Richard Walton's 80th Birthday, Part II

Ok, the actual birthday has passed, but the celebration is always at the end of May and this year is no exception...

If you haven't met Richard, don't let that stop you from celebrating...

Here's the email (only very slightly edited) he sends out:

Hi, Just a reminder that my 80th Birthday Party, Part II will be on
Sunday, May 31 starting about 2 at our place, 1 & 5 Grenore St., in the
Pawtuxet section of Warwick, just south of the Cranston line off
Narragansett Parkway.

Please do come but if you can't but would like to contribute, please
make checks out to Amos House and/or RICAEF [RI Central America Education
Fund] and mail them to me at 5 Grenore St., Warwick 02888. Thank you ...
but it would be more fun if you came. Details below. Peace. Richard.
P.S. And please help spread the word!


Ever since they started in 1988, they've probably been the biggest annual
social gathering of peaceniks, economic/social justice activists,
progressives, liberals, all-round lefties and folkies in Rhode Island and
nearby Massachusetts and Connecticut. I'm speaking, modestly of course,
about the annual potluck, fund-raising birthday parties of Richard Walton
to benefit Amos House and The Providence-Niquinohomo [Nicaragua] Sister
City Project. Over the years since my 60th Birthday, we've collected
about $65,000.
That first party was so successful, and so much fun, that we decided
to do it again the next year, calling it my 60th Birthday Party, Part II
... and we've continued in five-year increments ever since. So my 80th
Birthday Party, Part II will be held, rain or shine [and sometimes it has
rained!] on Sunday, May 31 at the Walton Compound [not quite as grand as
the Kennedys'], 1 & 5 Grenore St., Warwick just off Narragansett Parkway
five or six blocks south of the Cranston line on the Pawtuxet Village
bridge. Starts about 2 and often runs till dark, even after.
We ask people to bring good stuff to eat and/or drink and it's okay if
they bring their checkbooks too ... and often music breaks out. Since our
place is right on Pawtuxet Cove -- docks, boats, several organic vegetable
gardens and a glorious view -- it's a pretty good place for a party.
Plenty of room for grownups, kids, dogs, frisbees ... and last year even
a 1920's Model T Ford showed up and gave guests rides around the
neighborhood. So not only come but please help spread the word.
It's an INclusive party not an EXclusive one and, quite literally, the
more the merrier. Even some conservatives have been known to enjoy
themselves but no reactionaries. They wouldn't be seen dead with the
likes of us.
You'll probably have to park on the Parkway. Any questions? Call
Richard at (401)781-7504 or e-mail him at "richard@richardjwalton.org." It is
a pretty good party!

"When they come for the innocent without crossing over
your body, cursed be your religion and your life." Anon. But often
quoted by Dorothy Day.

Not About the Buildings (Library) News

Save The Date! And The Other Date! And One More Date After That!

(This just appeared in my email)

Not About The Buildings has had a pretty quiet spring, but that's because we're about to have a very, very busy summer!

First off, we're doing a new photo project. It's still a big secret, but you'll want to keep the next Gallery Night (June 18th) free and be ready for some excitement downtown.

(Okay, so we're not so good with keeping secrets: We're returning to our roots and photographing readers! If you're not shy about your reading habits, this weekend is your last chance to take part. It's short notice, yes, but the surprise will be worth it when you see the final results. If you're intrigued and going to be in Providence this weekend, reply to this e-mail for some secret advance details.)

Secondly, we're looking for serious readers of all ages to help us take part in something else we're doing this summer in conjunction with another book-oriented organization in the city. We're not divulging all the details until the first day of summer (June 21st), but if you read a lot and want to help a good cause, reply to this e-mail. (Sorry for being so mysterious! Really!)

Finally--and this one's no secret--it's Bee Season! On June 22nd at AS220, it's the third annual Not About The Buildings Spelling Bee. Compete against the city's top smartypantses for fame and glory and the chance to win fabulous prizes. Or if you're shy you can come cheer and watch other people win fabulous prizes. Judges this year include reigning Bee Queen Maureen Reddy and Providence Kickball League Umperor JP Reader. And did we mention that the prizes are fabulous? The action starts at 9pm and you'll want to be very punctual--a little early, even--if you want to spell. (It's $5 to spell but free to watch.)

Befriend Your Branch

For the first time ever, all nine neighborhood branches of the Providence Public Library have friends groups. If you want to help your local branch, just ask at the desk and the librarians will be able to put you in touch with the organizers for your neighborhood.

Want To Be A Library Director?

On July 1, management of all nine neighborhood branches will be handed over to the non-profit Providence Community Library. The PCL is currently seeking a director; the deadline for applications is June 1, and they hope to have someone installed in the position by the time the transition goes into effect. Click here for more details.


