Art Np2

For those of you who write research papers, the ALA is calling for papers on a variety of subjects.  Go to http://www.wsu.edu/~campbelld/ssaww/call.htm#chick  for further information.

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Olu Butterfly is a poet, spoken word performer, dancer, and has earned a degree from the University of MD in mechanical engineering. She currently lives in Baltimore, MD and sometimes performs with the musical group Fertile Ground.

"The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned." Maya Angelou Man With Pipe, 1926, Oil on paper board, 15 5/8 x 11 inches.  This is the work of Yun Gee (1906-1963), an American artist of Chinese descent.  Read his bio and see more of his passionate modern work at this link:  http://www.yungee.com/index.html

More than sixty years have passed since the critic Robert Coates, writing in the New Yorker in 1946, first used the term “Abstract Expressionism” to describe the richly colored canvases of Hans Hofmann. Over the years the name has come to designate the paintings and sculptures of artists as different as Jackson Pollock and Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner and David Smith. Beginning in the 1940s, under the aegis of Director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., works by these artists began to enter the Museum’s collection. Thanks to the sustained support of the curators, the trustees, and the artists themselves, these ambitious acquisitions continued throughout the second half of the last century and produced a collection of Abstract Expressionist art of unrivaled breadth and depth. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s vast holdings, Abstract Expressionist New York underscores the achievements of a generation that catapulted New York City to the center of the international art

Thank you for all the good music.  You made my life happier and Lady, I miss you already.  The man in the brown jacket is Donnie Simpson.  He was a disc jockey in Detroit in the seventies.  If I Were A Bell is on the Ivory album released in 1990 .

For some reason people have always told me stories.  I love hearing about other people's lives because I learn so much from hearing about their sorrows, struggles, and triumphs. These questions come from the Storycorp website and are to help you begin to put some of your stories into words for yourselves, your families and your children.  These are just a few of the suggestions.   Subjects •Friends and Colleagues •Grandparents •Raising Children •Parents •Growing Up •School •Love & Relationships •Marriage & Partnerships •Working •Religion •Serious Illness •Family Heritage •War •Remembering a loved one Great questions for anyone •What was the happiest moment of your life? The saddest? •Who was the most important person in your life? Can you tell me about him or her? To read many more go to: http://storycorps.org/record-your-story/question-generator/

Wow!  2010 is almost over and it has been a good year for me, but not an easy one. All year things kept breaking down and changing and my old ways of dealing with problems stopped working.  I have been learning and experimenting because my life is different from the way it was in the past. My adult son lived 1,000 miles away and in July he came back home to live after four years of being on his own. Well, we all needed some adjustment time.  It took me three years to accept that my baby was gone.  I spent many a night crying "I want my baby back."  The fourth year that he was gone I began to appreciate not having a child in the house.  I really like not having to figure out what's going to be for dinner and being able to have adult conversations without editing myself.  Come on people!  Once you get the kids out of the house there is the chance for some adult relationships to grow and improve, you know what I mean?  It's good to have some privacy. In reality, my child

Excellent article from The Root on the lives of Liberian women today. http://www.theroot.com/views/liberia-women-and-feminism?page=0,0

  " Just eight early icons of Mary remain. Sister Wendy went on a quest to find them for her new book " If you think you have trouble searching for God, you should try finding Sister Wendy Beckett. She lives in what she calls a caravan in the grounds of a Carmelite convent deep in the countryside of East Anglia. It is technically a mobile home, but the distinctions hardly matter since neither it nor she are going anywhere. Still Britain’s most recognisable nun from her stint as a TV art historian, she has lived here for almost 40 years, rising at 1am, spending at least seven hours a day in prayer and getting to bed by 6pm. I have been told that she finds one-to-ones a little intense; it would help if I could take some lunch with me, and don’t forget the wine; dry white preferably. Because it’s a closed order, you can’t just walk into the grounds. Visitors need permission well in advance. You then wait in the porch while a sister answers the bell and comes to escort you to the

"Try a little harder to be a little better." — Gordon B. Hinckley  

Sooo beautiful.  I believe these two were sent here intentionally by God or Someone Very Good. 

The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss is an action packed tale of historical fiction with  two protagonists I will never forget. The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde will forever be relevant because of her willingness to share her true feelings and experience. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot is full of rich, heavy, lustrous prose and deep insight into the minds and emotions of human beings . Speaker For The Dead by Orson Scott Card is science fiction at its very best.  I didn't even know I liked science fiction until I read this book.  The book is about science, family, religion, philosophy, life, death, love, and so many other things.  My mind is blown and I will be reading this one again and again. Substitute Me by Lori L. Tharps surprised me because I thought it was going to be a light and easy read and it was but, there are themes in this book, particularly the comtemporary image of the black woman as mammy has stuck in my mind.  Someone needs to do some research on this su

A thought provoking essay by Gabrielle Renoir Large that explains how tragedy affects and attracts readers. http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/why-we-prefer-tragedy-in

Today at the library I found the book The 100 Best African American Poems.   It is edited by Nikki Giovanni and published in 2010 by Sourcebooks Metafusion, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.  Sourcebooks, Inc. is located in Naperville Illinois.  Here is a link to their website. http://www.sourcebooks.com/ Anyway, Ruth Forman is one of the poets featured in this absolutely wonderful anthology.  I found her on Youtube reading some of her work. Ruth Forman  is a poet, teacher, and filmaker.  She lives in Los Angelos.

