Guest Post
by Luivette Resto
 |
| Journalist James Wright "Jim" Foley (1973-2014) |
It has been over a decade since I graduated from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst with an MFA. Yet, it was there in the musty hallways of Bartlett Hall that I met and had my first conversation with James Foley. He was pursuing his fiction degree while his best friend and my compadre, Yago S. Cura, was focused on poetry. We were all young and “aspiring” at the time. We survived New England winters, anticipated the fall, and complained about the lack of graduate courses that explored the politics of writing. We even petitioned one year along with other likeminded graduate students who knew that writing wasn’t just for the self. That it was about telling stories. Documenting what others were afraid to document.
For Jim, Amherst wasn’t going to be his only stop on his journey to tell others’ stories. He continued on this courageous and compassionate path and became a teacher and mentor. One masters wasn’t enough for him. In 2008 he earned his Master’s in Journalism from Northwestern University. His ability and drive to voice what others couldn’t or weren’t allowed made him a freelance journalist for the Global Post. After graduate school many of us went our separate ways, but as fate would have it, Yago and I ended up in Los Angeles and the bonds of musty Bartlett Hall and anti-climactic thesis defenses never weakened. Knowing how inseparable Jim and Yago were in grad school, I had to ask “How’s Jim doing?”
Unfortunately, in 2011 during one of our catch-up conversations Yago informed me of Jim’s captivity in Libya. A website with a counter had been created, and Jim’s family pleads to Secretary of State Clinton for their son’s release on CNN. And we did what poets do when one of our own storytellers gets silenced. We held a poetry reading in his honor to raise awareness. Avenue 50 Studio graciously allowed usinto their space as some of LA’s finest poets, SA Griffin, Billy Burgos, Dennis Cruz, Annette Cruz, and Jeff Rochlin, spoke out for Jim, a man they had never met proving that sympathy has no boundaries. Jim came home from Libya after 44 days.
As poets we felt relief when saw the counter turn to zero and Jim’s broad smile on TV, standing next to his family. His time in Libya didn’t deter him from his passion to document what many of us weren’t aware of in the U.S.
In 2012 he entered Syria and was kidnapped on November 22. For two years I would ask if any word had surfaced about Jim, and Yago would say, “No, not yet. But hey no news is good news, right? All we can do is hope and pray.” A miracle happened in 2011, and we held onto the idea that miracles can strike twice.
On August 19, 2014, that two year-old question was finally answered in a brutally public way. There on the afternoon newsfeed was Jim’s face looking back. The war came home for me in that instant. I couldn’t feel anything for a few weeks. I refused to watch the video. That is not the image I want to have of Jim. That wasn’t his legacy. I reached out to my grad school classmates after ten years. We consoled each other with virtual hugs and Jim stories. And once again we will gather in Los Angeles, but this time to send Jim home in the only way many of us can---through poetry.
On November 23, 2014, at 2pm at Avenue 50 Studio, almost two years since his kidnapping in Syria, La Palabra Poetry Reading Series will hold a poetry tribute with the original poets from three years ago plus many more poets and musicians. At the end of the reading, Iris de Anda will lead everyone one in a healing prayer as we send Jim our intentions of gratitude.
Michael Sedano
Luis Rodriguez & Friends Read at La Palabra
Fourth Sunday of a month, Avenue 50 Studio and Gallery Director Kathy Mas-Gallegos opens its doors and ears to poetry. The recent event featured memoirist poet Luis Rodriguez and a lively Open Mic session in a worthwhile afternoon.
People arrive early to chat with friends, others to find parking on near-by streets. Hint: Free parking. Take the drive between the light rail line and the Avenue 50 Studio building to find ample parking.
Here artist Joe Bravo chats with open mic performer Henry Chavez.
Don Newton and Laura Longoria co-host the event, sharing various announcements to launch the day's performances, and introducing each writer as she or he steps to the lectern area to share one or two pieces.
