I've taken the Paper.li plunge with Bell, Book, and Scandal

Having run an actual newspaper/magazine before, I was fascinated when I saw the first Paper.li paper tweeted to me on Twitter. I don't remember who tweeted me all those months ago, but before long it seemed that every other day someone sent a tweet directing me to his or her Paper.li paper.

Since I had already been thinking about narrowing my focus to books, publishing, entertainment, and politics, in that order, I began to toy with the idea of creating my own Paper.li paper that curated just those topics. Now, I've done it.

My paper is called Bell, Book, and Scandal, a play on the name of a movie I loved in my youth, Bell, Book, and Candle starring Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart.

The movie is about a witch (Novak) falling in love with a mortal (Stewart) after casting a spell on him to make him fall in love with her. She initially goes after him, however, because she doesn't like his fiance. The spell backfires, and as a result she falls in love and loses her magical powers. Her mind-reading cat plays a big role in the film. You can see how she uses him to cast her spell in the video below.

The movie's title may itself be a play on another use of the phrase. According to multiple sources, an obsolete ceremony for excommunication from the Roman Catholic church was also called "bell, book, and candle" because those three items were used during the the ritual. Phrases.org.uk says, "In the excommunication ceremony officials close the book, quench the candle and toll a bell, as for someone who had died. The phrase is old and first appears, in Old English, circa 1300." The entry adds that the phrase appears in Shakespeare's King John: "BASTARD: Bell, book, and candle shall not drive me back, When gold and silver becks me to come on."

I've found a few articles on the excommunication ritual, which was done in secret, but here's an overly-dramatic video with graphics that explains it, albeit with sensational music.

While my paper, Bell, Book, and Scandal, may occasionally curate articles on paranormal activities and events (I live in New Orleans, so how can I resist?), it has nothing to do with witches or secret religious rituals. The bell in its name represents the Liberty Bell (politics),  the book, all things literary, and the scandal, arts and entertainment coverage that happens to favor ABC's Scandal. But I will also have my eye out for news of How to Get Away with Murder and science fiction and fantasy-oriented shows such as SyFy's Helix and HBO's Game of Thrones.

It's my hope that by narrowing my focus, I'll hunker down, read more books, and devote more time to creative writing.

Quickly, Quicky: My reads from Edgar Allan Poe facts to airplane fights

As numerous headlines zip across my screen daily, I end up hitting the "favorite" or "like" buttons often, not because I've read whatever it is, but because I want to read it. Here are a couple of articles I skimmed today that I hope to return to and some that I've read.

And speaking of what I want to read, I am seriously thinking about blogging my bookshelf because I've collected a number of books that were either assigned but remain barely read or I purchased that I have had not yet read. File that under self-accountability.


7 Things You Probably Didn't Know about Edgar Allan Poe
Rhyming headline aside, if you're a Poe fan, this article at Huffington Post should intrigue you. I didn't know that he went by "Eddy" to some people, nor did I know that he used multiple secret identities or sobriquets.

What's wrong with writing sentimental poetry and fiction?

If you would prefer to read the text of this poem outside the video, click here.

I do not have an easy answer to that question in the title of this post--"What's wrong with writing sentimental poetry and fiction?"--but I have a few thoughts about why writing critics reject poets who write what they call "Hallmark Card verse" or fiction authors who slather on the sentimentality that causes readers to reach for the tissues. The primary critique usually goes along the lines that writing overly-emotional verse and prose is easy, and within that objection is the unspoken bias that the creation of genuine art always entails struggle, a nose-to-the-grindstone crafting of one's work, that anything that produces tears--of joy or of pain--easily can't be any good.