Other Happenings Around Town

This Friday is the opening of The Book Show at 5 Traverse (5 Traverse St.)
This exhibition reception kicks off a month-long book release party for two limited edition artist books: 1) The Diary Project by Jessica Deane Rosner In 1986, this artist's diary disappeared; 14 years later a stranger returned it to her and she embarked on a project to transform each of the 72 pages into a new drawing. Here, for the first time, all 72 drawings are reproduced in a full-color, hard-bound book. This is a signed, limited edition of 50 books, each comes with a sealed envelope containing a secret original drawing by the artist. The original set of drawings, as well as hand-embellished fine reproductions, will also be available.2) Monday Morning, Going to Work by Will Schaff. At last, three new drawn stories appear in this 92-page, color, cloth-bound book. A limited edition of five books will be available with a unique, frame-able full-color drawings as a book-cover. The original drawings and fine reproductions of individual sequences will also be available. The show also investigates the State of the Object in Rhode Island, with original work by 20 artists who un-simplify the word "Book." Finally,Brent Legault of Ada Books is curating a wall of books he loves. Check out the Not About The Buildings blog very soon for a review of the show.

Next Friday evening is the Photo Lottery at AS220. It's the biggest fundraiser for the Paul Krot Community Darkroom: 150 photos by 150 photographers (including Mona Kuhn, Henry Horenstein and Danny Lyon), available for just $100 each. Buy tickets while you still can by going to the website.

And June 1 marks the opening of A Fragile Memory: Turn of the Century Glass Negatives from Providence Public Library's Special Collections Department. That's on view Monday, 6/1 through Saturday, 6/27, at Providence Public Library's Special Collections Exhibition Hall, 150 Empire Street in downtown Providence. Over one thousand glass plate negatives have long lain forgotten in the Special Collections of the Providence Public Library. Now a select handful of them will be hand printed and revealed to the public eye, possibly for the very first time. The project was conceived and curated by Agata Michalowska and was brought to bear through a close collaboration with local photographers working out of the AS220 Paul Krot Community Darkrooms. During the opening reception, James DaMico and Richard Ring will lend their expertise to help us further imagine the stories these photographs quietly suggest. DaMico, the Rhode Island Historical Society's Graphics Archivist, will talk about the technical development of photography with his presentation "Glass plate negatives: A Look at a 19th Century Photographic Innovation". DaMico will also discuss how Rhode Island photographers, both amateur and professional, were making use of the glass plate technology. Richard Ring, Providence's Special Collections Librarian, will offer us an informed historical perspective on the city at the dawn of the twentieth century with his presentation, "The Beehive of Industry: Providence in the Late Victorian Era, 1890-1910".

Based in Providence, Rhode Island, Not About The Buildings is an organization that creatively seeks to build local communities of readers and writers.

notaboutthebuildings
246 Rankin Avenue
Providence, Rhode Island
02908

Not About The Bloggings

"Authentic Rabbis": A Photo by David McReynolds

My friend, David McReynolds
sends me more valuable articles, links, announcements than I can possible comprehend, and I won't claim to understand fully the significance of this photo.

We have the inalienable right to misspell.

That spelling of heresy just jumps off that sign.

How I predicted the false torture confessions

Last month, we found out that the real reason the Bush administration tortured prisoners was the same reason that evil people always torture prisoners -- to extract false confessions. In particular, as we learned from Col. Lawrence Wilkerson today, Vice President Richard "Dick" Cheney was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq, so he ordered interrogators to torture prisoners until they said that Saddam Hussein was helping Al-Qaeda. Well, who could have predicted such a thing?

Me, that's who.

Way back in the fall of 2006, as Congress was debating the Military Commissions Act, the Providence Journal ran a hideous editorial defending the use of torture. It was such an odious pile of excrement that I felt compelled to issue a line-by-line rebuttal (a fisking, as we bloggers say) on my old blog, Newport 9. The Newport 9 blog no longer exists, but I felt the ProJo's atrocity deserved a wider airing, so I cross-posted my piece to a Daily Kos diary. That diary is still there, so I'd like to take this opportunity to quote a section of it:

While experts disagree on whether torture works,

Major, major weaselness here. Whenever people want to muddy the waters on an issue, they always resort to the old "experts disagree" dodge: "experts disagree" about global warming, "experts disagree" about cigarettes causing cancer, "experts disagree" about evolution, and on and on and on.

Anyone who isn't a moral cripple knows that torture doesn't work. All torture lets you do is make somebody say what you want them to say. Here's how it goes:

INTERROGATOR: Was Saddam Hussein working with bin Laden to attack America?
CAPTIVE: Of course not, they hate each others' guts.

INTERROGATOR: Wrong answer.

CAPTIVE: AAAAAAAAAHHH!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!! AAAAAAAAAHHH!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!! AAAAAAAAAHHH!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!

INTERROGATOR: Now, I'm going to ask you again. Was Saddam Hussein working with bin Laden to attack America?