Here, Longoria makes sure all open mic'ers are on the list. Photographers will note the hard backlighting coming through white curtains. Since flash can be a distraction to readers and audience, I open the lens two stops to challenge the setting. Mostly the images work well.
Luis Rodriguez reminds gente that his work and other writers comes from his Tia Chucha Press. In addition, Homeboy Industries publishes an arts magazine. Today's reading will take two parts. Before Open Mic time, Luis reads from work published in Homeboy Review.
Open Mic Readers Wow the HouseAkira Yamamoto gives a rousing performance featuring a rhythmic, hard beat chanting style that I find arresting and delightful. Back some years, this would have been called "rap" or "rapping". Maybe young poets still use that term. It feels too inadequate, three letters only to encompass such power and attention-holding verse.
The lineup follows with quiet, serious, passionate readings. Some highly personal, others movimiento tinged but definitely contemporary. La Palabra is an exclusively aural delight, the artists do not sell or provide printed copies for gente like me who enjoy reading and listening. Maybe next month, a ver.
Maria Ruiz
Ron Baca.
Rafael Alvarado.
Antonio Sorcini.
Henry Chavez elects an interesting--and I think ill-advised--medium, a blackberry. The public performer wants to hold eye contact to produce a sense of immediacy and personalize the presentation. Henry struggles to read the tiny screen giving little attention to listeners struggling to give his work an unencumbered hearing.
Henry Lozano.
Don Newton.
Two highlights of the Open Mic session, for me, included "rapper" Yolanda Androzzo, whose Emmett Till "rap" included a call and response section, a technique guaranteed to please audiences because it frees them from merely listening and allows them to become personally involved in the performance.
Another highlight came from, Mary Francis Spencer, who said something in her narrative that gave three listeners, Heriberto Luna, Rafael Alvarado, and Enrique Serrato, something to focus on. I caught the movement in my peripheral vision and swiveled to snap them so fully engaged in Mary Francis' speech.
When Open Mic concluded, Luis took the floor again, for a reading of "old stuff."
Rodriguez kept his audience engaged, such as Angela Penaredondo and Suzanne Lummis. Most Open Mic performers rewarded their audience with strong presentations, though some struggled to achieve a satisfying interaction. A clear difference between Rodriguez and some of the Open Mic readers is Rodriguez' planning, comfort with his own stuff, and experience doing readings.
The wrap-up to the reading were announcements and input from the house. Here David Diaz adds to the discussion.
Kathy Mas-Gallegos, acknowledges her guests, many of whom are regular attenders of La Palabra.
Don Newton and Laura Longoria conduct a wonderful afternoon of poetry and performance. A scattering of empty seats indicate there's space for you the fourth Sunday in August. Here Longoria finally relaxes as the audience adjourns to the refreshment table featuring cold water, fruit, cheese, crackers.
Since there is no charge to attend La Palabra, nor a fee for participating in Open Mic, the luscious spread proves the old adage wrong, there is such a thing as a free lunch. Yours for the gnoshing, snacking, scarfing, devouring, tragando. Check Avenue 50's website for details of La Palabra and the outstanding art exhibits Gallegos sponsors. As Rodriguez noted in his opening remarks, Avenue 50 Studio is a hidden gem that the LA Times ignores with regularity. Tell your friends, make the visit to all the shows.
Thank you Kathy and Don for your help identifying these poets. It's totally comforting to be in a public place where your hosts know your name. Clearly, it's not business but Love that makes La Palabra and Avenue 50 Studio special.
Grrrr....
Shame, shame, shame, Obama.
U.S. military veterans have proved we can take a lot of crap and that's a good thing because career politicians, especially non-veteran tipos, dish out crap to veterans in heaping trucksful.
To the public, of course, these tipos pay elegant lip service, Henry Waxman and Barack Obama to name a pair. But they act either with empty gesture, or inimically to the nation's veterans.
