HAPPY HOLIDAAYS

 

WORTH REPEATING

 

STILL OBVIOUS

MY UNIONS (WGA & SAG-AFTRA) ON STRIKE FOR GOOD REASONS EVEN WITHOUT AI ISSUES

 

MY MLK SONNET

When Martin Luther King is shot I feel the

sudden shift in the atmosphere, like trying to

breathe underwater. It's been three years since

Malcom X’s assassination and my new radical

friends and reading have opened my eyes to the

realities of class in the USA. Malcolm verbally

attacked white folks with impunity, but the

minute he decided it was not about race but

about the poor and the wealthy, BAM! King

spends years fighting racism and despite attempts

on his life and tons of threats seemed invulner-

able, but as soon as he organizes a poor people’s

campaign talking about the haves and have-nots,

BAM! I wonder if the Marxists have it right.

(C) 1968, 2023

GREAT QUOTE FROM ONE OF MY FAVORITE WRITERS

 

NUMBER ONE CONCERN, REALLY?

LATEST FAVE INTERNET MEME (NOT MINE)

 

ALWAYS WORTH REPOSTING [especially after hearing oil company shareholders urging them to keep prices high]

 

THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

Watched my favorite movie, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, on TCM tonight. I've seen it many times since it first screened in 1946 and it was always high on my various lists of favorite movies, but in recent years it has moved to the top, because every time I watch it not only do I see more and more to admire about it, I also see nothing to not admire it for.

It's of its time, and maybe you have to be from that time to be impacted by it the way I am. I was born a few months after Pearl Harbor, and my two oldest brothers were in The Army Air Corps and The Navy at the end of the war, one in Okinawa when the fighting stopped. My two sisters, who were five and seven years older than me, took me with them to the movies most Sunday afternoons (to get us out of the house for our father's weekly nap on his only day off), including to this one.

But even if this film doesn't evoke for you the same kinds of memories it does for me, it can still be admired as classic Hollywood filmmaking. William Wyler's direction is so good (aided exquisitely by Gregg Toland's famous depth of field cinematography), even the briefest scenes and the acting in them resonate. Three of my favorite actors—Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and Cathy O'Donnell—give superb performances, while Virginia Mayo and Dana Andrews give their best performances ever (and Frederic March and Harold Russell won Oscars for theirs).

For me, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES is a perfect film. There, I've said it.

TBT

My sister Irene and me in front of our father's home repair shop c. 1952 when I was 10 and she was 15, the only two of seven kids now still alive. John, the brother between her and me died as an infant. I was always playing catch up. In this photo she's just visiting, I was working, which meant answering the phone and fixing small appliances like irons and toasters and lamps et al. This was just a couple of years before corporations started sealing the innards of these things and more so we couldn't repair them for a couple of bucks so folks just had to buy news ones. Built-in obsolescence. 

I worked every day after school and Saturdays either in the shop (a space no bigger then a walk-in closet) or on people's homes, for "room and board" (which means no pay) so eventually picked up other jobs on weeknights and Sundays. Had a resentment about that up until my 60s. But in this past decade that's faded away, among many others, thankfully.

AN OLDIE BUT GOODIE

 

ALWAYS QUOTABLE

 

YEP

Now that the repubs are suddenly returning to this issue after ignoring it for the last four years:

IN THE HEIGHTS

I cried, I laughed, I moved to the music, I couldn't stop smiling as stars were born, a new favorite musical made a future list, I already want to watch it again (this time with the captions on so I don't miss a syllable of its delightful theatrical genius), oh and make sure you stick around for the coda after the end credits!

THEN THERE'S THIS

My oldest son, Miles reminded me of this voiceover I did for the trailer to EMPIRE RECORDS. And that you know it's me by the way I pronounce "The Cranberries" i.e. "can-buries"...

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JUST A REMINDER

 

MEMORIES

 

"BLACK HISTORY" 3

Here's five more "Black writers" that are favorites of mine I missed in my last list:

Jean Toomer's CANE is actually one of my all-time favorite books and I have no idea why that wasn't at the top of my mind when I made the last list.

James Baldwin, of course, his first novel, GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, and his first essay collection, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, are what first impacted me as a teenager when they first came out.

August Wilson's plays, all of them, but especially MA RAINEY'S BLACK BOTTOM.

Andrea Lee has been a favorite author since I first read her; I love everything she has written, but if you don't know her work, INTERESTING WOMEN, a collection of her stories is a good introduction.

Mindy Thompson Fullilove is a psychiatrist who studies the psychology of communities and may be best known for her book URBAN ALCHEMY, but every one of her books is worth reading, including her latest, MAIN STREET in which (full disclosure) she quotes some of my poetry. 

MY HERO (ONE OF THEM)

 
My niece, Patrice Lally Pniewski, getting the Covid vaccine. Head nurse in the neurosurgery department of a hospital in the Atlanta area, she's the one who saw something physically off in me (we were at another niece's funeral in Maryland) in 2009 and told me to get to a neurologist that led to my brain operation. She has sacrificed much to help others in her years as a nurse.

She's always been one of my personal heroes, along with other nurses and teachers and farmworkers and all those "essential workers" who make it possible for the rest of us to live. They deserve the salaries of the corporate greedheads who mostly make it harder for the ret of us to live.