CAPTIVE: YES!! YES!! AAAAAHH!! AAAAAHH!! ANYTHING YOU SAY!! AAAAAHH!! AAAAAHH!! AAAAAHH!!

INTERROGATOR: Williams, contact the President, tell him we've confirmed the link between Saddam and bin Laden.

There you have it, folks, proof of my awesome powers of predictiveness. (And yes, it's true that my Daily Kos User ID is 2558, making me one of the Secret Masters of the Great Orange Satan. Bow down and worship me, you ignorant masses!)

So, how did I do it? Did I have a time machine that I used to travel to the year 2009 to learn the truth about Bush's torture regime? Sadly, no. I had to rely on that rarest of faculties, simple common sense. I knew that torture didn't work, and that a person being tortured will say whatever his interrogators want him to say. I knew that the Bushies were using the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to invade Iraq. Egro, logic suggested that the Bushies were using torture to gain a false link between 9/11 and Iraq.

QED.

(cross-posted to Rhode Island's Twelfth)

No Whammy Bar or Effects Pedals

Monday, May 11, 2009

Another in a haphazard series of non-inflammatory posts.

Gentle Reader:

I journeyed to Johnson City, NY on Sunday. The purpose of the trip was to meet a person I'd met on the blogs, William Yelverton, who was playing in a concert at an arts venue there. Bill is a progressive who is both passionate and articulate in his arguments and while he no longer operates his politics blog, I'm quite sure he's not forgotten what brought us to the present.

I knew of him first as a blogger and, then, as a musician. He is a gifted (and I'm sure much practiced!) classical guitarist. I am a person who loves music, without being able to play much of anything--when it comes to the guitar I have the musical equivalent of Black Thumbs--or even read a score, so I enjoy it without truly understanding most of it.

The pieces that were played yesterday were a combination of classical ,baroque, Latin American and one great Bluegrass inspired piece written by one of Bill's colleagues. It was all wonderful. Just the instruments and the players, no microphones, pickups or other electronic augmentation. Piano alone, guitar and piano, guitar and violin. All of the music was played in a room that held 125 or so people in a relaxed "Pops" concert setting with cafe seating, bevvies, little sammies and lots of desserts! The audience was engaged, attentive and appreciative. Fortunately I did not have my Bic lighter--and I remembered not to yell "Freebird!" when both Bill and the pianist returned for their encores!

I am currently listening to one of Bill's albums, "Harpsichord Music On Guitar". The other album that I got is "Music of South America". All the information about the music and Bill's professional creds (as well as his thoughts on his current home in TN--and its environs) can be found at: http://tnparadise.blogspot.com/; give it a look.

I think Bill is the seventh or eighth person that I've met on the blogs and, then later, in person. I have been told by numerous folks that I am courting disaster by agreeing to meet with people in this manner. That has proved to be a non-issue. I'm not saying it's impossible to get in trouble that way, quite the contrary. However, my experience has been that most folks I spend some time getting to know on the interntet (through blogs) are who they have led me to believe they are. Granted I have not been aching to meet the trolls, but only people with similar interests and views on important subjects like the arts, politics and food.

We live in a VERY large world and it helps, imo, to have folks turn us onto things that they find interesting and informative amidst the plethora of experience that is available.

So thanks to Bill, and Dave von Ebers, Claudia, Mack, Nomi, Reverend Jerry Gloryhole, Annti, Richard at "Everyone wants to read my blog" and the rest of the good folks that I've met on the blogosphere. And to those of you whose names are not in that list, or who are on the list but not yet had me "all up in your grille..", your time is coming! Oh, btw, if any of you are into "kink", just remember this--I am the REAL reason that the chicken crossed the road!

I'm putting another of my poems on here, today, 'cuz it's my blog and I can!

Enjoy.

The Lesson


From the street, I watched you.

Through the window I could see the lyricism of you, the fluent dancer;

and the hesitancy of the students, unfamiliar with the language of movement,

afraid of uttering a mistake.

I saw you standing at ease; in a languid, indolent moment.

I saw you, in a moment, transformed, as you moved into a "frame"

Silk and satin for the viewer:

Whipcord and spring steel for the dancer.

That look of effortlessness, that look that costs a thousand, thousand repetitions.

The nights of standing in front of the mirrored walls,

learning by teaching.

making that same, perfect turn; over and over.

Until it is no longer a conscious pattern,

but, rather, it becomes, like breathing, intrinsic to your being.

Giving to the students a way to find the metronome of their own heartbeat.

Getting from the giving; the wisdom of experience.

Learning by teaching.

Learning that every step you will ever take is already in your soul.

7/20/01
Posted by democommie at 5:09 AM 0 comments

Three cheers for Judy Blume!

Judy Blume has written many books, and my favorites will always be the Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing series.

I have just learned that she wrote a fundraising letter for Planned Parenthood which led to death threats from "pro--life" supporters.

Thankfully, Planned Parenthood has received many messages in support...

Here's the link to Judy's website.