However, I also think that in Euro-American culture since the so-called Age of Reason fell upon its consciousness, a long-standing belief's taken root that intelligent humans are rational creatures, not beings driven or swayed too easily by emotion, and this bias against emotion--against obvious pathos--causes critics to deem emotional writing to be synonymous with the mundane and stupidity. I add that this bias also manifest as a bias against women's writing in many cases. Within the concept of the Enlightenment self--the unified and rational self--a preference for masculine attitudes and masculine behavior dominates. Consequently, anything associated too much with femininity, such as emotional and subjective responses, is deemed inferior. You may also consider how often people of color are associated with emotion: people of African descent are "soulful" and those of Latin descent are "hot-blooded" and "passionate."

I recall now how some critics of Elizabeth Alexander's poem "Praise Song for the Day," delivered at President Obama's inauguration, was blasted by some poetry critics because at the end it speaks of love. However, it could be argued that we don't talk about love enough, especially brotherly love and that the day Obama was inaugurated was a day characterizes by a sense of unity and love with hope for forgiveness, and so the mention of love was appropriate, but that's another post.

Anyway, I suspect my mulling over varying concepts of subjectivity--the unified self of Enlightenment versus the fragmented self of Post-modernism--and why shows of emotion in not only writing but also in life are often disdained was on my mind somewhat when I wrote the poem in the video above, "End Times." And I was also thinking as I wrote it about deflection in general and that sometimes people do not want anything that goes directly for the heartstrings because they don't want to feel anything that may cause them alarm or perhaps to take action for something in which they believe.

Sometimes people want to disconnect from their feelings so they can rationalize the paths and stances they repeatedly choose to take. Some of those paths and corresponding attitudes include ignoring that we're running out of oil, that we're in a global economy that makes American exceptionalism a thing of the past (if it ever really existed at all), that perpetuating political polarization has become the standard, and that proponents of a political ideology that applauds the elimination of public sector jobs and services has gained the upper-hand in this nation. Few people want to contemplate that we're headed toward an age of austerity and that we may have to completely overhaul our current economic system. I don't mention these issues in the poem, but they have been on my mind.

The poem also reflects my contemplation of how obscure language has become associated with brilliance and plain speech or "being real" has become associated with a lack of talent in some schools of thought. It seems sometimes that some people think that the more you use language to obscure meaning, the better, which begs the question what is it we're trying to obscure: is the goal to steer people away from contemplating that injustice, murder and mayhem is still with us and something we must resist? When I think of political language, I observe how often it's used today to keep Americans from seeing the truth that the party's over: we live on a finite planet with finite resources; material growth cannot be a constant. Perhaps spiritual growth can be so, however.

Guess I was in a philosophical mood and moody today. It's like that sometimes. Woke up this morning with blue moon in my eye, but I did not get myself a gun; I got myself a poem. :-)

Sometimes I Get Stuck on Nessun Dorma, Play and Replay

English Translation of "Nessun Dorma"

Nobody shall sleep!...
Nobody shall sleep!
Even you, o Princess,
in your cold room,
watch the stars,
that tremble with love and with hope.
But my secret is hidden within me,
my name no one shall know...
No!...No!...
On your mouth I will tell it when the light shines.
And my kiss will dissolve the silence that makes you mine!...
(No one will know his name and we must, alas, die.)
Vanish, o night!
Set, stars! Set, stars!
At dawn, I will win! I will win! I will win!

Translation source: About.com.



O.K. Back to work.

R. Kelly ... Again? The Dartmouth Aires Cracked Me Up

I did not intend to mention the Dartmouth Aires again, but as I said in my post about NBC's The Sing-Off finale, I'm catching up with what I missed via OnDemand. Anyway, the Aires's performance of R. Kelley's "Ignition Remix" on Episode 9 had me howling with laughter. As judge Shawn Stockman said, "there were so many uncomfortable moments ..." in the performance, and yet it was fun. Ben Folds told the group that he would like to see them do R. Kelly's whole "Trapped in the Closet" series.



Seeing them made the second time I've heard R. Kelly's name in a week, which is very unusual. He was hot after I was married and having babies, so I didn't pay that much attention to him, and only became aware of him with "I Believe I Can Fly" and then his scandal hit the news. Nevertheless, I may be seeing the man live in February 2012 at the Zulu Ball because I let my cousin talk me into going to that Mardis Gras ball again.