Lily Tomlin is a comedian, actress and writer who was born in Detroit on September 1, 1939.  She attended Cass Technical High School (so did my nephew) and Wayne State University.  I became aware of her comedic genius as a six year old child.  She is an intelligent original, insightful about people and the world, and her perspective is forever relevant. Here is a sketch from the Sunday Funnies on Laugh In .  Keep in mind that this sketch was done long before the age of computers.  Even then, people had no privacy.  Laugh In was a comedy show on American televsion that ran from 1968-1973.  Someone once said things change but they always stay the same or something like that. Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann on Sesame Street.  She cracks me up because I have been around five years old girls and they wriggle around and talk just as she does in this skit though she does exaggerate somewhat. More than Motown and cars came out of Detroit and that's the truth.

Through the years... Asthma almost killed me This Year. This blog has been up for One Year. I Was A Woman Marine For Four Years. My stint as an Avon Representative lasted for Fourteen Years. Detroit was my home for Twenty Years. For some reason I feel Twenty-Seven Years old. Jake has been in my life for Thirty Years. I have lusted after Tom Jones for Forty Years. Every Year I hope to grow a little bit wiser.

"Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it." — Mark Twain Autobiography: Water/Ancestors/Middle Passage/Family Ghost (1988). Acrylic, tempera, cattle markers, oil stick, paper, polymer photo transfer, vinyl on sewn canvas. 118" x 71". Collection: Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Brief bio of African-American artist and writer Howardena Pindell http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=1512&category=Artmakers

I never get tired of this song.

Source: "Painter On His Way To Work". Oil/Canvas, Van Gogh, 1888 "The visually stunning field of   tilt-shift photography   became a fairly big thing   in the Web a couple of years ago. It uses a special lens that gives a real-world scene the illusion of being a miniature model. You've probably seen examples by now, but if not then see the " Credits " page for links to some breathtaking examples. The effect can be simulated in Photoshop, by adjusting a photograph's contrast, colour saturation and depth of focus. It works quite well with regular photographs, so we decided to try it using   paintings   to see what would happen, and it turns out that the works of   Vincent van Gogh   in particular make excellent subjects for this kind of treatment. Following is a slideshow of 16 awesome photo-manipulations based on some of van Gogh's most moving and powerful paintings. To see the original paintings unaltered, go to the " Credits " page. To re

http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12/02/slave.labor.ring.busted/index.html

This young woman from Georgia, USA sings my heart.  The song is on the Dreaming Wide Awake  album and was written by Lizz Wright and Carlos Henderson.

Somehow My Name and Blog Has Been Put On A Hard Porn Site. I wasn't sure if I should talk about this publicly, but if someone did deliberately put my name on this site, they want me to feel afraid and ashamed.  I am tired of people crapping on me.  I have decided to tell my story and maybe it will help someone else out there besides me.  The site is so sickening I cannot go on it to see how my name is on there.  My son went on and I was so repulsed by what he was exposing himself to, that I made him get off of it. Also, I am scared that someone could see my name and come after me thinking I am interested in that way of life.  Not to mention what potential employers will think.  Sweet Jesus help me through this one! The first thing I am going to do is contact the site.  I have a person I suspect to be behind this, but right now I just want to get my name off the site.  Say a prayer for me.  12-9-10 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"I often think . . . that the bookstores that will save civilization are not online, nor on campuses, nor named Borders, Barnes & Noble, Dalton, or Crown. They are the used bookstores, in which, for a couple of hundred dollars, one can still find, with some diligence, the essential books of our culture, from the Bible and Shakespeare to Plato, Augustine, and Pascal." — James V. Schall (On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs: Teaching, Writing, Playing, Believing, Lecturing, Philosophizing, Singing, Dancing)

Pretzel Logic-Oh Yeah!  I played that cassette til it broke!

I don’t like that.   I’m talking about pornography. It sexually objectifies men, women, children, and animals.  It seeks to make humans into something to be used and degraded instead of respected and appreciated. In other words, it dehumanizes. Then it twists the delights of  sexuality into something dark and selfish that is disgusting and destructive. Pornography does not portray true sexuality or passion.  It depicts a false form of physical gratification and its users are deceived and addicted.  They also end up spending their hard earned money on that garbage.  That is my opinion.  If you don't agree with me, YOU ARE WRONG!  Yep, that's what I said.  I am climbing down until the next time.

 MuleBoy: A Marxist Interpretation of Richard Wright’s “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” One of my favorite classes in college was Literary Interpretation.  The class attempted to teach students the different ways a text could be interpreted.  What I found fascinating about the course was instruction I received in regard to looking at a single text from multiple perspectives.  I cannot say that I learned all that I needed or wanted to because when I went back and looked at some of the papers I wrote, they were not so good.  So I am hoping to learn some of what I missed by writing these essays.  If you have anything to add or have an opinion about something I wrote, please do not hesitate in responding.  I wholeheartedly welcome any relevant contribution.  Just be nice about it:) "The Man Who Was Almost A Man" by Richard Wright was first published in 1940 and later included in the short story collection Eight Men in 1961.  The story focuses on the life of Dave Saunders, a frust