Random Access

Sunday – 13 February 2011
It’s my sister, Rana’s, birthday:

So far, today has been rather quiet and lazy. I slept in, which was quite the treat.

Yesterday, I headed over to Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection to play HeroClix with a few of the guys.  We wound up playing a 3-on-3 game, themed “Science vs. Magic.” Chris, Andrew and I played figures with the “Mystical” and “Psychic” keywords, while Jeremiah and the two Johns played “Science,” “Robot” and “Armor” keyworded figures. It was a good game. We beat science to a pulp… with the very notable exception of Jeremiah’s Dr. Manhattan figure.

After I got home, SaraRules! and I ate dinner and watched The Hurt Locker and Iron Man. We’d not seen The Hurt Locker before. It was a very good and well-done movie; it was easy to see why the Academy lavished so much attention on it last year. And, Iron Man – which was SaraRules!’ choice, not mine by the way- well, that was just fun.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is Wynton Marsalis:

Wynton Learson Marsalis is a trumpeter, composer, bandleader, music educator, and Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Marsalis has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music often to young audiences. Marsalis has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for a jazz recording.

Wynton was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to Dolores and Ellis Marsalis, the second of six sons. At an early age he exhibited an aptitude for music. At age eight, Wynton performed traditional New Orleans music in the Fairview Baptist Church band led by banjoist Danny Barker, and at 14, he performed with the New Orleans Philharmonic. During high school, Wynton performed with the New Orleans Symphony Brass Quintet, New Orleans Community Concert Band, New Orleans Youth Orchestra, New Orleans Symphony, various jazz bands and with a local funk band, the Creators.

At age 17, Wynton was the youngest musician admitted to Tanglewood’s Berkshire Music Center, where he won the school’s Harvey Shapiro Award for outstanding brass student. Wynton moved to New York City to attend Juilliard in 1979, and picked up gigs around town. In 1980, Wynton joined the Jazz Messengers led by Art Blakey. In the years that followed, Wynton performed with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Sweets Edison, Clark Terry, Sonny Rollins, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and countless other jazz legends.

In 1987, Wynton Marsalis co-founded a jazz program at Lincoln Center. In July 1996, Jazz at Lincoln Center was installed as new constituent of Lincoln Center. In October 2004, Marsalis opened Frederick P. Rose Hall, the world’s first institution for jazz containing three performance spaces (including the first concert hall designed specifically for jazz) along with recording, broadcast, rehearsal and educational facilities. Wynton presently serves as Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and Music Director for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Stray Toasters

• 4-Star General, 5-Star Grace
• If you’re in the San Francisco area – and are a fan of movies and sci-fi – you might want to check out this event, coming up on Wednesday.
  • If you’re not familiar with Sandy Collora’s work, check out the trailer he made for Batman: Dead End:

• A Point of View: Why books do not prepare us for real love
• Waltham, MA becomes Steampunkville
  
• 
• By way of Lish: Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions
  • When I countered that this was an article from Faux News, he backed it up with this corroborating article from The New York Times
• Ebooks Finally Included on the NYT Bestsellers List

Namaste.

Saturday – 12 February 2011
It’s the weekend, baby! Surprisingly, I’ve even managed to be… productive… this morning. I folded a bunch of laundry, started a new load, started cleaning the bathroom. And all of this before 1100. (Yeah, I know! I’m a little shocked, too.)

Last night, after hanging out with the Clitorati crowd, I played a little CoD: Black Ops with a few of my coworkers for a couple of hours. After that, I took a spin through Metropolis with Nefer-Tem and beat on some bad guys in DC Universe Online.

Today, I’m hanging out with some of the usual suspects at Dr. Volt’s and playing ‘Clix. It’s not a tournament, so I should be able to just hang out, relax and play. Oh, and trash talk… of course.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is “Sugar” Ray Leonard

Sugar Ray Leonard is an American retired professional boxer. He was named Ray Charles Leonard, after his mother’s favorite singer, Ray Charles. Leonard was the first boxer to earn more than $100 million in purses, and he is widely considered to be one of the best boxers of all time, winning world titles in five weight divisions and defeating future fellow International Boxing Hall of Fame inductees Wilfred Benítez, Thomas Hearns, Roberto Durán and Marvin Hagler. Leonard was named “Boxer of the Decade” for the 1980s, due to his accomplishments.

Leonard started boxing at the recreation center in Palmer Park in 1969. His older brother Roger started boxing first. Roger had helped start the boxing program, urging Ollie Dunlap, the center’s director, to form a team. Dave Jacobs, a former boxer, and Janks Morton volunteered as the boxing coaches. Roger won some trophies and showed them off in front of Ray, goading him to start boxing.

In 1972, Leonard boxed in the featherweight quarterfinals of the National AAU Tournament, losing by decision to Jerome Artis. It was his first defeat. Later that year, he boxed in the Eastern Olympic Trials. The rules stated that a boxer had to be seventeen to box in international competition, so Leonard, only sixteen, lied about his age. He made it to the lightweight semifinals, losing a disputed decision to Greg Whaley, who took such a beating that he wasn’t allowed to continue in the trials. Whaley never boxed again.

Sarge Johnson, assistant coach of the U.S. Olympic Boxing Team, said to Dave Jacobs, “That kid you got is sweet as sugar.” The nickname stuck. However, given his style and first name, it was probably only a matter of time before people started calling him Sugar Ray, after the man many consider to be the best boxer of all time, Sugar Ray Robinson.

In 1976, Leonard made the U.S. Olympic Team as the light welterweight representative. The team also included Leon and Michael Spinks, Howard Davis, Jr., Leo Randolph, Charles Mooney and John Tate. Many consider the 1976 U.S. team to be the greatest boxing team in the history of the Olympics. Leonard won his first four Olympic bouts by 5–0 decisions. In the final, he boxed the great Cuban knockout artist Andrés Aldama, who scored five straight knockouts to reach the final.

In the second, he dropped Aldama with a left to the chin. Late in the final round, he again hurt Aldama, which brought a standing eight count from the referee. With only a few seconds left in the fight, a Leonard combination forced another standing eight count. Leonard was awarded a 5–0 decision and the Olympic Gold Medal.

He finished his amateur career with a record of 145–5 and 75 KO’s.