This will make the third year in a row that I'm going. Last time, I went for the O'Jays and Frankie Beverly and Maze, but she nudged me this time with Mary J. Blige. When she told me that R. Kelly would perform, I shook my head and said, "Wait. You mean golden-shower man? I don't know if I want to see him," and was ready to say "No," and that's when she played the Mary J. Blige card. My daughter told me she wanted to go, too, mainly to see the people in their gowns and tuxedos, and that sealed it for me. But I probably won't buy a ticket until I get more assurance that Mary J. Blige will be there.

Ay! What a week!

My eyes ached. I thought for a moment I had crashed and burned. Aging, damn it, was getting the best of me, and I was waking some days with that blue moon in my eye, but I made it through.

Sorry for speaking in code, people, but I've learned discretion can save a body trouble.

Time to go back to the gym, too. Missing so many sessions kicked me into the stress pool.

Playing Alabma 3's "Woke Up This Morning" ... again.

Reflecting on News of the 'Black Power Mixtape' (Documentary Video)

The video embedded in this post is from Democracy NOW! and is about a documentary co-produced by actor Danny Glover. As described on its YouTube page:

(the documentary and the clip feature "rare archival footage of Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, Stokely. The Democracy NOW! episode and was) broadcast from Park City, Utah, home of the Sundance Film Festival, the nation's largest festival for independent cinema. One of this year's selection that is creating a lot of buzz is a documentary called "The Black Power Mixtape." The film features rare archival footage shot between 1967 and 1975 by two Swedish journalists and was discovered in the basement of Swedish public television 30 years later. We speak with renowned actor and activist Danny Glover who co-produced "The Black Power Mixtape."

For me, the clip brings back some memories worthy of more contemplation. Looking at the documentary's poster, I remember sitting in a chair at my grandmother's house reading a magazine with an article about Angela Davis and how I stared for a long while at her picture. I need to recapture what I was thinking then.



The New York Times also has an article about the documentary, Power to the People, but Quietly. From that article:

... [A]round 2007, Goran Hugo Olsson, a documentary filmmaker, stumbled upon the 16-millimeter material as he looked for footage for a project about the Philadelphia soul singer Billy Paul (“Me and Mrs. Jones”). The trove included interviews with members of the Black Panther Party and a candid conversation with Angela Davis in a California jail. “I immediately realized that these images couldn’t stay in this basement,” Mr. Olsson, 45, said during a recent visit to New York. “It was my duty to put them out for a new audience.”

Using material from some 20 different Swedish television productions, he conceived the backbone of a feature-length documentary eventually titled “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975,” which opens in New York on Sept. 9. The movie also contains new audio interviews with veterans of the movement, including Ms. Davis, as well as younger artists and activists inspired by it, like the rapper Talib Kweli.

And also this:

The documentary reflects a trend in black studies scholarship. “What we’re seeing is really a re-evaluation of the black power period,” said Peniel Joseph, a professor at Tufts University and the author of “Waiting ’Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America,” from 2006.

“There are striking juxtapositions between the documentary image of black power and our popular memory of it,” which he described as an “emotionally charged and destructive movement.”

As a black woman of 51 years, I grew up with the Black Power Movement as a common feature on the nightly news and as a topic under discussion at family gatherings. So, the themes of this documentary reside in my own memory. I do recollect thinking that the Black Power Movement had more radical rhetoric than Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speeches, and I recall that its members were usually called "militants" and portrayed as "dangerous." These stereotypes popped up in television police dramas and blaxploitation films such as Sweet Sweetback's Badass Song as well as other movies such as The Spook Who Sat By The Door.

