Impetuous 30Something Cosmopolitans.

Noteable SPRING 2008 Collections

2007-11-18T00:03:00.000-05:00

Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week had some noteable collections and some forgetable ones. I won't mention the forgetable collections because I can't remember them. Although not so forgetable, I was disapointed with Baby Phat's 2008 Spring collection. I am not into the "Tramp Chic" look, and it's way too excessive. Caroline Herrarra had wonderful silhouettes but those god awful prints ruined it for me. My absolute favorite was actually Tracy Reese, however the notable runner ups were Luca Luca, Mui Mui, Armani, Monique Lhillier and Zac Posen. There collections were superbly fresh and beautiful. Elle featured their shows below:

Luca Luca Spring 2008

Double click bottom Arrow. (Source: ElleMagazine)

Mui Mui Spring 2008

Double click bottom Arrow. (Source: ElleMagazine)

Giorgio Armani Spring 2008

Double click bottom Arrow. (Source: ElleMagazine)

Monique Lhillier Spring 2008

Double click bottom Arrow. (Source: ElleMagazine)

Zac Posen Spring 2008

Double click bottom Arrow. (Source: ElleMagazine)

OM. What? OMMMMM. Que? OMMMMMMMMMM

2007-11-12T00:03:00.000-05:00

Yoga is the union of our physical, mental and spiritual selves. Yoga encourages us to focus our minds and become more aware of the internal flow of energy. It is said that the holistic doctrines of yoga are the result of thousands of years of experimentation and observation by great sages, enlightened gurus and ordinary people.

OM means oneness with the Supreme, the merging with the physical being with the spiritual. The Om (or Aum) sign for the Hindus & Buddhists is the primordial sound, the first breath of creation, the vibration that ensures existence. OM is the mantra used during yoga and meditation in the quest to obtain enlightenment, self realization, and union with the individual self and the universal self. True Blissfulness can be obtained through enlightenment.

Simply stated first, OM is chanted during meditation to relax, clear the mind, and experience absolute nothingness. The nothingness brings one to a level of consciousness which allows one to tap into one's internal and external energies. As a result, the skill of successfully reaching a metaphysical state of being allows for one to reach a level of controlled calmness. This is helpful in dealing with the challenges one faces in daily life.

30Something are plagued with stress from increasing responsibilities and demands. Yoga is a very helpful tool in managing and maintaining balance in ones life. OMMMM.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPE

2007-10-25T01:49:00.001-04:00

I read both of Barak Obama’s books, “Dreams From My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope”, Thought on Reclaiming the American Dream. In doing so, one can clearly understand who he is, learn of his pesonal development to manhood, his high level of integrity, reveals his incredibly hight intelligence, his willingness to listen, compassion, patience, and objective to preservng human life, help families create the american dream with his plan for the future.

The MICHIKO KAKUTANI 2006 New York Times review of the “Audacity of Hope” states my sentiments exactly, a poignant moving and genuine book about himself and explain his perspectives on life, humanity, the world, peace efforts, the war, and the American dream with no spin, all heart.

Michik wrote:

His 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” written before Mr. Obama entered politics, provided a revealing, introspective account of his efforts to trace his family’s tangled roots and his attempts to come to terms with his absent father, who left home when he was still a toddler. That book did an evocative job of conjuring the author’s multicultural childhood: his father was from Kenya, his mother was from Kansas, and the young Mr. Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia.

And it was equally candid about his youthful struggles: pot, booze and “maybe a little blow,” he wrote, could “push questions of who I was out of my mind,” flatten “out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory.” Most memorably, the book gave the reader a heartfelt sense of what it was like to grow up in the 1960’s and 70’s, straddling America’s color lines: the sense of knowing two worlds and belonging to neither, the sense of having to forge an identity of his own.

Mr. Obama’s new book, “The Audacity of Hope” — the phrase comes from his 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address, which made him the party’s rising young hope — is much more of a political document. Portions of the volume read like outtakes from a stump speech, and the bulk of it is devoted to laying out Mr. Obama’s policy positions on a host of issues, from education to health care to the war in Iraq.

But while Mr. Obama occasionally slips into the flabby platitudes favored by politicians, enough of the narrative voice in this volume is recognizably similar to the one in “Dreams From My Father,” an elastic, personable voice that is capable of accommodating everything from dense discussions of foreign policy to streetwise reminiscences, incisive comments on constitutional law to New-Agey personal asides. The reader comes away with a feeling that Mr. Obama has not reinvented himself as he has moved from job to job (community organizer in Chicago, editor of The Harvard Law Review, professor of constitutional law, civil rights lawyer, state senator) but has instead internalized all those roles, embracing rather than shrugging off whatever contradictions they might have produced.