When Leonard decided to turn professional, Janks Morton introduced him to Mike Trainer. Trainer talked twenty-four of his friends and clients into underwriting Leonard’s career with an investment of $21,000, to be repaid within four years at 8% interest. Trainer then made Leonard the sole stockholder in Sugar Ray Leonard, Inc. Angelo Dundee, Muhammad Ali’s trainer, was brought in to be Leonard’s trainer and manager.

Leonard made his professional debut on February 5, 1977 before a crowd of 10,270 at the Civic Center in Baltimore, Maryland. He was paid $40,044 for the fight. His opponent was Luis “The Bull” Vega, whom he defeated by a six-round unanimous decision. After the fight, Leonard paid back his $21,000 loan to the investors.

In his fourteenth professional fight, Leonard fought his first world-ranked opponent, Floyd Mayweather, who was ranked seventeenth. The fight took place on September 9, 1978. Leonard won by a tenth-round knockout.

Leonard fought Wilfred Benitez for the WBC Welterweight Championship on November 30, 1979 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Leonard received $1 million and Benitez, a two-division champion with a record of 38–0–1, received $1.2 million. Going into the final round, Leonard led by scores of 137–130, 137–133, and 136–134. The two went toe-to-toe in the fifteenth. Late in the round, Leonard dropped Benitez with a left. He got up, but after a few more punches, the referee stopped the fight. The time was 2:54 of round fifteen.

In October 1996, the 40-year-old Leonard announced that he was coming out of retirement to fight Héctor Camacho for the lightly regarded IBC Middleweight Championship. Camacho, a quick southpaw, had a record of 62–3–1. The fight with Camacho took place on March 1, 1997 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Leonard held his own in the first two rounds, but Camacho, who applied pressure from the opening bell, started to score well in the third. He continued to score well in the fourth and opened a cut above Leonard’s right eye. In the fifth, Camacho dropped Leonard with a right followed by two left uppercuts. Leonard got up, but was unable to ward off Camacho. The referee stopped the fight with Leonard taking punishment on the ropes.

The Camacho fight was Leonard’s last. He finished his career with a record of 36–3–1 with 25 knockouts.

Stray Toasters

• My father took me to see a Sugar Ray Leonard fight, when I was a kid.
• Neil Gaiman explains why he doesn’t sweat “piracy”
• Inherently Funny Words
• 
• Book uses colored thread between pages to make hyperlinks

Up. Out.

Namaste.

Friday – 11 February 2011
It’s Friday. Granted, it’s my “on” Friday, but it’s still the end of the work week.

Last night, SaraRules and I attended a performance of Never Fight a Shark in Water, a one-man play based on the experiences of Gregory Bright, a man who served 27^1/2 years in prison for a second-degree murder charge that he didn’t commit. The play, starring Charles Holt,  gave a time-compressed view of Mr. Bright’s ordeal, from his arrest to his emancipation. Mr. Holt gave a very powerful and emotional performance… despite what had to be one of the worst audiences that I’ve been part of:

• People wandered in, not quietly, ten to fifteen minutes after the play had started;
• One woman’s daughter was restless – and very vocal about it – throughout the performance;
• One man shouted down at Mr. Holt not smoke; he lit and took two or three drags off two (2) cigarettes over the course of the two-hour performance, both of which were extinguished within a minute or two of lighting them. The smoking of both cigarettes was integral to each part of the story. To his credit, Mr. Holt queried the audience and offered to not smoke – the audience response was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing.
• People got up, leaving and returning to the theatre, mid-performance… again, not quietly.

After the performance, there was a brief Q&A panel session, led by KUER’s Jennifer Napier-Pierce, with Gregory Bright, Charles Holt and a professor whose name eludes me. There were some rather good questions posed by the audience, including:

• Q: How long did it take for you to let go of your anger?
  A: “Five or six years.”
• Q: You taught yourself to read while in prison and spent so much time reading legal documents to help in securing your freedom; do you read, now, just for enjoyment?
  A: “When I learned to read, I read everything: George Orwell… Plato… comic books. Reading was such a great thing! I still read… I just don’t have as much time to do it.”

Mr. Bright was very candid and open in his responses. Even when asked about his former love, who – after 23 years of visits – told him that she’d married someone else, he said that she had been a major force in his life and that she remains a very good friend today.

In all, it was a very good way to spend the evening. If you have a chance to catch a performance of Never Fight a Shark in Water, you should do so.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is Eartha Kitt:

Eartha Mae Kitt was an American actress, singer and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit Christmas song “Santa Baby”.

Kitt began her career as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company in 1943 and remained a member of the troupe until 1948. A talented singer with a distinctive voice, her hits include “Let’s Do It”, “Champagne Taste”, “C’est si bon”, “Just an Old Fashioned Girl”, “Monotonous”, “Je cherche un homme”, “Love for Sale”, “I’d Rather Be Burned as a Witch”, “Uska Dara”, “Mink, Schmink”, “Under the Bridges of Paris”, and her most recognizable hit, “Santa Baby”, which was released in 1953. Kitt’s unique style was enhanced as she became fluent in the French language during her years performing in Europe.

Throughout the rest of the 1950s and early 1960s, Kitt would record, work in film, television and nightclubs, and return to the Broadway stage in “Mrs. Patterson” during the 1954-55 season, “Shinbone Alley” in 1957, and the short-lived “Jolly’s Progress” in 1959.^[9] In 1964, Kitt helped open the Circle Star Theater in San Carlos, California. Also in the 1960s, the television series Batman featured her as Catwoman after Julie Newmar left the role.

In 1968, during the administration of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Kitt encountered a substantial professional setback after she made anti-war statements during a White House luncheon. The public reaction to Kitt’s statements was extreme, both pro and con. Publicly ostracized in the US, she devoted her energies to performances in Europe and Asia.

During that time, cultural references to her grew, including outside the United States, such as the well-known Monty Python sketch “The Cycling Tour”, where an amnesiac believes he is first Clodagh Rodgers, then Trotsky and finally Kitt (while performing to an enthusiastic crowd in Moscow). She returned to New York in a triumphant turn in the Broadway spectacle Timbuktu! (a version of the perennial Kismet set in Africa) in 1978.

Ms. Kitt became a vocal advocate for homosexual rights and publicly supported same-sex marriage, which she believed to be a civil right. She had been quoted as saying: “I support it [gay marriage] because we’re asking for the same thing. If I have a partner and something happens to me, I want that partner to enjoy the benefits of what we have reaped together. It’s a civil-rights thing, isn’t it?”

