Kevin Sites' In the Hot Zone Book and DVD

My Memorial holiday was spent in bed, sick. I was too ill with a head cold (yes, I'm a wimp) to move around, but not sick enough to just sleep. So I wrapped my head in pillows to press against a dull headache and read most of Kevin's book "In the Hot Zone." A fitting memorial day activity.

David spent a year covering all the world's war zones. The documentary DVD that accompanied the book (a pretty cool mixing of mediums that convinced me to buy the book) is almost overwhelming in its' imagery. What makes the book a valuable addition is all the background information it includes. We not only "see" the African women who have been raped by insurgents but learn of Kevin's struggle over whether to show their faces. (He does not.)

The reason I am posting this book here is because of the way Kevin mentions art throughout the book. Whether a Haitian cutting beauty from an oil drum can, or a couple painting idyllic landscapes inside a bombed out apartment building, Kevin peppers his retelling of all the misery he saw with acts of creation. Not mentioned in the documentary, they are a counter to the act of destruction. It's not an even draw but it does show the power of art to heal, provide hope, and save us from our worst selves.

This weekend some friends gave me a new bumper sticker that says "Make Art, Not War." I smiled when I first saw it and thought immediately of Kevin and his project.
I will display it with conviction strengthened by the art Kevin has given us in his writing and documentary. Visit his site.

5 Notes, just 5 notes.......

My great-grand mother used to hide my great-grand father's banjo telling him that it was "darky-music". He would always find it and keep playing. I think my great-grandfather understood in his soul what Wintley Phipps is saying in this video.

Check out this You Tube video and see what pathos can be packed into 5 simple notes, just the black keys on the piano.

Click on green title above to view video.

Running the numbers

The above depicts 65,000 cigarettes, equal to the number of American teenagers under age eighteen who become addicted to cigarettes every month.

Viewing Chris Jordan's series of works called Running the Numbers inspired awe then anger in this viewer. As Chris says in his artist statment these works should be seen in person.

Click on above title to view Jordan's website.

Drop All for Carolina Chocolate Drops

With the energy of old tent revivalists, Carolina Chocolate Drops brought audiences to their feet this weekend at Merlefest. Even though they are from my hometown of Greensboro, I had not heard them before yesterday at Merlefest 2008. My wife and I stood in the rain with others outside their too small tent venue. But who cares, the energy, talent, and joy they gave off spread like sunshine over every isle and then outside the tent where it warmed those of us with rain soaked souls. I left the festival dancing in the mud and rain thanks to them and other inspiring groups like The Wilders, The Bearfoots, Donna the Buffalo, and the Lovell Sisters.

The Carolina Chocolate Drops are single handedly saving a part of Americana that deserves new life; the black string band. Drop what you are doing the next time they come to your community and go see them. Until then enjoy this video from the recent European tour. (They are also featured in the Movie The Great Debaters, and will appear on the Grand Old Oprey in June, 2008.)

Click on the headline here to go to their website.

Take an afternoon off from work and go see this movie!

The new documentary "Young @ Heart" is a must see. It's the story of a group of seniors who take on modern Rock 'n Roll hits to heartwarming affect. Take a moment to view this you tube video of their version of Cold Play's Fix You. As someone with a loved one on oxygen I cannot express the impact. Take a mental health afternoon and go see the whole movie.

Bob Seven and Ambulance Ready to Respond

Check out this video on North Carolina artist Bob Seven and his Emerge-N-See Ambulance Installation.

From the Invisible 5 Website:

Invisible-5 is a self-guided critical audio tour along Interstate 5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It uses the format of a museum audio tour to guide the listener along the highway landscape.

ABOUT

Invisible-5 investigates the stories of people and communities fighting for environmental justice along the I-5 corridor, through oral histories, field recordings, found sound, recorded music, and archival audio documents. The project also traces natural, social, and economic histories along the route.

ROUTE

The tour follows I-5 between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with additional routing via I-580/I-880 to San Francisco. Sites along the tour, which can be driven in either direction, include Livermore, Crows Landing, Kesterson NWR, Kettleman City, and Boyle Heights in East Los Angeles.

El Systema Changing the World through Music

Gustavo Dudamel conducting the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra

El Systema takes poor kids from the slums of Venezuela and trains them as classical musicians. You may have heard about this program like I did on 60 Minutes on Sunday April 13th, 2008. Here is an article on the program as well. I have long felt art could help save the world. Here is a country saving their easily lost youth (Could we save ours?) through music that "takes them to a different world" in more ways than one. This is a movement we as educators in the USA could learn much from. They have so much participation they are makeing their own instruments. Here are some inspiring facts: 800,000 children have been through the program, $80 million dollars from 8 Venezuelan governments has been spent towards helping these kids. Their National Youth Orchestra (they have hundreds of others) travels world wide. Check out this You Tube on Gustavo Dudamel (one of the program's super stars) and the Simon Bolivar youth orchestra. I am so glad I am a teacher and will be dreaming and instituting ways to light the same fuze in my students as El Systema.