Reporters and politicians continually use the word authenticity to describe Mr. Obama, pointing to his ability to come across to voters as a regular person, not a prepackaged pol. And in these pages he often speaks to the reader as if he were an old friend from back in the day, salting policy recommendations with colorful asides about the absurdities of political life.

He recalls a meet-and-greet encounter at the White House with George W. Bush, who warmly shook his hand, then “turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand.” (“Good stuff,” he quotes the president as saying, as he offered his guest some. “Keeps you from getting colds.”) And he recounts a trip he took through Illinois with an aide, who scolded him for asking for Dijon mustard at a T.G.I. Friday’s, worried the senator would come across as an elitist; the confused waitress, he adds, simply said: “We got Dijon if you want it.”

In his 2004 keynote address Mr. Obama spoke of the common ground Americans share: “There is not a Black America and White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.” And the same message — rooted in his own youthful efforts to grapple with racial stereotypes, racial loyalty and class resentments — threads its way through the pages of this book. Despite the red state-blue state divide, despite racial, religious and economic divisions, Mr. Obama writes, “we are becoming more, not less, alike” beneath the surface: “Most Republican strongholds are 40 percent Democrat, and vice versa. The political labels of liberal and conservative rarely track people’s personal attributes.”

Mr. Obama eschews the Manichean language that has come to inform political discourse, and he rejects what he sees as the either-or formulations of his elders who came of age in the 60’s: “In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004,” he writes, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage. The victories that the 60’s generation brought about — the admission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individual liberties and the healthy willingness to question authority — have made America a far better place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to be replaced, are those shared assumptions — that quality of trust and fellow feeling — that bring us together as Americans.”

His thoughts on domestic and foreign policy try to hew to this consensus-building line. Some of his recommendations devolve into little more than fuzzy statements of the obvious: i.e., that America’s “addiction to oil” is affecting the economy and undermining national security, or that the education system needs to be revamped and improved. Others echo Bill Clinton’s “third way,” methodically triangulating between traditionally conservative and traditionally liberal ideas.

Mr. Obama writes that “conservatives — and Bill Clinton — were right about welfare as it was previously structured: By detaching income from work and by making no demands on welfare recipients other than a tolerance for intrusive bureaucracy and an assurance that no man lived in the same house as the mother of his children, the old A.F.D.C. program sapped people of their initiative and eroded their self respect.”

He uses the Bush administration’s tough language to talk about national security in the age of terrorism (“if we have to go it alone, the American people stand ready to pay any price and bear any burden to protect our country”) but adds, crucially, that “once we get beyond matters of self-defense,” he is “convinced that it will almost always be in our strategic interest to act multilaterally rather than unilaterally when we use force around the world.”

He assails President Bush for waging an unnecessary and misguided war in Iraq and for promoting an “Ownership Society” that “magnifies the uneven risks and rewards of today’s winner-take-all economy.” Yet he also takes the Democrats to task for becoming “the party of reaction”: “In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action. In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance with secularism and forfeit the moral language that would help infuse our policies with a larger meaning. We lose elections and hope for the courts to foil Republican plans. We lose the courts and wait for a White House scandal.”

This volume does not possess the searching candor of the author’s first book. But Mr. Obama strives in these pages to ground his policy thinking in simple common sense — be it “growing the size of our armed forces to maintain reasonable rotation schedules” or reining in spending and rethinking tax policy to bring down the nation’s huge deficit — while articulating these ideas in level-headed, nonpartisan prose. That, in itself, is something unusual, not only in these venomous pre-election days, but also in these increasingly polarized and polarizing times.

Chrisette Michele performing on the David Letterman

2007-10-17T11:13:00.000-04:00

AMAZING!!!Chrisette Michele performing on the David Letterman

Chrisette Michele

Meet Chrisette Michele

2007-10-15T13:45:00.000-04:00

Chrisette Michele's CD, "I AM" is gracefully moving, remarkably complex, intrinsically passionate and incredibly soulful. Her voice is a mix of Billy Holiday and Lauren Hill. Her music style is a mix of Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Washington and Diana Ross. Yet she resembles a corpulent Kerry Washington. "I AM" is a refreshing through back to the days when music was beautiful and it touch the soul.

FOUR STARS!

Here is what January 02, 2007, Billboard magazine had to say.

Singer Gets Religious With Hip-Hop
By Ayala Ben-Yehuda, L.A.
It was after church on a Sunday, and Chrisette Michele had God and hip-hop on her mind. The 23-year-old Long Islander was on her way to a studio to write and record the hook for "Lost One," the first single off of Jay-Z's album "Kingdom Come." She hadn't heard the rest of the song yet, but the deacon's daughter wondered if it might be too explicit for her strong moral code.