Kitt died from colon cancer on Christmas Day, 2008 at her Weston, Connecticut, home.

Stray Toasters

• Poetry
• Some people choose to be inconsolable.
• How did dinosaurs do it?
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: British woman dies after botched butt ‘enhancement’ in a hotel
• 
• After the “less-than-ideal-to-me” X3: X-Men United, I have been… skeptical… in my attitude towards this summer’s X-Men: First Class. Until this appeared yesterday:

  Now, I’d say that I’m “cautiously optimistic.”

• Nothing’s ‘Unknown’ about January Jones
• I stopped at Pin-up Girl on the way back from lunch. Kendra (the on-duty barista) and I were a little more than “mildly” shocked to learn that Christy (another barista) had NO idea who James Brown was.
• Sex questions answered: 1959
• 
  
• Hospitals Shift Smoking Bans to Smoker Ban
• Twitter Users Tricks Sony into Posting ‘Secret’ PS3 Code
• Super Mario Game Theme: Violin

Namaste.

Thursday – 10 February 2011
Another NBN Thursday is upon us.

Last night was D&D (4.0) game night. We started a new encounter, created by . It was good… and a little odd. We were traveling down a road, minding our own business, when we were ‘jacked by a goblin… which stole an item that we were trying to return to its rightful place. We chased the gob through woods and into a clearing. There, we found:

1. A goblin corpse (the goblin we’d been chasing, in fact) and
2. A pink slime

For those of you – like me – who have never encountered Item #2 before, allow me to share with you a little insight:

The key thing to note there is its “Seasoning Mist.” All but two of us were caught in the mist… which nearly turned us into a party of cannibals. Nearly. Instead, a few of us (those who missed our saving throws) wound up eating some of the carrion in the area. Yeah, it was like that. We managed to survive the encounter.

Back at home, SaraRules! and I tackled another recorded episode of NCIS and a couple of other shows before she called it a night and I dove into yesterday’s four-color haul.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s item is Juneteenth.

Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is a holiday in the United States honoring African American heritage by commemorating the announcement of the abolition of slavery in the U.S. State of Texas in 1865. Celebrated on June 19, the term is a portmanteau of June and nineteenth, and is recognized as a state holiday in 36 states of the United States.

Though Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, with an effective date of January 1, 1863, it had minimal immediate effect on most slaves’ day-to-day lives, particularly in the Confederate States of America. Texas, as a part of the Confederacy, was resistant to the Emancipation Proclamation, and though slavery was very prevalent in East Texas, it was not as common in the Western areas of Texas, particularly the Hill Country, where most German-Americans were opposed to the practice. Juneteenth commemorates June 18 and 19, 1865. June 18 is the day Union General Gordon Granger and 2,000 federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, to take possession of the state and enforce the emancipation of its slaves. On June 19, 1865, legend has it while standing on the balcony of Galveston’sAshton Villa, Granger read the contents of “General Order No. 3”:

The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere.

Stray Toasters

• On the way to work this morning, I was listening to X96’s Radio From Hell morning show. They had an interview with Gregory Bright, who – after serving 27 years in prison for a second-degree murder charge – was released from prison due to wrongful conviction. Mr. Bright and Lara Naughton have turned his story into a one-man play, called Never Fight a Shark in Water, which is being performed at the University of Utah this evening; there is no admission charge for the performance. For more information about tonight’s performance, click here.
• Breakout Style
• Fooducate: Eat a Bit Better
• Houston Opera Still Embraces Bold Ventures
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: 7-Year-Old Buys Harrier Jet — Then Gets Dreams Shattered
• 
  
• Medical Treatment, Out of Reach
• Navigating the new UI at Gizmodo will take some getting used to…
• ‘Superman’ artist Joe Shuster’s lurid comic world exposed
• 
  
• Girls Love Gadgets, Too: Gifts for Your Geeky Sweetie
• Black Metal Greeting Cards

Namaste.

Wednesday – 09 February 2011
Midweek. Which makes it not only new comics day, but also D&D (4.0) night. Now, to just make it through the work day…

Last night, SaraRules! and I helped her father (and both brothers) move an organ out of her grandfather’s apartment. I’m going to let that sink in for a moment…

::: pause :::

Got it? Okay. Moving on. It was cold last night. Sub-freezing, with a not-so-lovely wind adding to the “fun.” The move took a little longer than it could/should have. But, in the end, the organ was loaded into a U-Haul trailer. Amen. Mid-move I jokingly asked SaraRules! where she was taking me for dinner. Without missing a beat, she asked,”Where do you want to go…? Outback?” Mmm, Outback…

And, so it was, later, as the miller told his tale, that her face – at first just ghostly – turned a whiter shade of pale that we wound up at the local Outback Steakhouse.  Aussie Cheese Fries. Prime Rib. Good. On the way home from dinner, we drove past A Perfect Dress, to see what new fashion (or horrors) they had in the windows. Turns out that SaraRules! and I agreed that most of the items weren’t too bad; there were only a couple of dresses that we questioned. The rest of the evening was spent, on the couch, watching TV. And I wrapped up the night playing CoD: Black Ops with a few coworkers before calling it a night.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
I had a hard time coming up with something that began with the letter “I” for today’s entry. Eventually, an idea came to mind… and it’s one that I find apropos, as today is also the day that new comic books release:

Today’s item is Incognegro, a graphic novel by Mat Johnson.

(c) DC Comics

For a synopsis of the book’s plot, I’ll refer to an interview that Mat Johnson did with Newsarama in 2007:

NEWSARAMA: Mat, let’s start with the big picture. What’s the gist of Incognegro?

Mat Johnson: It’s the story of a mixed person of African-American descent who passed for white in the 1930s to investigate lynchings in the South. He goes down to Mississippi on a specific mission that ends up getting tangled really quickly, and it turns into a noir thriller.

NRAMA: What can you tell us about the protagonist Zane Pinchback and where he is when the book opens?

MJ: He’s a reporter in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance, and he’s kind of a minor celebrity, but he’s only famous on paper. Nobody can know what he looks like because of what he does. So he’s somewhat frustrated by that, being famous but not being famous. He’s dealing with his past, and part of what happens in the story is he’s pulled back into his personal past, his own story.
NRAMA: In addition to dealing with his own issues, he also has to go “incognegro” and go to the South to save his brother. So there’s a whole external drive going for him, in addition to his own internal awakening, right?