Look on the sunny side.......

This Table of Honor to Hispanic Immigration is available for installation on request.

This past Sunday I attended a conference on the effects of policy changes on Undocumented Immigrants and came away convinced that our nation is drifting head long into another mistaken reaction (Iraq was the first) that makes villains of Hispanics and Latino regardless of their status. I have seen "immigrant" come to mean the same thing as "illegal alien" in my own church. I have heard of local law enforcement racial profiling and fishing for "illegal aliens" at road blocks and in diners and in schools ("Gee thanks Mr. SRO for catching that dirty illegal alien!") and listened to politicians, Democratic and Republican, jump on the "What part of illegal do you not understand" band wagon for the sake of votes. I have neighbors who have attacked and robbed Hispanics without fear or prosecution, know of police that decline response based on status. I see Hispanics that are suffering mental illness and stress and read of attempted suicide rates unacceptable in a humane world. I have watch the national news focus on the most divisive and simplistic aspects of undocumented immigration and I AM MAD about it all.

Rather than simply rage on I have created a " Table of Honor to Mexican / Latino Immigration" to remind us that their are good people hidden behind these labels we so easily apply to dismiss so many of our neighbors.

Anyone can donate an item in honor of a loved one or friend from Latin America- regardless of their status; citizen, legal immigrant, or illegal. Flowers, letters, pictures have already been given. This table has appeared in Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Greensboro, and Winston-Salem. It was disassembled without my permission in the latter two communities.

Searching for the brighter side of human nature is an idea that cannot be disassembled- at least in my home and at this table.

Sleep Through the Static Gets My Vote as Best Anti-War Song

Jack Johnson's new album Sleep through the Static is excellent. The best song on the album is by the same name. (Click here to hear it on You Tube.) A roller coaster ride of words and ideas, this song points at our and Bush's war making mistakes without being shrill or obvious. A thinking person's song you'll find yourself trying to sing along while simultaneously thinking "Damn right, Damn right." Here are a few lines:

Who needs sleep when we've got love?
Who needs keys when we've got clubs?
Who needs please when we've got guns?
Who needs peace when we've gone above
But beyond where we should have gone?
We went beyond where we should have gone

Check out this Youtube to hear Jack talk about his album.

Be sure to catch the Peace Seminar, TIME TO BREAK THE SILENCE: SOUTHERN CHURCHES AND WAR on Saturday, April 5th, at New Garden Friends Meeting in Greensboro, NC.

Altarpiece Inspired by AIDS and Art History

Keiskamma Altarpiece

Beauty and hope cannot be beaten. Whether it is the plagues of Medieval Europe or the AIDS Pandemic of today, death cannot overcome the vessel of hope and beauty; art. In fact, art making is one of humanity's core responses to the realization of death. The Keiskamma Altarpiece is a wonderful example. A work created by over 120 South Africans, mostly women, who live in the AIDS decimated community of Hamburg, South Africa, this work of art standing 13 feet high and 22 feet wide. The multi-layered altarpiece takes its form from Grunewlad's Isenheim Altarpiece. Itself an earlier example of triumph of the human spirit over adversity as it was commissioned in the 1500's by the order of Saint Anthony in Alsace for hospice patients dying from ergot poisoning.

The Keiskamma Altarpiece was instigated by Dr. Carol Hofmeyr, a South African doctor and artist. The Keiskamma Altarpiece is a must see while it is still touring the US. It is currently in Chicago. See their website for more images and tour information. source: April 2008, Art in America

Worth Crying Over?

I have struggled over what to say about these photoshoped photographs by Jill Greenburg, aka the Manipulator. A student of mine suffering the loss of a loved one by their own hand showed me these images as a potential influence on her painting. They are deeply affecting- at least for this old sap of a father. I cannot view them without hearing my own children wailing over some insult or injury to their small selves.

The question I struggled with was over their value. Beyond a striking image, how do these pictures "make the world a better place"? When in doubt, I usually do some research and often find some background information that helps. In this case it did not help. (Jill's political based reason for making them seem trivial in comparison to the overarchingly universal, timeless quality of these images- as does the process she underwent to make them, however conceptually uncomfortable.) My answer came rather from a colleague of mine who teaches psychology. When he saw these photos for the first time he commented that these were children in need of adults to protect them. He then shared a figure on the number of children that die at the hands of parents every year in the US.

Want to guess the number?

