If you’re a rock hound (have a fascination with gems of all kinds), the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, CA is currently showcasing “An exhibition of ninety four spectacular jewelry pieces and twenty eight photographs from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia that was collected over thirty years by Xavier Guerrand-Hermès of the renowned Paris-based fashion empire…rare and stunning collection of North African jewelry and historic late 19th- and early 20th-century photographs by some of the region’s most prominent photographers.”
Everytime I see The Deer Hunter I notice how beautiful the film is, as well as how intentionally or unintentionally the film captures the evolution of that time. The backdrop to this love story is writer director Michael Cimino portrait of young men with the bawdy habits of their fathers with regard to women, drinking and their belief in the idealism of “Greatest Generation” until actually experiencing the horrific and often meaningless game of war.
When Micheal’s (Robert DeNiro) returns home from Vietnam in a taxi driven by a black man signals the beginning of the change for me. One legacy of the Vietnam “police” action was that soldiers came home by themselves, alone without a victory celebration or “thank you for your service”. Some of these men were shunned and giving little opportunity to regain the jobs they lost by going to war.
Another message in “The Deer Hunter” is my understanding of the “One Shot” and that to take more than one shot is greedy and eventually destructive.
When first reading about World War I, and that it was sometimes referred to as “The War to End All Wars” I wondered why this promise was never kept. What is it about us that we are so entranced by destruction. We know what war does and the impact it has on our lives. We seem to lack the courage to say no to war.
Today’s soldiers return and we clap and say thanks for keeping us safe (unintentionally but insincere in a way), before ordering that five dollar cup of coffee sweetness we feel we are entitled to each morning. No one wants to work in a steel mill today and only those with extreme idealism want to go to war (which is different in my mind to wanting to serve your country).
History and Evolution teaches us an important lesson. The past was never as glorious as others have made it out to be and if it were ever that good, we still are not able to go backwards. We really only have one shot, and that’s always going forward.
It just doesn’t happen, especially something created by David Simon, that the drama plays backup to the music. The music is the backbone to this wonderful epic, cause New Orleans is a living document about the United States and as much some people would like to see it gone and forgotten it keeps rolling, like that river.
New Orleans is the seed to the culture of the United States and the source of modern music across the world, and it takes “Musician from Other Lands” who come to pay their respect for us to wake up to the treasure we are trying to kill.
There is a thought that recreating New Orleans and turning it into a Disney Land park, with re-enactments of funeral marches, and almost spontaneous breakout of jam sessions every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday at 8PM at a designated club will preserve the history and magic of this place. I don’t think so.
“A major career retrospective of the work of José Bedia at Miami Art Museum (MAM) explores the influence of indigenous cultures and religions from Cuba, North and South America, and Africa on the artist’s work over the last three decades…featuring 35 artworks including large-scale figurative paintings, installations and drawings, highlights the layering of spiritual, social and historical constructs in Bedia’s body of work—all of which are retold through a highly personal lens.”
I always get excited when Ms Morrison graces us with a new book. Just released last week, her latest is “Home”, which centers on a man’s two most life assaultive experiences – while a soldier during the Korean War and growing up in the South in the 50’s.
Ms Morrison, now 81, has such a fantastical, spiritual approach to her characters and plot, but she’s also got “edge”. She can set a tone, paint a picture, capture identifiable feeling/emotion and describe events so clearly and with such poetry that it makes you laugh or, it makes you cry. There are some passages in her much acclaimed book “Beloved” that are so painful that your throat clutches and closes.
Her “truth”, in her books like “Sula”, “The Bluest Eye”, “Song of Solomon” just to name a few, are cloaked in make believe and are sometimes difficult to handle – sort of a ground glass in the oatmeal type of thing. You feel it. (“Beloved” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and Ms Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.)
I think she is amazing and a true gift.
“Writing was … the most extraordinary way of thinking and feeling. It became the one thing I was doing that I had absolutely no intention of living without.”Toni Morrison
Ms Primus, 1919 – 1994, often referred to as “the grandmother of African-American dance”, will have an evening devoted to her contributions on 5/24/12 at the Schomburg Center in New York City.
“Youth dancers from the Harlem School of the Arts will open the evening with a performance of Primus’s signature work, “Bushasche, War Dance, A Dance for Peace.” Afterwards, there will be a discussion conducted by Peggy and Murray Schwartz about their book, The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus.
If you’re a rock hound (have a fascination with gems of all kinds), the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, CA is currently showcasing “An exhibition of ninety four spectacular jewelry pieces and twenty eight photographs from Algeria, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia that was collected over thirty years by Xavier Guerrand-Hermès of the renowned Paris-based fashion empire…rare and stunning collection of North African jewelry and historic late 19th- and early 20th-century photographs by some of the region’s most prominent photographers.”