Obama, for one, earns high dudgeon because he promised to bring transparency and respect for the nation's military veterans. Instead, he's dashed hopes of veterans who believed his campaign promises but witness instead steadfast support of the Bush status quo
Waxman has been boldly rapacious and dismissive. With Waxman's assistance, the Bush Veterans Administration gave away a prime parcel of veteran land to Waxman's wealthy Brentwood supporters. Waxman was asked by a Marine, a Chicano Vietnam veteran, why the congressman refuses to entertain petitions to rescind this land grab of property deeded "in perpetuity" to veterans. Waxman shrugged with a nonsensical riposte, "where do you draw the line?" He might as well have echoed Tolstoy's story, "All the Land a Man Needs." How much land does an injured veteran need? A hole six feet deep. Obviously, I am a deranged veteran that I grow this outraged thinking about these two turkeys Obama and Waxman out-Bushing Bush and Cheney in their contempt for veterans. So I'll stop. You may wish to hear what other veterans say on this. Here's an outstanding blog and video on the land grab: http://veteranslandgrab.blogspot.com/
That's the final Tuesday of July, the month of the nation's independence, the Sotomayor hearing, the health care debate, the morass of Iraq and now Afghanistan--bring them home now! Dang, gente, if the VA and elected officials are going to take away land intended to care for the men and women who gave a leg, an arm, or a mind to war, and give that precious land for free to fat cats, then it's time to throw in the towel and stop creating injured veterans. OK, I won't get started again.
Thank you for visiting La Bloga on this Tuesday, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except you are here. Walter Cronkite used to say that.
mvs
La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and all daily columns. Click the comments counter below to share your views. As you saw Sunday from Olga, tatiana, and Liz, and yesterday, from Thania in Chile, La Bloga welcomes Guest Columnists. If you'd like to be our guest, click here to discuss your column idea.
Michael Sedano
"4th Sunday of Every Month," the email taunts me. Taunts, because invariably my good intentions of attending a La Palabra Monthly poetry event run afoul of some other commitment. I have subscription seats to Sunday concerts for LA Phil at Disney Hall and
Coleman Chamber Music Association at Cal Tech. Often our tickets fall on a fourth Sunday.
Or sometimes I start an early morning project that grows like topsy into the afternoon, and 2:00 p.m. comes and I'm covered in dirt or chicken poop and would make a poor seat mate to some hapless poetry lover.
And poetry lovers are whom one meets at La Palabra's monthly poetry celebration. At any rate, that's how it turned out for me when I was able to get cleaned up early enough on Sunday the 23d of November (tempus fugit!), to arrive unfashionably late.
I'm so late that I don't get a program and can show only the portraits of the gente reading their well-crafted work. I cannot tell you the names of these poets.
La Palabra evidently holds Open Mic readings to launch the afternoon, followed by scheduled poets. The Emcee pictured here with a close-up of her Open Mic sign-up board is most likely the Co-Host of La Palabra, Laura Longoria.
Despite the sign-ups of three men and a woman, one of the poets either did not perform, or, owing to my tardiness, she read before my arrival, and I missed her work.
So I am treated to readings by the three Open Mic men. It's an intimate setting, a white-walled space with twenty or so plastic chairs arranged three rows deep. Being a photographer, I zig and zag myself through the chairs to take an empty seat in the front row. The space is small enough that every word would likely be audible from the back row. This adds to the enjoyment of the verse, not straining to make out the words.
One gentleman, weara a "Poetry Daily" t-shirt publicizing the
website of the same name.
Another reader announces he's just written the piece he'll read. He reads his work off the back of the program.
Dog gone it, I wish I could tell you the name of the Cubana who reads several pieces about her cultura and growing up in Habana
with Orishas and Yemeya and Babalaos. She weaves an entertaining narrative between her formal pieces, playing a vinyl disc and a CD that illustrate her work. Fabulously entertaining, she doesn't, or cannot, stay at the lectern but moves about. At one point she dances to the infectious beat of island drumming.
Next up is Don Newton. I can tell you his name because he's one of the sponsors of La Palabra, and Don's and Emcee Laura's name is on the publicity posted at Avenue 50 Studio's
homepage, the host of the event. Don shares some autobiographical work recounting events growing up in New Jersey, Mexico, and Brazil.