MJ: He has a twin brother who looks much like himself but is dark-skinned. His brother has had none of the breaks that Zane had, largely because of his difference in appearance, even though they’re of the same mother and father. When he goes back, Zane has to confront this other life that he was able to escape, but that his brother instead had to dive deeper into. And that’s really the emotional heart of the book, the two of them and their lives, the convergence of them coming together.

Johnson also notes that the story was partially inspired by Walter Francis White, a light-skinned African-American who used his skin color (or lack thereof) to investigate lynchings and race riots in the American south in the early 20th Century:

MJ: Yeah. Well, Walter White is the primary idea for the piece, when he was investigating these lynchings, but there’ve been other points in history – I’m African-American, but I look fairly white or European, so I’ve always been very fascinated by these points in history, when people like myself interacted, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. I was fascinated with the idea of taking something that is part of my life and part of past lives, and seeing if I could make that into not just a curiosity, but into something that actually could mean the difference in lives.

As I wrote in 2008, when I first read the book:

Incognegro, written by Mat Johnson (1, 2, 3) – a light-skinned Black man, himself – is adeptly written. Its characters aren’t just stereotypical caricatures; they have depth. The settings aren’t just backdrops, they add to the flavor of the scenes. The story also contains a few interesting plot twists, as well.

See also: The New York Times review of the book.

Stray Toasters

• Employee surveys. Normally, I’d be all *twirls finger in air* about it, but it seems as though our robot overlords protectors are actually invested in seeing what employees think and feel about the company and their jobs and what – within reason – can be done to make our working lives better.  We’ll see how this shakes out.
• Speaking in Defense of Science
• Ravens’ Michael Oher tells his side in memoir
• Lymph Node Study Shakes Pillar of Breast Cancer Care
• 
• Packers celebrate Super Bowl win with 56,000 fans at Lambeau Field
• Women “computers” of World War II
• Worker Trapped in Plane’s Cargo Hold Avoids Becoming Passenger
• Homeowners face “new normal” in housing bust
  • Chart: Owing more than home is worth
• 
• Iconoscope No. 1: Star Wars Episode IV
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Sofa made from a coffin

Quote of the Day
Today’s quote comes from last night’s moving extravaganza. While standing outside, watching the comedy of trying to figure out how to arrange the organ in the trailer, SaraRules! thanked me for “…helping my crazy family” with the move. We joked about it for a moment before she noted:

SaraRules!: “Oh, your family’s crazy, too.”
Me: “Yeah, but at least my family has the good sense to be crazy indoors, where it’s warm!”

We both got a good laugh out of that.

Namaste.

Tuesday – 08 February 2011
It’s a sunny day in the valley. That is in stark contrast to the snow that fell yesterday afternoon and last night. Although, on the “plus” side: The air is clean(er) and you can see across the valley:

Last night, SaraRules! and I had a Date Night Adventure! It was really just supposed to be dinner and a concert, but the first half turned into something of an ordeal. Shortly after last month’s Preservation Hall Jazz Band concert, we learned that Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra was going to be performing.

So, we decided to go and celebrate Valentine’s Day a little early.

This came under the heading of “Good Theory.”
“Practical Application” went a little something like this:

We drove to the University of Utah campus and found parking. We walked down to 13th East, as we had planned to eat at Aristo’s, a restaurant that SaraRules! had heard was good and wanted to try. We walked in to find they had at least a 45-minute wait. No good.

We walked next door to Indochine, a Vietnamese restaurant. The restaurant was fairly packed and there wasn’t anyone at the front counter. Again, no good.

We headed over to Market Street Broiler… and were met with people walking out, saying that they’d lost some power – the block across the street had a complete power outage – and were closing. *sigh*  We were starting to see a pattern and it wasn’t good.

We then walked back down to B&D Burger. We were at the “beggars can’t be choosers” point of the evening and we were also running out of time. It was 6:30 PM when we walked in and the concert started at 7:30. Fortunately, we were only a five-minute walk from the hall. SaraRules!, in her near-infinite wisdom, suggested that we grab what looked like the last available table before we ordered. (Very good call on her part.) We stood in line for about 10 minutes, as the place was full of people – like us – who were unable to get into the other restaurants. We ordered and we sat down and waited.

6:50…

7:00…

7:05…

Around this time, SaraRules! went up “to have words” with the young lady at the counter. Granted, the place was full and the cook – the sole cook – was busy, but apparently the cashier had an “Oh, well…” attitude about the whole affair. And, at no point did anyone call in additional help to cover the rush.

7:15…

SaraRules! went back to the counter to get our order “to go.” Many other patrons had just decided to leave, without getting their orders AND without demanding refunds. (SaraRules! told me later that the cashiers were like “Hey… more money for us!” about those customers.) Contrast that attitude with this, taken from the back of the customer survey card:

We got our food about 7:25 PM. We hurried back to the car – we couldn’t exactly take our dinner into Kingsbury Hall – dropped off the boxes, took our gyros with us and ate them as we headed to the hall.

Fortunately, the performance started a few minutes late. I literally sat down a couple of seconds before the orchestra started playing.

It was a fantastic performance. One expects excellence when listening to Wynton Marsalis play. It was great to see… um, hear…  that he surrounded himself with phenomenal talent, as well. It was an amazing show. There was no band leader/conductor. In fact, Wynton Marsalis wasn’t even front and center; he played on the third row, with the rest of the trumpeters. Mr. Marsalis even explained, between a couple of the pieces, why we saw the band talking amongst themselves during the performance: It was to decide who was going to solo or be featured in some pieces. On the fly. They played for about an hour-and-a-half and came back for an amazing encore. It was a great way to cap off an evening that began less-than-auspiciously.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today, let’s take a look at the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the “New Negro Movement”, named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke. Though it was centered in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City, many French-speaking black writers from African and Caribbean colonies who lived in Paris were also influenced by the Harlem Renaissance.

The Harlem Renaissance is unofficially recognized to have spanned from about 1919 until the early or mid 1930s. Many of its ideas lived on much longer. The zenith of this “flowering of Negro literature”, as James Weldon Johnson preferred to call the Harlem Renaissance, was placed between 1924 (the year that Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life hosted a party for black writers where many white publishers were in attendance) and 1929 (the year of the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression).

