The Free Press is bringing back a Reviews section after some absence. We hope to review plenty of events around town. Check back frequently and if what\'s going on is any good.
Arts & Culture
Adversity can debilitate and defeat a lesser soul. But for those with the inner strength to make the climb, new heights can beckon.
Along the way---especially for a musician---it helps to have an other-worldly talent, a gift that combines decades of hard work with those inexplicable powers that come from the slipstream of the spirit. A combination like that can light up the world, especially at jam-packed concerts that become joyful communions. Now on the second leg of an epic US tour---to be followed in Asia and Europe---Bonnie Raitt has taken it to a new level. Reading through the show-by-show reviews of her performances is like being witness to an ecstatic coronation.
Bonnie's well-deserved joyride comes after a long ordeal of personal loss. Her parents, brother and a close friend all passed in scary succession. She has also set sail with her own Redwing Records label.
None of which have shaken her political convictions or willingness to act on them (by way of disclosure, I've worked with Bonnie since 1978 and edit the website for NukeFree.org, whose core she comprises with Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and benefit producer Tom Campbell).
Along the way---especially for a musician---it helps to have an other-worldly talent, a gift that combines decades of hard work with those inexplicable powers that come from the slipstream of the spirit. A combination like that can light up the world, especially at jam-packed concerts that become joyful communions. Now on the second leg of an epic US tour---to be followed in Asia and Europe---Bonnie Raitt has taken it to a new level. Reading through the show-by-show reviews of her performances is like being witness to an ecstatic coronation.
Bonnie's well-deserved joyride comes after a long ordeal of personal loss. Her parents, brother and a close friend all passed in scary succession. She has also set sail with her own Redwing Records label.
None of which have shaken her political convictions or willingness to act on them (by way of disclosure, I've worked with Bonnie since 1978 and edit the website for NukeFree.org, whose core she comprises with Jackson Browne, Graham Nash and benefit producer Tom Campbell).
Tested: How Twelve Wrongly Imprisoned Men Held
Onto Hope
Budd and Dorothy Budd
Brown Books Publishing Group
The plight of the wrongfully convicted is finally on the national radar screen, helped along by the miracle of DNA testing, groups that work on their behalf, and the willingness of state governmental officials to admit that there are serious flaws in the criminal justice system. While a number of articles and books have brought much needed attention to the problem, Tested is the first book to examine how the wrongfully convicted survived the hell of prison knowing that they are innocent.
Budd and Dorothy Budd
Brown Books Publishing Group
The plight of the wrongfully convicted is finally on the national radar screen, helped along by the miracle of DNA testing, groups that work on their behalf, and the willingness of state governmental officials to admit that there are serious flaws in the criminal justice system. While a number of articles and books have brought much needed attention to the problem, Tested is the first book to examine how the wrongfully convicted survived the hell of prison knowing that they are innocent.
The power of music is one of the great unknowns in the human saga. For reasons we don't quite understand (yet) its vibrations can lift us to great heights, drop us down into deep depression, liberate us, make us joyous, help us grieve, and so much more.
Thus its practitioners---the best of them---can rise to shaman status. They can speak to higher realities, lead us on political issues, arouse our spirits, calm our souls.
Those with the power are rare. There is a huge corporate industry designed to manufacture and sell commercial imitations.
But real ones still walk among us, and if we catch them at the right moment, they can move us as little else in this life.
Monday night was such a time. Crosby, Stills and Nash played under a pavilion on the Ohio River outside Cincinnati amidst a gorgeous warm night before some 4,000 folks who must be described at this point as elders.
Thus its practitioners---the best of them---can rise to shaman status. They can speak to higher realities, lead us on political issues, arouse our spirits, calm our souls.
Those with the power are rare. There is a huge corporate industry designed to manufacture and sell commercial imitations.
But real ones still walk among us, and if we catch them at the right moment, they can move us as little else in this life.
Monday night was such a time. Crosby, Stills and Nash played under a pavilion on the Ohio River outside Cincinnati amidst a gorgeous warm night before some 4,000 folks who must be described at this point as elders.
Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America
by Eugene Robinson
As a professor of African American history, I often remind my students that the black community is not monolithic, nor is there any one black experience. There is no one voice speaking for all of black America–this idea is the creation of white America–just as there is no longer such a thing as an all encompassing state of black America, the Urban League’s annual report notwithstanding. Indeed, African Americans are as diverse as any other race. According to the Pulitzer Prize winning Robinson, “Black America, as we knew it, is history,” done in by integration, suburbanization, Reaganomics and the global economy. Instead, Robinson reports that there are now four distinct black communities.
by Eugene Robinson
As a professor of African American history, I often remind my students that the black community is not monolithic, nor is there any one black experience. There is no one voice speaking for all of black America–this idea is the creation of white America–just as there is no longer such a thing as an all encompassing state of black America, the Urban League’s annual report notwithstanding. Indeed, African Americans are as diverse as any other race. According to the Pulitzer Prize winning Robinson, “Black America, as we knew it, is history,” done in by integration, suburbanization, Reaganomics and the global economy. Instead, Robinson reports that there are now four distinct black communities.