It's clear that Don and la Cubana are close friends. I'm sure their bonds aren't the sole reason they read today. Obviously both enjoy the process of reading and performing their poetry.
I am relieved I finally had the opportunity of a free fourth Sunday. Here all this time I'd been castigating myself thinking I was missing a grand experience. And I was right, La Palabra is a grand experience, not to be passed by under ordinary circumstances.
Now if the Phil or Coleman would just cooperate and not schedule competing events, I'd have no conflicts and could happily attend every La Palabra. Who knows, maybe next time I have a conflict, I'll give away my concert tickets and sign up for the Open Mic.
Flor Y Canto Progress Report
I spent last week at the University of California, Riverside Tomás Rivera Library Media Center, digitizing the library's collection of
U-matic video cassettes. This is a time-consuming process that is 25% completed. Next week I'll post a few snippets of work, for example, Omar Salinas, whose readings would have been the ideal accompaniment to Karen Harlow McClintock's
touching eulogy of her friendship with the poet.
I am happy--make that overjoyed--to report that USC, as the Copyright owner, has granted me permission to make these copies and share them with La Bloga and Read! Raza visitors. Rest assured I'm no
Digital Millenium Act scofflaw.
I'll be conducting a workshop in "reading your stuff" at next year's
National Latino Writers Conference, and am integrating selections from some of these 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto readings as part of my lesson plan.
With the creation of DVDs of these historic performances, planning for the 2010 Festival de Flor Y Canto is making great progress. Click
here for the Call for Writers to that event. If you're an alumna alumnus of that 1973 Festival, please contact me for an invitation to the 2010 reunion!
That's the final Tuesday of November 2008. It's the week for tofu turkey loaf, if you're so inclined, or real roasted bird. My grandmother, Emilia Macias, was the best poultry dresser of the Inland Empire. People used to drive from all over southern California to DeYoung's Poultry in Redlands to get a bird prepared by my grandmother. Granma, you wouldn't recognize what they do to coconos nowadays.
Happy Thanksgiving, whether you're having tamales or turkey or tofu. See you next week, December 2, with some of those 1973 readers.
Ate, les wachamos,
mvs
La Bloga welcomes your comments on any column. Simple click the Comments counter below to share your views. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. When you have an extended response to something you've read here, or when you'd like to do your own book or cultural events review, please, be our guest. To get started on your first--or next--visit as our guest, click
here.
Carnal,
Yes, you probably are deranged for having become a Veteran, for positioning yourself behind the "truckloads" of crap that our so-called "progressive" thinking society and politicians heap upon you and our brother and sister Veterans. So, what are WE going to do about it?
For starters, with regard to the piece, let's give credit where credit is due. That U-Tube piece succintly and graphically describes the "Land-grab" situation that has whittled away a visionary gift to Veteran patients and represents the darkest side of VA Asset Management. This exposure comes after years of whistle-blowing by individuals and groups who, unfortunately, are fragmented and, therefore, easily ignored. Thanks to a combination of guts, tenacity, the Internet and U-Tube, that fact may go away. I say "may" because there is, still, the human element that gives a squat about the largter human element. Veteran advocates vary in personality and political loyalities as much as everything and everyone else.
For me to even suggest that "we must..." do this or that in order to unify our efforts is putting the proverbial cart before the horse. Another strategy must be employed because, while we are avoiding our differences, arguing over them or trying to unify them, precious little land that is needed for future Veteran patients is being snatched from underneath the public's eye; it might be due to the thick cover of wool that has been pulled over them by elected leaders like Waxman and Obama. The idea of saving the "HOME" is an island, surrounded by an ocean of ignorance, politics and greed. Throw in some extended issues like how Veterans fought to keep so-called illegal aliens out of this country and why 1st generation children to undocumented workers should not be allowed to stay and you come up with an interesting stew that, all good bloggers know, is impossible to swim in.
Let's stick to saving the "HOME" and we may be able to learn to solve problems together.