The Harlem Renaissance grew out of the changes that had taken place in the African American community since the abolition of slavery. These accelerated as a consequence of World War I and the great social and cultural changes in early 20th century United States. Industrialization was attracting people to cities from rural areas and gave rise to a new mass culture. Contributing factors leading to the Harlem Renaissance were the Great Migration of African Americans to northern cities, which concentrated ambitious people in places where they could encourage each other, and the First World War, which had created new industrial work opportunities for tens of thousands of people. Factors leading to the decline of this era include the Great Depression.

Characterizing the Harlem Renaissance was an overt racial pride that came to be represented in the idea of the New Negro, who through intellect and production of literature, art, and music could challenge the pervading racism and stereotypes to promote progressive or socialist politics, and racial andsocial integration. The creation of art and literature would serve to “uplift” the race.

There would be no uniting form singularly characterizing the art that emerged out of the Harlem Renaissance. Rather, it encompassed a wide variety of cultural elements and styles, including a Pan-Africanist perspective, “high-culture” and “low-culture” or “low-life,” from the traditional form of music to the blues and jazz, traditional and new experimental forms in literature such as modernism and the new form of jazz poetry. This duality meant that numerous African-American artists came into conflict with conservatives in the black intelligentsia, who took issue with certain depictions of black life.

Some common themes represented during the Harlem Renaissance were the influence of the experience of slavery and emerging African-American folk traditions on black identity, the effects of institutional racism, the dilemmas inherent in performing and writing for elite white audiences, and the question of how to convey the experience of modern black life in the urban North.

The progress—both symbolic and real—during this period, became a point of reference from which the African-American community gained a spirit of self-determination that provided a growing sense of both Black urbanity and Black militancy as well as a foundation for the community to build upon for the Civil Rights struggles in the 1950s and 1960s.

Stray Toasters

• Since we were heading out for Date Night – and since we were going to an event – I decided to wear my black suit, a white shirt and my African masks tie. While standing in line to get dinner, a woman (who was obviously aware of the concert) came up to me and asked,”Are you playing tonight?”

  *sigh*

  That’s right, lady. I’m a black guy in a suit and tie near the university campus.  I, obviously, must be playing in the concert.

  I simply told her, “No, I’m not.” My second – and, unfortunately, much-delayed – thought was to tell her “Yes, I’ll be playing trombone.”

• If you haven’t taken a look at Google’s home page (“Google classic,” that is), check it out.
• Ken Olsen, Founder of DEC, Dies at 84
• Space Avalance (some possibly NSFW content)
  



• A Hidden Treasure Struggles in Los Angeles
• Imperial Walker (AT-AT) from recycled computer parts
• The Apollo, Uptown’s Showbiz Incubator
• Courtesy of Vince, from Dr. Volt’s, comes Superman Classic, a short – and very well-made – animated fan film:
• Planned Parenthood to Retrain Public Staff
• Kayabuki in Utsunomiya – Where Waiters Are Monkeys

Namaste.

Monday – 07 February 2011
It’s Monday.
And the NFL 2010-2011 championship title has returned to Titletown.  But, more on that in a minute.

It was a good weekend. There was a fair bit crammed into the three days. Highlights include:

1. A trip to Ogden to visit Wonderful World of Trains, The Bookshelf, as well as Almosta Junction on Friday, with .
2. A trip to Jitterbug Coffee Hop for the first time in a very long while.
3. A good HeroClix tournament on Saturday.
4. The Super Bowl yesterday.

Sure, there were other things that happened over the weekend, but those were the big ticket items.

And, tonight, SaraRules! and I are celebrating an early Valentine’s Day by going out to dinner (none of those Feb. 14th dinner crowds for us!) and going to Kingsbury Hall to hear Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra perform.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note: Althea Gibson

Althea Gibson was a World No. 1 American sportswoman who became the first African-American woman to be a competitor on the world tennis tour and the first to win a Grand Slam title in 1956. She is sometimes referred to as “the Jackie Robinson of tennis” for breaking the color barrier.

Gibson continued to improve her tennis game while pursuing an education. In 1946 she moved to Wilmington, North Carolina, to work on her tennis game with Dr. Hubert A. Eaton and enrolled at Williston High School.

In 1958, Gibson retired from amateur tennis. Before the open era began, there was no prize money, other than an expense allowance, and no endorsement deals. To begin earning prize money, tennis players had to give up their amateur status. As there was no professional tour for women, Gibson was limited to playing in a series of exhibition tours.

According to Lance Tingay of The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, Gibson was ranked in the world top ten from 1956 through 1958, reaching a career high of No. 1 in those rankings in 1957 and 1958. Gibson was included in the year-end top ten rankings issued by the United States Tennis Association in 1952 and 1953 and from 1955 through 1958. She was the top-ranked U.S. player in 1957 and 1958.

In 1971, Gibson was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, and in 1975, she was appointed the New Jersey state commissioner of athletics. After 10 years on the job, she went on to work in other public service positions, including serving on the governor’s council on physical fitness.

On September 28, 2003, at the age of 76, Gibson died in East Orange, New Jersey due to circulatory failure and was interred there in the Rosedale Cemetery.

On the opening night of the 2007 US Open, the 50th anniversary of Gibson’s victory at the US Championships in 1957 (now the US Open), Gibson was inducted into US Open Court of Champions.

Instant Replay: Football
Yesterday, Super Bowl XLV was played in The Temple of Jones Cowboy Stadium…

Pittsburgh Steelers at Green Bay Packers
25 – 31
The Steelers and the Packers, teams from a couple of blue-collar towns, battled for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The Packers took advantage of key Pittsburgh turnovers in the first half, establishing a 21 – 10 lead by halftime. The Steelers returned to form in the second half, scoring 22 points and coming within two minutes of potentially winning the game, but couldn’t pull all of the pieces together to make it work. Congratulations to the Packers on their win.

Stray Toasters

• I think that owning these would be fun.
• Killing of Missionary Rattles Texas Border
• I would love to know who at Microsoft and/or Treyarch thought that it was a “good idea” to make this a “Double XP Weekend” for Call of Duty: Black Ops.
• I finally remembered to get screenshots of (the DCUO version of) Nefer-Tem:

  

• Bill Nye on America’s “horrible” science education
• Why Some People Evade Colds and Others Don’t
• 
  (I do own the game and it’s a lot of fun; I just haven’t played in a LONG time…)
• Jos. A. Bank 2011 Spring Style Guide – It may require a Facebook account
• From the “Whoops!” file: Christina Aguilera mangles national anthem at Super Bowl XLV
• I ordered a Superstreets vehicle and a CSX water tower for my layout. I should probably start putting some brainpower towards of the logistics involved with building the multi-level deck that I have in mind.
• Best Art Ever (This Week)

  

• Pharmacies Besieged by Addicted Thieves
• Betting on News, AOL Is Buying The Huffington Post
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Sicily couple murdered man with butter
• Steampunk Etch-a-Sketch

That’s good for now.