When the biomass hits the wind turbine: How we got ourselves into this mess, and how we are going to get out of it
By Jay Warmke
Published by BRS Media (Philo, Ohio: 2012)
Renewable “green” energy will be the biggest industry in the history of humankind. When the Biomass Hits the Wind Turbine is a great way to learn all about it.
Author Jay Warmke is blessed with an off-beat sense of humor and a wonderful way of narrating truly earth-shattering history with aplomb and a light, loving touch. “I don’t remember a time when the world wasn’t about he end,” he begins.
Neither do I.
But given this summer’s life-threatening heat, its record drought and on-going string of apocalyptic ecological disasters, we could be easily convinced that unless we do something---NOW!---our ability to live on this earth could indeed come to a crashing halt.
With his wife and collaborator, Annie, Jay has founded an ecological community called Blue Rock Station, near Zanesville. It features green power along with tours and classes designed to further our knowledge and commitment to a world worth saving.
By Jay Warmke
Published by BRS Media (Philo, Ohio: 2012)
Renewable “green” energy will be the biggest industry in the history of humankind. When the Biomass Hits the Wind Turbine is a great way to learn all about it.
Author Jay Warmke is blessed with an off-beat sense of humor and a wonderful way of narrating truly earth-shattering history with aplomb and a light, loving touch. “I don’t remember a time when the world wasn’t about he end,” he begins.
Neither do I.
But given this summer’s life-threatening heat, its record drought and on-going string of apocalyptic ecological disasters, we could be easily convinced that unless we do something---NOW!---our ability to live on this earth could indeed come to a crashing halt.
With his wife and collaborator, Annie, Jay has founded an ecological community called Blue Rock Station, near Zanesville. It features green power along with tours and classes designed to further our knowledge and commitment to a world worth saving.
At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape and Resistance–a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
Danielle L. McGuire,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York
Rosa Parks is often referred to as the Mother of the modern civil rights movement. Historically she has been depicted as a prim, virtuous, diminutive lady who was merely too tired after a long day at work to move from her seat. Had she been Catholic she surely would have been canonized by now; St. Rosa, the patron saint of bus riders. Forty-two years old at the time of the bus boycott, she was described by Martin Luther King Jr, as “. . the victim–emphasis mine–of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny. She had been tracked down by the Zeitgeist–the spirit of the times.”
Danielle L. McGuire,
Alfred A. Knopf, New York
Rosa Parks is often referred to as the Mother of the modern civil rights movement. Historically she has been depicted as a prim, virtuous, diminutive lady who was merely too tired after a long day at work to move from her seat. Had she been Catholic she surely would have been canonized by now; St. Rosa, the patron saint of bus riders. Forty-two years old at the time of the bus boycott, she was described by Martin Luther King Jr, as “. . the victim–emphasis mine–of both the forces of history and the forces of destiny. She had been tracked down by the Zeitgeist–the spirit of the times.”
On a busy street
Of a large Midwestern city
In the summer heat
Of 2003
I unfurled a sheet
Hung from my apartment window
Eighteen feet
That said OPPOSE THE WAR
And the cars rolled by
They said die faggot die
We’ll be back for you later
And Nuke Iraq was their battle cry
As my people called me a traitor
But I say treason
One man’s treason
One man’s treason
Is another man’s love
Then I took a seat
Tuned up my guitar and
Played them something sweet
‘Bout giving peace a chance
And if they stopped to chat
Gave them free press magazines
Said please read that
And please OPPOSE THE WAR
Well some said right on
But then they were gone
To their jobs and kids and their gardens
And the war came and went
To the next government
While the previous team all got pardons
Treason
What is treason
What is treason
But another's man's love
Of a large Midwestern city
In the summer heat
Of 2003
I unfurled a sheet
Hung from my apartment window
Eighteen feet
That said OPPOSE THE WAR
And the cars rolled by
They said die faggot die
We’ll be back for you later
And Nuke Iraq was their battle cry
As my people called me a traitor
But I say treason
One man’s treason
One man’s treason
Is another man’s love
Then I took a seat
Tuned up my guitar and
Played them something sweet
‘Bout giving peace a chance
And if they stopped to chat
Gave them free press magazines
Said please read that
And please OPPOSE THE WAR
Well some said right on
But then they were gone
To their jobs and kids and their gardens
And the war came and went
To the next government
While the previous team all got pardons
Treason
What is treason
What is treason
But another's man's love
"Meanwhile in Afghanistan"
Meanwhile in Afghanistan
The essay:
"My Spring Vacation in Europe"
Spring in Europe
Meanwhile in Afghanistan
The essay:
"My Spring Vacation in Europe"
Spring in Europe