However, I don't remember being afraid of the movement's energy or focus. Perhaps I was not afraid because my mother also took me to plays at Free Southern Theater and gave me books that approached the black struggle in more complex terms. Therefore, I was drawn to ideas of the movement, and its emphases, its art, poetry, drama and music despite being too young to be seriously involved or to understand the sacrifice and danger of speaking out and associating black skin with any kind of power.

Nevertheless, I continued to identify with the right to equal freedom and equal influence, and when I think of the Black Power Movement now, I also recall a conversation in my 1973 Civics class at a girls boarding school in Virginia about the Olympic medal winners who raised their fist in what was perceived then to be a "black power salute" during the 1968 games. A white student, JK, the daughter of a judge, was very outspoken and if ever there was a girl who fully embraced her white privilege, she was it. She declared with much passion that those black men should have been "horsewhipped." I think she attributed the sentiment to her father, the judge, and I was suddenly aware that powerful people in the courts that were supposed to render justice were also often racists. The anger that swelled in me as I listened to her would have burned her alive if she could have felt it.

The concepts of that movement stayed with me so long that in 2006, still fascinated enough with its figures on a subconscious level, I jumped at the chance to attend a salon at Amiri Baraka's home in New Jersey just to get a feel for what he and his circle and the old days may have been like in person. I enjoyed a conversation then with his wife, Amina, also a creative artist, who was busy with food in the kitchen, a very warm, nurturing woman. And I was also able to talk to the poet himself very briefly, but that's sort of a blur. (I can't find my notes from the encounter at the moment or I'd share more about my impressions.) That night my mind kept shifting to new territory as I looked around. It flipped back and forth from black issues to women's issues while I observed the comings and goings of the evening, the trail of poets, dancers, musicians, aspiring this or thats, and the people who drew the spotlight.

I must see this documentary.

You can read a full article about the doc at NYT, where I also found a video, an "exclusive" clip from the documentary that features Black Panther Party leader Eldridge Cleaver speaking in 1968.

H/T to Kalamu Ya Salaam's blog Neo-Griot

A Brand New Day

I will be moving this blog away from discussions of politics and race toward something less controversial, mythology perhaps. Something less personal, too, but what I do not know because existence is personal, is it not? Suddenly I am aware of the many reasons a woman should confine her own freedom of speech to the abstract or less threatening and yet even that decision is political. How will I go on?

The Social Media Diet

As I work at putting my life in order, which means doing the things I've always said I would do before my time runs out on this planet, I realize that I'm spending less time online. That's a good thing, but it's also a strange thing given how much time I've put into the Internet since 2002 and even earlier. I should probably elaborate, but I've got someplace to go right now and later it's exercise, thesis research on Marcus B. Christian, and more work on the novel. :-)

Tribute to Patti Labelle at BET Awards 2011 Went Well

Patti Labelle tribute at BET Awards 2011 with Marsha Ambrosius, Cee Lo, and Shirley Ceasar. Patti herself performs at the end. I enjoyed watching the show with my aunt and cousins last night, three generations in one place with a difference of opinion about what is good music. The younger ones were more into the rappers. And Kevin Hart's Real Husbands of Hollywood made me laugh until I cried.

What is a Closet Drama?

In some ways this blog is a commonplace book for me, and so, as I am researching closet dramas and their relationship to Plato and the dialectic or dialogue, I'm storing this definition or summary of closet dramas from The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama, Volume 1. Wikipedia is good starting point, too.

All on a Mardi Gras Day: Zulu Parade, Red Beans, and Family

I got up at 5:50 a.m., again complying with my dearest cousin (yes, the same cousin with whom I went to the Zulu Ball) but also with pressure from my son, and went to one Mardi Gras parade, the first of Mardi Gras Day, which is the Zulu Parade. We stood somewhere on St. Charles Avenue between Jackson and Felicity Streets. Scenes from the morning are in the video above.

