This Month's Articles

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Fred:

I happened to find your memoir about Edenwald one day when I was searching for "Edenwald" online. I was a "housing assistant" for NYCHA in Edenwald in 1978-79, not the best job in my life by a long shot. At any rate, I really enjoyed your story, and I myself am a fan of '50s R&B; and do-wop. But I think you give the mistaken impression that in the '50s, Edenwald was all black. Speaking to the remaining old-timers when I worked there, my impression was that in those years it had large numbers of whites, blacks and Hispanics at the same time, and that included young people as well.

Edenwald, from the very beginning, was considered a "low-income project"; Parkside and Pelham Parkway were considered "middle-income projects." The white people who lived in Edenwald in the 1950s, I believe, were real hard-core working-class, definitely not middle-class, a lot like the Irish and Italian friends you described.

Raanan Geberer, ex-Marble Hill, ex-Co-op City

Ed note: You are quite right Mr. Geberer, and thanks for writing. If you look at other chapters in my memoir …and Mistakes Made Along the Way, you will see that I indicated that the Bronx, and the Edenwald projects, were not the deeply segregated New York City we know today.

ESSAY

In the Basement of the Ivory Tower: Confessions of an Accidental Academic

By Professor X

A tale of two accidental professors

An essay by Fred Beauford

This is an essay about two "accidental academics" with two very different experiences in such a role. Although I once shared many of the problems Professor X writes about in his first book, including standing in front of many college students who hated the written word, I didn't start in the basement of academia as he, but far upstairs, in the elevated tower of academe.

In 1975, I started teaching in the Department of Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC), a school then best known internationally for its.....Read More

PORTFOLIO

Portfolio

by Kara Fox

Thanksgiving traditionally brings warm feelings of appreciation. I now add Tobey Cotson Victor to my 'appreciation' list!

We met at a friend's 'night after Thanksgiving dinner.' The evening, laden with panini, sweet potato fries, creamed spinach, freshly baked pies and burnt caramel ice cream, became even more glorious as I feasted on Tobey's stunning images from India.

Her gift of capturing the moment and her skill in enhancing the image yields photographs that were beautiful when first taken. And then, with her discerning eye and capabilities in re-touching, Tobey transformed these images into the highest level of photographic art.

Tobey has been taking photos since High School.  She began with.....Read More

REVIEWING

Playwright, Poet and Activist, Sonia Sanchez

I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I’m Not and Other Plays

“There are few writers alive who have created a body of work that both teaches and celebrates life, even at its darkest moments.”

Haki Madhubuti, “Sonia Sanchez, The Bringer of Memories”

by Brenda M Greene

At the Split the Rock Celebration of Langston Hughes, sponsored by the Association of Writing Conference in Washington DC, Sarah Browning, poet and Director of Split This Rock and DC Poets Against the War, introduced Sonia Sanchez as “a mighty, mighty poet.” These words symbolize the persona of Sonia Sanchez, a woman who is a mighty poet, playwright, teacher and literary activist and who over the last five decades has provided generations of writers, artists, young people and students with poetry, prose and actions that critically examine the impact of politics, race, homophobia, war, violence and class struggle on the lives of people within this nation and within our global society. 

“Our country is founded on revolution,” Sanchez reminded the audience at the tribute to Langston Hughes. “Engagement in the struggle for peace and freedom is important to the survival of.....Read More

REVIEWING

Say Her Name

by Francisco Goldman

May Her Memory Be a Blessing

Reviewed by Janet Garber

Is it every writer’s dream – I know it’s mine – to hover overhead as someone near and dear sifts through our bottom drawer and rescues our hastily scribbled poems, our tattered diaries, and a half-baked manuscript or two, posthumous fame being better than no fame.

  

Francisco Goldman, in Say Her Name, mounts a towering memorial to the life and works of his young wife whose promising academic and writing career was cut short when she lost her life in a freak accident at age 30. Not only does he resurrect.....Read More

SHORT STORY

John Wayne Vs. "Willie" Shakespeare

by Alejandro Grattan

The following tale is at least partially true, though the anecdote within the story might well be undiluted horse manure. The reader will draw his own conclusions. It happened many years ago on a snowy Christmas Eve in a small town in the high country of northern New Mexico.

I had been involved in the production of a TV series called The Bearcats, which featured a couple of gringos (played by Rod Taylor and Dennis Cole) who roam around Mexico in a Stutz-Bearcat during the time of Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution.

The TV show’s cast and crew had been granted a furlough to return to LA to spend Christmas with their families, but since I had no family, I stayed on in New Mexico to save myself the plane fare.

The town I was holed up in .....Read More

REVIEWING

Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

Elizabeth Chatwin and Nicholas Shakespeare, eds.

Reviewed by Sarah Vogelsong

Like most great writers, Bruce Chatwin, the famed British author of In Patagonia and The Songlines, did not set out to become a man of letters—somewhere along the way, it just happened. Although he came to be known for his wide-ranging travels, Chatwin’s career began somewhat incongruously, at Sotheby’s auction house in London. Neither the position nor the institution suited him. Much later in life, he noted to a friend, that “everything about the firm filled me with claustrophobia and disgust.” Nevertheless, Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin, holds up the author’s life for view in the same way that .....Read More

NOVEL

The African Gentleman

…and The Plot to Re-establish The New World Order

A Novel by Fred Beauford

Chapters 18-23

The African Gentleman

…and The Plot to Re-establish The New World Order
 
A Novel by Fred Beauford

18

I have been constantly pondering lately, for reasons I am not quite sure of, Gladys’ sad passage about the love-starved old Jewish man; maybe, because in a few years, that could be me? I still missed Liz Gant, and was still not sure about where this relationship with Gladys was going. I had to acknowledge that this was made-up drama—nowhere near the very real drama my friend Assai was facing.

And now, I was also beginning to feel the fall-out.

Word quickly spread around our office that checks were bouncing .....Read More

ART BEAT

Art Beat- April 2011

by Lindsey Peckham

Elizabeth Murray: Painting in the Seventies, at the Pace Gallery

The impression that Elizabeth Murray’s work left on me was strong: there is an enormous duality to the exhibit now at the Pace Gallery (the one on 25th Street). Her use of color ranges from the dark and subtle to bright and geometric. Being that this is the first exhibit of hers at Pace following her passing in 2007, I can’t ignore the historical aspect of this show. It seems to suggest a strong but conflicted artist, who was working in a time of unprecedented experimentation and artistic freedom. One of only four female artists to have had a retrospective dedicated.....Read More

REVIEWING

Dirtdobber Blues

by Cyril E. Vetter

Reviewed by Michael Carey

Cyril E. Vetter is a successful businessman with several accomplishments in the entertainment industry. He has recently added Dirtdobber Blues to his list. It is a novel dedicated to the memory of his old friend, Charles “Butch” Hornsby, who was amongst other things, a musician and an artist.

This fictionalized version of Butch’s life is told in episodes that paint a charming and touching picture of the man Cyril knew so well.

We’ve all had a friend (or friends, if we’re lucky) whose zest for life, friends, and.....Read More

MEMOIR

My Nine Lives – A Memoir of Many Careers in Music

by Leon Fleisher and Anne Midgette

Reviewed by Jane M McCabe

Since opening an art gallery in Taft, California, one of my favorite things to do is to listen to music while I paint. In so doing, I’ve come to a new appreciation of my collection of classical music and jazz. So, when a musician friend recommended the book she had just read, a memoir by Leon Fleisher, the well-known American pianist and conductor, I wanted to delve.....Read More