Namaste.

Friday – 04 February 2011
It’s my 9/80 day off. Amen.

Today is also World Cancer Day.

Last night, Mary and Matt came over for dinner. SaraRules! made breaded pecan chicken strips, scalloped potatoes and a zucchini/squash mix for dinner. Mary and May brought a cake for dessert. Dinner, the company and the conversation were all very good. After our company left, I finished reading this week’s four-color haul and played a little (a very little) DCUO before calling it a day.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Since it’s the weekend, and it’s going to be “a little” busy, you’re getting THREE entries:

• Dorothy Jean Dandridge was an American actress and popular singer, and was the first African-American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

  

  She performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. In 1954, she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Carmen Jones. By 1956, still under contract to Fox, Dandridge hadn’t made any films since Carmen Jones. Fox still believed that Dorothy was a star, but just didn’t know how to promote her. One of the head chiefs at Fox once said “She’s a star, but we don’t have any films to put her in or leading men to cast her opposite.”

  In 1957 Dorothy’s luck came back when Darryl F. Zanuck cast Dandridge as Margot, a restless young Indian woman, in his controversial film version of, Island in the Sun, co-starring stars such as Joan Fontaine, James Mason, Harry Belafonte, Joan Collins, Michael Rennie, and Stephen Boyd. This film was a success which brought Dandridge back to the public eye. Determined to reinvent her career, she decided to wait on Fox to call for her to make a film.

  In 1959, Columbia Pictures cast Dorothy in the lead role of Bess in Porgy and Bess; Dorothy was again nominated for a award, this time for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. Dorothy was again eager to see if she was to win the award, but she once again lost. A few weeks later Dorothy was released from her 20th Century Fox contract.

  Dandridge was married and divorced twice, first to dancer and entertainer Harold Nicholas (the father of her daughter, Harolyn Suzanne) and then to Jack Denison. Dandridge died of an accidental drug overdose, at the age of 42.

• Ralph Waldo Ellison was a novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer.

  

  Ralph Ellison, named after Ralph Waldo Emerson, was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to Lewis Alfred Ellison and Ida Millsap.In 1933, Ellison entered the Tuskegee Institute on a scholarship to study music. Tuskegee’s music department was perhaps the most renowned department at the school, headed by the conductor William L. Dawson. While he studied music primarily in his classes, he spent increasing amounts of time in the library, reading up on modernist classics.

  During World War II, Ellison joined the Merchant Marine, and in 1946 he married his second wife, Fanny McConnell. She worked as a photographer to help sustain Ellison. From 1947 to 1951 he earned some money writing book reviews, but spent most of his time working on Invisible Man. Fanny also helped type Ellison’s longhand text and assisted her husband in editing the typescript as it progressed.

  Published in 1952, Invisible Man explores the theme of man’s search for his identity and place in society, as seen from the perspective of an unnamed black man in the New York City of the 1930s. In contrast to his contemporaries such as Richard Wright and James Baldwin, Ellison created characters that are dispassionate, educated, articulate and self-aware. Through the protagonist, Ellison explores the contrasts between the Northern and Southern varieties of racism and their alienating effect. The narrator is “invisible” in a figurative sense, in that “people refuse to see” him, and also experiences a kind of dissociation. The novel, with its treatment of taboo issues such as incest, won the National Book Award in 1953.

  In 1964, Ellison published Shadow and Act, a collection of essays, and began to teach at Rutgers University and Yale University, while continuing to work on his novel. The following year, a survey of 200 prominent literary figures was released that proclaimed Invisible Man the most important novel since World War II.

  Ralph Ellison died on April 16, 1994 of pancreatic cancer, and was buried at Trinity Church Cemetery in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

• Ella Jane Fitzgerald, also known as the “First Lady of Song” and “Lady Ella,” was an American jazz and song vocalist.

  

  Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia. In her youth Fitzgerald wanted to be a dancer, although she loved listening to jazz recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters. She idolized the lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, “My mother brought home one of her records, and I fell in love with it….I tried so hard to sound just like her.”

She made her singing debut at 17 on November 21, 1934 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York. She pulled in a weekly audience at the Apollo and won the opportunity to compete in one of the earliest of its famous “Amateur Nights”. She had originally intended to go on stage and dance but, intimidated by the Edwards Sisters, a local dance duo, she opted to sing instead in the style of Connee Boswell. She sang Boswell’s “Judy” and “The Object of My Affection,” a song recorded by the Boswell Sisters, and won the first prize of $25.00.

In January 1935, Fitzgerald won the chance to perform for a week with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House. She met drummer and bandleader Chick Webb here. Webb had already hired singer Charlie Linton to work with the band and was, The New York Times later wrote, “reluctant to sign her….because she was gawky and unkempt, a diamond in the rough.” Webb offered her the opportunity to test with his band when they played a dance at Yale University.

She began singing regularly with Webb’s Orchestra through 1935 at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. Fitzgerald recorded several hit songs with them, including “Love and Kisses” and “(If You Can’t Sing It) You’ll Have to Swing It (Mr. Paganini)”. But it was her 1938 version of the nursery rhyme, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket”, a song she co-wrote, that brought her wide public acclaim.

With Decca’s Milt Gabler as her manager, she began working regularly for the jazz impresario Norman Granz, and appeared regularly in his Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) concerts. Fitzgerald’s relationship with Granz was further cemented when he became her manager, although it would be nearly a decade before he could record her on one of his many record labels. Fitzgerald left Decca and Granz, now her manager, created Verve Records around her. Fitzgerald later described the period as strategically crucial, saying, “I had gotten to the point where I was only singing be-bop. I thought be-bop was ‘it,’ and that all I had to do was go some place and sing bop. But it finally got to the point where I had no place to sing. I realized then that there was more to music than bop. Norman….felt that I should do other things, so he produced The Cole Porter Songbook with me. It was a turning point in my life.” Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, released in 1956, was the first of eight multi-album Songbook sets Fitzgerald would record for Verve at irregular intervals from 1956 to 1964. The composers and lyricists spotlighted on each set, taken together, represent the greatest part of the cultural canon known as the Great American Songbook. Fitzgerald’s song selections ranged from standards to rarities and represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over into a non-jazz audience.