We didn't stay until the end, however. Once my daughter had three coconuts and my son had an ax (he's too old for that), they were ready to go. But we also caught waaay too many beads and toys despite ducking some of them. Afterward, we went to my aunt's house and ate red beans and rice, hot sausauge, ribs, potato salad, garlic-stuffed chuck roast, and King Cake. Now, that his how to wreck a diet! We reminisced a little about former Mardi Gras and friends and family who are no longer with us, and we played cards. My adult children and I got home after 6:00 a.m., and I plan to sleep late tomorrow.

About the Zulus: I know for some people seeing black people and white people dress up in grass skirts and blackface is a shock. Wasn't it just last month that folks on the Net bristled at Beyoncé Knowles in blackface on a magazine cover? For some explanation of why the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club wears black face, try this article at Mardi Gras Digest.

Public Radio and Why I Wish I Drove More

What I miss about driving less is getting lost in a radio show, specifically narratives on NPR via WWNO here in New Orleans. I can't seem to listen to talk or narratives on radio sitting still in my bedroom or living room because my mind starts to travel to all the things I need to do in my house, and if I try to do chores and listen, I don't enjoy the story the way I can in the car.

This Saturday, February 5, however, I was zipping through the city and Metairie and ha the pleasure of listening to This American Life.

I could not wipe the smile from my face as I heard the last segment, "Contrails of My Tears" on 426: Tough Room 2011. Brett Martin discussed the tendency to cry at movies on airplanes. I don't wait for airplane rides to cry watching movies or even sappy commercials, but I related to the discussion.

06. Kem - Love Calls: Procrastination

I am struggling through reading for classes, and procrastination is calling my name much more than any love, but still I love this song.

"Remembering a Life" Read at MLK Celebration in Maryland

I discovered today that my poem "Remembering a Life" honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was read at a Hagerstown Community College celebration for MLK Day 2011. This is not the first time the poem has been recited at such an event. I started to learn of people reciting it and some of my other poems at special occasions around 2006, and I think I wrote about the recitations in 2008.

However, this event at HCC was captured on video by the area's local newspaper, the Herald Mail. You can watch the video here.

According to the paper's article:

"... and alumna Leticia West read a poem about King called “Remembering a Life” by Nordette Adams. ... The program concluded with a dramatic rendition of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Darin Mency of Greater Campher Temple."

You can identify Ms. West reading in the video because the screen shows her name and the poem's title as she reads part of the second stanza.

The poem was also read at an Oklahoma State University MLK program this year and at Tufts University, and in 2008 in Roanoke, Virginia, at a ceremony marking the 40th anniversary of King's death a speaker quoted the poem.

Remove Your Personal Data from Spokeo? Unlikely

More than likely, any attempt to remove your personal data from Spokeo.com will only result in Spokeo having more information about you.



Everytime I look around on Facebook lately, someone is posting a warning about Spokeo.com, the same website discussed in the video above. Spokeo is a personal information aggregator promoting itself as a search engine with the tagline "not your grandma's phone book." The site is making public in one place people's personal data that is normally considered private, such as your home address and net worth.

The invasion of privacy has people up in arms. My first thought when I noticed the warnings was, "Another annoying site?"

(Related: Is privacy a relatively new concept?)

Over the years I've learned there's not much you can do about bits of your life seeping out online short of staying offline and living far below the radar or living off the grid completely. The only people who may be relatively safe are those with common names like "Jane Smith" because it takes so long to figure out which Jane Smith that only someone being paid to find the right one will bother. However, even Dick and Jane can be assured that somebody, somewhere is watching and gathering not only their personal data but also their social and buying behaviors.

Nevertheless, with so many people posting concerns about Spokeo.com, and then last night even one of my local TV stations doing a segment about it, I decided it was time to pay Spokeo a visit. I entered my own name and some friends and family member's names, and I quickly discovered that of the private information Spokeo makes public about ordinary people, some is accurate and some is totally bogus. Either way, the exposure is a problem. Fake information can sometimes cause more problems than factual information.