"I was preparing in my head how I would say, 'I'm sorry, I can't do this,'" says the singer-songwriter of her meeting with the hip-hop mogul.

But after Jay-Z played the track, which deals with commitment, friendship and death, "I looked at him and said, 'Yo, this song is spiritual.' This song is about self-respect." Chrisette pauses for a moment. "He's a preacher."

That's quite a statement for someone with a family full of clergy, who led the gospel choir in high school and college but never got a CD until she was 17.

Still, Chrisette Michele describes herself as "a kid of the hip-hop culture" who didn't have MTV, but sang and freestyled in impromptu rap circles at school.

She also has a neverending stream of songs in her head that she attributes at least in part to attention-deficit disorder, a condition that she calls "a gift."

But it wasn't until the day a high school track coach stopped her in the hallway -- Chrisette had been jogging down the corridor singing -- that her artistic fate was sealed. The coach gave her a CD of Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz' "The Girl from Ipanema," a song that would establish her love for mixing jazz melodies with what she grew up with: gospel vocals and hip-hop beats.

"I went up to my jazz teacher in school, and said, ‘I need you to give me some more of that,'" she says, recalling the discovery of a cabinet full of classic jazz music. "Every day after that, at lunch period, I would go into the piano room and practice those songs."

With Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday as newfound heroes, Chrisette went on to major in music at 5 Towns College. A show at New York City's Village Underground led to opening gigs for India.Arie, and eventually a contract with Island Def Jam. "Lost One," her collaboration with Jay-Z, has been climbing Billboard's R&B/Hip-Hop songs and Hot 100 charts, where it now stands at No. 21 and No. 73, respectively.

Chrisette, who is finishing up her own album on IDJ, was featured on the Heineken Red Star Soul tour this fall and performed onstage with Jay-Z at his Radio City concert.

She also wrote and sang hooks on Nas' album "Hip-Hop Is Dead," including on single "Can't Forget About You," a nostalgic reminiscence that's bubbling under the R&B/Hip-Hop songs chart.

Being on Nas' album had particular significance for Chrisette, whose mother was raised in the same Queensbridge housing project as the rapper.

Childhood memories of her own, particularly of the homeless women and girls her family took into their home, inspired her own album. Themes include self-esteem, commitment, and abstinence.

"I don't want to come off preachy, but I'm not afraid to be a Christian in this industry and to really believe what I believe in," says Chrisette a stance made easier to take with respectful and respected artists like Nas and Jay-Z behind her.

"He curses," she says of the latter, smiling audibly. "He didn't say the curses when I was in the room, but he curses. But that's okay."

Meet Barak Obama

2007-10-15T03:29:00.000-04:00

ENOUGH SAID!

Sorority Sisters.

2007-10-04T11:26:00.000-04:00

When we were college students with fresh faces and fresh ideals about the world, we believed in service to the community and cherished the times we spent making a difference on our campus. We were leaders, we were dreamers, we were believers. By the time we graduated, we knew we would be friends for life, bound by the serenity of sisterhood.

Fast forward 15+ years, a couple more degrees, the careers, the marriages, the children and the new memories have simply given us more to talk about. Even when those old memories start to fade, we get together and reminisce about those days on the hill when the youth of yesterday had the promise of tomorrow shinning so brightly before us. TJ Butler, author of the novel Sorority Sisters, writes so vividly about the complexities of the simple days of Sorority life. The book was a clear depiction of how Sorors struggle to discover their future. I think TJ Butler should write Sorority Sisters II, the 10 year reunion, and III the 20 year reunion.

Recently, my line sister was in town on business. Another Gamma Mu Soror and I met her at Bus Boys & Poets in DC. Of course we talked about our men, her children, the days on “the Hill”, Gamma Mu chapter, and our 2008 Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Centennial Anniversary Celebration hosted in Washington DC. There will be thousands of Sorors converging on DC in July 2008 to commemorate 100 years. Considering the next centennial will not be in our life time, this centennial will be a once in a lifetime experience.

Life as I know it.....An introductory thought

2007-10-03T20:17:00.001-04:00

I’m a behaviorist who happens to be a voracious reader, with an inquisitive itch, and incredibly strong opinions. Frankly, my friends and colleagues would rather have their wisdom teeth pulled without novocain rather than listen to my random rants. On any given day, I have shared my thoguhts on subjects like human rights, world peace, preserving the planet/global green, the womanist movement, religion as philosophical literature, eradicating poverty/One campaign, relationships, the concept of "Love not Hate",when to procreate, academia, urbanisms and suburbanisms, child rearing and child development, the markets, hedge fund maniacalism, the UN and it’s baby sitters, the corporate manifesto, the concept that life's contradictions represent the human condition, ……yada, yada, yada…..and the list goes on.....so here we are. Life as I know it………..TO BE CONTINUED.