It is 1,000/year. (On tonight's news the CDC reports that over 905,000 infants are victums of neglect. That's 1 in 50 infants. )

At that point I saw the value of Jill's series. It is not for their beauty, but for the content they deliver at a gut punching level- that children feel deeply and profoundly, and suffer in our midst. The feelings in their faces are also our own, unfiltered. How can these pictures help? By reminding us that many, many children suffer at the hands of adults. What child is born ready for prison? They are molded into such -by adults. A friend of my son's said once "There would be no racism if all the old folks were all dead." True-but considering that I am an old folk in his eyes I prefer work like this that remind us of the suffering that should, that must, be addressed. It's a situation worth crying over -then fixing.

(Go to Jill Greenburg's website and select the "End Times" series to view more from this series.)

Wildless

My mother has a fear of dead birds, she has over the years found them on her porch preceeding the death of more than one loved one. A similar dread fills me when I see Amy Steins work. Growing up, I could sleep with my window open and hear a chorus of insects singing in the forest just beyond my suburban home. Today, those woods are more suburb and the singing has stopped. Amy Stein most likely grew up similarly.

She has made this series Domesticated showing that border between man and nature. Unlike the fertile zones that nature often creates when one environment transitions into another, our man made zone often bears only road kill, broken necked birds, and fear filled animals fleeing across perfect lawns and concret. Amy memoralizes those moments we all experience but only fleetingly as we see deers just past our headlights or navigate over road kill.

Dixie Queen floats but is not a river boat

What would it feel like to be an illegal immigrant and gay? It's a double trouble that has resulted in suicide in my community here in the American South. I learned this from a brave couple (straight) who have helped start a support group for gay hispanic men and women. Although there is not a documentary out yet showing the reality of their lives, I have found an interesting documentary out since 2003 by Miles Christian Daniels called Dixie Queen. It shows the life and community of a drag queen living in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Warning: This documentary contains graphic scenes not suitable for all viewers

A Broken Heart in the Form of Poem

Update this picture.

Join the Peace Vigil tonight, 7:30PM Wednesday 3-19-08

at Guilford College. Bring Candles.

This poem was sent to me by Pastor Linda Faltin. It's funny, the most outspoken, activist pastors I know are the ones without a "church." For example Pastor Kristina Johnson and Pastor Brady Faggort who has begun La Vela, a spiritual counseling center for Latinos. Pastor Linda is retired and now an author. She regularly sends out emails of her poetry that always speak the truth. Send me your email address if you would like to added to her distribution list; todd@tdrake.com Here is her most recent emailed poem.

five years...and counting

Five long years...
one thousand eight hundred
twenty-seven days...
countless thousands of
lives lost...
thousands more changed
forever in ways we cannot
even imagine by head injuries
and lost limbs...by "post-
traumatic stress disorder"-
and even our language has
changed, as "disorder"
cannot begin to describe
a life forever misshaped
by the horrors seen &
experienced...
families destroyed- here and
in Iraq,,,children without parents...
parents losing children...husbands,
wives ripped away... all in the
name of- what?
Power?
Domination?
Oil?
Our American appetite for it
continues insatiable...and we
dare descry the loss of our
"American way of life" as the
stock market plunges & banks
close & property values plummet &
jobs are lost... while on distant
shores, a "way of life" has been
held in abeyance for five long
years.
Lord, have mercy.
And our government continues
to speak of "Iraqi freedom"...but
surely it cannot be about
freedom, since in this dreadful
"War on Terror" we have lost
so much of ours...allowing it
to slip through our fingers
like sand on the Iraqi desert...
since our government keeps
"terror" alive within American
hearts & minds to justify,
to gain support for, this
oxymoronic war-
which is destroying us
as surely as it is
destroying the Iraqi people.
Lord, have mercy.

Five long years...
one thousand eight hundred
twenty-seven days...
and-irony of ironies- we
stand here in the middle
of Holy Week...
commemorating the unholy
slaying of the man called Jesus
by the powers of his day...
commemorating the unholy
slaughter of peace and justice
by the powers of our day.
Lord, have mercy.

Fall to your knees, friends &
foes, Red states & Blue...
hang heads in shame for what
we have permitted in our name...
then rise up with a mighty
"No more!" resounding...
No more war!
No more fear!
No more lives for oil!
BE the peace for which
you long!
BE the hope for which
our nation craves!
BE the loving compassion
which is the path
to justice this world
needs!

Lord, have mercy,
and strengthen us
to live the truth.
Amen & amen

For those of you in the greater Greensboro area, there will be a peace vigil at the corner of Guilford College Road and Friendly Ave., right in front of Guildford College at 7:30p.m. tonight. Bring candles...and any signs you might have. And for the rest of you, MoveOne is sponsoring similar vigils across the country, as, I imagine, are any number of bold churches. Let us not be so paralyzed by fear or the perception of partisanship that we lose sight of being the peace that this world so desperately needs. Blessings, Linda

Also, be sure to watch the Front Line Documentary Bush's War. Viewable online.