Plagued by health problems, Fitzgerald made her last recording in 1991 and her last public performances in 1993. Miss Fitzgerald was generous throughout her career, and in 1993, she established the Charitable Foundation that bears her name: The Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation, which continues to help the disadvantaged through grants and donation of new books to at-risk children.

Stray Toasters

• MarknTyme sent me a link to an article about a “skin gun,” used as a treatment for burn victims. The accompanying video isn’t for the squeamish… but the results are rather impressive.
• 
• A Super Bowl oddity: No cheerleaders for Packers or Steelers
• No Easy Fixes as Internet Runs Out of Addresses
• Today in rock ‘n’ roll history: The day the music died
• 
  
• Gunman hijacks Greyhound bus in North Carolina
• The King of Cool’s Motorcycle Is for Sale
• Yesterday’s amazing house of tomorrow is today’s boring house of today

And, on to the day!

Namaste.

Thursday – 03 February 2011
It’s my NBN Technical Friday. Amen.

Last night was D&D (4.0) game night with and company. We almost team-wiped twice. It wasn’t pretty. But, we finished two encounters… and everyone survived. Barely. One neat, but unrelated thing: Jack and I noticed a Justice League Chess Set for sale for $50 (USD). We were intrigued. We pondered it for a bit before realizing that we could just “build” a chess set, using ‘Clix figures for the pieces for a lot less, should we decide that we really couldn’t live without one.

I also played a little DCUO last night. I’m still having a lot of fun with it. Last night, I was sent to a new (to me) part of Metropolis, Chinatown, to meet Zatanna for my next set of missions. Let me just say that this part of the city looks simply amazing.  The DCUO team also released another teaser video that portends ill things…

AND… new information has been released about new content being added to the game, including their Valentine’s Day event content, as well.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s personality is: Stokely Carmichael

Kwame Ture, also known as Stokely Carmichael, was a Trinidadian-American black activist active in the 1960s American Civil Rights Movement. He rose to prominence first as a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced “snick”) and later as the “Honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party. Initially an integrationist, Carmichael later became affiliated with black nationalist and Pan-Africanist movements. He popularized the term “Black Power”.

In 1960, Carmichael went on to attend Howard University, a historically-black school in Washington, D.C., rejecting scholarship offers from several white universities. His apartment on Euclid Street was a gathering place for his activist classmates. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1964.

He joined the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG), the Howard campus affiliate of SNCC. He was inspired by the sit-ins to become more active in the Civil Rights Movement. In his first year at the university, he participated in the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and was frequently arrested, spending time in jail. In 1961, he served 49 days at the infamous Parchman Farm in Sunflower County, Mississippi. He was arrested many times for his activism. He lost count of his many arrests, sometimes giving the estimate of at least 29 or 32, and telling the Washington Post in 1998 he believed the total number was fewer than 36.

Carmichael saw nonviolence as a tactic as opposed to a principle, which separated him from moderate civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr.. Carmichael became critical of civil rights leaders who simply called for the integration of African Americans into existing institutions of the middle class mainstream.

The Black Panthers and Carmichael disagreed on whether white activists should be allowed to help the Panthers. The Panthers believed that white activists could help the movement, while Carmichael thought as Malcolm X, saying that the white activists needed to organize their own communities first. In 1969, he and his then-wife, the South African singer Miriam Makeba, moved to Guinea-Conakry where he became an aide to Guinean prime minister Ahmed Sékou Touré and the student of exiled Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah. Makeba was appointed Guinea’s official delegate to theUnited Nations. Three months after his arrival in Africa, in July 1969, he published a formal rejection of the Black Panthers, condemning the Panthers for not beingseparatist enough and their “dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals”.

It was at this stage in his life that Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor the African leaders Nkrumah and Touré who had become his patrons. At the end of his life, friends still referred to him interchangeably by both names, “and he doesn’t seem to mind.”

Carmichael remained in Guinea after separation from the Black Panther Party. He continued to travel, write, and speak out in support of international leftist movements and in 1971 collected his work in a second book Stokely Speaks: Black Power Back to Pan-Africanism. This book expounds an explicitly socialist, Pan-African vision, which he seemingly retained for the rest of his life. From the late 1970s until the day he died, he answered his phone by announcing “Ready for the revolution!”

Stray Toasters

• This LEGO video was sent to my by angstd:
• Shippers Concerned Over Possible Suez Canal Disruptions
• The White Stripes Call It Quits
• The Super Bowl is Sunday. As the Ravens (and Dolphins and Panthers) are not in the game, I guess this means that I’m a Packers fan… at least through the weekend.
  • Even the Avengers are choosing sides… again:
    
• Ad banned for simulating drug use
• MTH has announced a locomotive that I now covet.
  I specifically want it in the Army livery.
• Reprogrammed stem cells are loaded with errors
• LEGO Mystery Box
• 
• Dispute Over Jewish Archives Derails Russian Art Loans to U.S.
• Classic Teen Heroes Boogie Down in the Art of Bill Walko
• This is a very cute commercial:
• The time has come for child seats on airplanes
• Foreclosed Homeowners Go to Court on Their Own

Namaste.

Tuesday – 02 February 2011
It’s Groundhog Day; be on the lookout for Bill Murray.

It’s also new comics day and D&D (4e) night, to boot.

Last night was D&D (3.5) night with and company. When we weren’t behaving like twelve-year-olds – and derailing the game – we managed to come up with a course of action… most of which we won’t get to until next gaming session. But, it was still fun. (A good corollary is found in Wil Wheaton’s blog entry: In which we play Cal & D).

After I got home, I played DCUO for an hour or so. One of the missions repeatedly kicked my trash. Nothing like getting swarmed – and defeated – by higher-level H.I.V.E. Troopers…repeatedly. *sigh* After what felt like eleventy-kajillion times, I finally got through it. I did a couple of Brainiac-related missions, as well.  Those weren’t quite as painful, though.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is… actually going to be TWO people:

• James Baldwin

  

  Baldwin was an American novelist, writer, playwright, poet,essayist and civil rights activist.

  Most of Baldwin’s work deals with racial and sexual issues in the mid-20th century in the United States. His novels are notable for the personal way in which they explore questions of identity as well as the way in which they mine complex social and psychological pressures related to being black and  homosexual well before the social, cultural or political equality of these groups was improved.

  During his teenage years in Harlem and Greenwich Village, Baldwin began to recognize his own homosexuality. In 1948, disillusioned by American prejudice against blacks and homosexuals, Baldwin left the United States and departed to Paris, France. His flight was not just a desire to distance himself from American prejudice. He fled in order to see himself and his writing beyond an African American context and to be read as not “merely a Negro; or, even, merely a Negro writer”. Also, he left the United States desiring to come to terms with his sexual ambivalence and flee the hopelessness that many young African American men like himself succumbed to in New York.

  In 1953, Baldwin’s first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, an autobiographical bildungsroman, was published. Baldwin’s first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son appeared two years later. Baldwin continued to experiment with literary forms throughout his career, publishing poetry and plays as well as the fiction and essays for which he was known.

  Baldwin’s second novel, Giovanni’s Room, stirred controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content. Baldwin was again resisting labels with the publication of this work: despite the reading public’s expectations that he would publish works dealing with the African American experience, Giovanni’s Room is exclusively about white characters. Baldwin’s next two novels, Another Country and Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone, are sprawling, experimental works dealing with black and white characters and with heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual characters. These novels struggle to contain the turbulence of the 1960s: they are saturated with a sense of violent unrest and outrage.

• Gwendolyn Brooks

  

  Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American writer. She was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

  Brooks published her first poem in a children’s magazine at the age of thirteen. When Brooks was sixteen years old, she had compiled a portfolio of around seventy-five published poems. Aged 17, Brooks stuck to her roots and began submitting her work to “Lights and Shadows”, the poetry column of the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper. Although her poems range in style from traditional ballads and sonnets to using blues rhythms in free verse, her characters are often drawn from the poor inner city.

  Her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville, published in 1945 by Harper and Row, brought her instant critical acclaim. She received her first Guggenheim Fellowship and was one of the “Ten Young Women of the Year” in Mademoiselle magazine. In 1950, she published her second book of poetry, Annie Allen, which won her Poetry magazine’s Eunice Tietjens Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, the first given to an African-American.

  After John F. Kennedy invited her to read at a Library of Congress poetry festival in 1962, she began her career teaching creative writing. She taught at Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, Clay College of New York, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 1967, she attended a writer’s conference at Fisk University where, she said, she rediscovered her blackness. This rediscovery is reflected in her work In The Mecca, a book length poem about a mother searching for her lost child in a Chicago housing project. In The Mecca was nominated for the National Book Award for poetry.

  In addition to the National Book Award nomination and the Pulitzer Prize, Brooks was made Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968. In 1985, Brooks became the Library of Congress’s Consultant in Poetry, a one year position whose title changed the next year to Poet Laureate. In 1988, she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. In 1994, she was chosen as the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Jefferson Lecturer, one of the highest honors for American literature and the highest award in the humanities given by the federal government. In 1995, she was presented with the National Medal of Arts.

Stray Toasters

• Consider this: There is almost always enough time to exchange a pleasantry with a coworker before asking a question or setting them to a task. It amuses me how often I have to “gently remind” people of this fact.
• Flowchart: What Facebook Comment Should You Leave?
• I considered making Avery Brooks (1, 2) this morning’s Black History Month personality… but then I figured that people might not want to read my gushings over my man-crush. So, I didn’t.

  But, guess what: You’re reading about him, anyway!  So, I guess that means I still win!

• Punxsutawney Phil celebrates 125 years of Groundhog Day
• How to Use “Who” and “Whom” Correctly
• 
• Fees for home mortgages increase
• Crime Scenes: No break for cops caught on camera
• A Hacking Case Becomes a War of the Tabloids
• 
• Batman: billionaire plutocrat vigilante
• Leave the libraries alone. You don’t understand their worth.

Namaste.

Tuesday – 01 February 2011
It’s another sunny, but cold, day in Paradise.

Today not only marks the beginning of a new month, but also the start of Black History Month. (More on this below.)

Last night, SaraRules! and I had a fairly quiet night. We had dinner at the local Cafe Zupas, then we did a little errand-running before locking the world outside our door. We even managed to watch an episode of NCIS from the DVR. After that, I played a little DCUO before heading to bed. As a test, I fired up City of Heroes; I wanted to see how it looked with the graphics settings dialed up. The visuals were good, but the framerate was… less than fluid, which I found disappointing, when juxtaposed with DCUO. Maybe I need to tweak a few more settings in CoH to increase the framerate.  *shrug*

Chew on This: Food for Thought
As mentioned above, today is the beginning of Black History Month. As with last year, I think that I’ll do another “ABCs of Black History” this year. We’ll start with Dr. Ralph Abernathy:

Abernathy, the grandson of a slave, was born in Linden, Alabama (March 11, 1926). Ordained a Baptist minister in 1948, he studied at Alabama State College and Atlanta University. Abernathy met Martin Luther King in the early 1950’s, when the two were ministers of congregations in Montgomery, Alabama. They became widely known after the success of the Montgomery Bus Boycotts in 1955-56.

In 1957, King and Abernathy formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), with King as President and Abernathy as Secretary-Treasurer. After King’s assassination in 1968, Abernathy assumed the presidency, leading the Poor People’s Campaign later that year. Abernathy also presided over SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket, which used economic pressure against companies that did not provide equal opportunities to blacks. In 1977, he resigned from the SCLC to run unsuccessfully for Andrew Young’s Atlanta seat in the US House of Representatives.

After the election, he served as pastor of the West Hunter Street Baptist Church in Atlanta. A year before his death, he published his autobiography, entitled And The Walls Came Tumbling Down.

For more information, see: Ralph Abernathy

Stray Toasters

• A Harlem Cultural Hub Is Threatened by Debt
• Android System Overtakes Symbian
• Tolstoy’s “10 Rules of Life”
• 
• What’s Happening in Egypt, the Action Movie Explainer: “Raiders of the Lost Mubarak”
• Further reflections on discrimination
• Maine Bill Would Allow One-Armed Men to Use Switchblades
• 
• Apps Alter Reading on the Web
• Study puts spotlight on red-light cameras

Namaste.