But seeing an elderly relative or young female relative's actual address show up is disturbing for obvious reasons. I thought about the risk Spokeo and other sites like it may pose for women who are fleeing violent ex spouses or boyfriends when it makes phone numbers and addresses visible to anyone or how easily it would be for a con artist to use the data revealed to perhaps show up at a senior citizen's house and claim to know the senior. Will it take someone being swindled of life savings or killed to run the Spokeos of the Net out of business?

So, I clicked on its opt-out directions to remove my name and one of my children's names. I figured I'd tell friends and other family to go in and take their names out later, but as I thought about trying to remove my self, I decided to let it go. Like Hans Solo, I thought, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

I decided not to opt out because I suspected that the outcome of any attempt to remove myself would be that Spokeo ended up verifying my email address, which it would then post online or sell. Plus, if not Spokeo, then some other database down the road will pop up pimping uch private information again.

Investigators at Snopes.com came to similar conclusions:

"... removing your personal information from display by Internet aggregators isn't a one-time deal, but rather more like a never-ending game of Whack-a-Mole: You might swat down an aggregator site or two, but more of them will inevitably pop up. ... Our repeated attempts to request the blocking of a particular record through Spokeo's privacy page have found the procedure to be highly questionable: no attempt is made to verify that the person requesting the blocking of a record is the person identified by that record, our efforts have never resulted in a successfully blocked record, and Spokeo's customer service group did not respond to any of our inquiries. ... Attempts to initiate record blocking are frequently met with error messages claiming that the provided e-mail address is invalid or that "in order to prevent abuse, we must limit the frequency of privacy requests." ... All of this has led some to speculate that one of Spokeo's core businesses is actually collecting e-mail addresses or pushing sales of privacy services."

I think Snopes contributors are on to something, especially with that final point of speculation.

In the video at the top of the post, a privacy expert advises that you should be careful about what you put online in the first place. Remember nothing really disappears from the Internet. Somewhere, some database has grabbed it and archived your data for posterity.

Most likely, the government is the only entity that can stop this kind of intrusion by making it illegal for third party sources to make private citizens' information visible to casual Internet surfers without the citizen's explicit permission. I don't think the government can stop these aggregators from selling the information. The junk mail industry has thrived on these kinds of sales for years. But some kind of legislation should be able to stop aggregators from exposing the phone numbers, home addresses, and personal income of people with whom these sites have no direct relationship. Or at least perhaps some kind of privacy legislation can force these sites to reveal the original sources so citizens can have their information hidden at those websites or databases.

My Son Went Crash Bang Yesterday Morning

This was my day yesterday: At 8:30 a.m., I got a call. My son, 20, had wrecked my daughter's Chevy Cobalt. He was lost, and had made a bad turn, committing a failure to yield. An SUV hit the car on the passenger's side. Thank God he was alone in it.

The Cobalt then careened into a traffic light pole on Marconi and Harrison by City Park. The Other driver, one of the city's District Attorneys, was not injured. He was on his way to work at Tulane and Broad.

Again, thank, God. After the police left and the car was towed away, my daughter and I took my son to an emergency room to have him checked out. He had to have some glass bits removed from his hand, and also suffered a few bruises, but otherwise he's fine.

Next week it's back to grad school for me, and he and his sister go back to undergrad classes. Somewhere in middle of it I'll fit in a visit with my dad's physical therapist.

If this is the opening to the new semester, I'd better eat my Wheaties.

It's Raining. The Dog Goes Nuts.

It's been raining ducks and alligators here, and my dog, who is afraid of thunderstorms but won't go in his dog house, has been outside going nuts. Furthermore, I postponed a trip across the lake partly because I don't like driving over the Twin Span when the rain's pouring down, but also because I'm functioning on little sleep today.

Verizon Wireless called me this morning before my wake time and woke me up. The agent tried to get me to renew a contract I just cancelled on the HP Mini. She was nice, and I was polite, but sleep would have been better.

Anyway, on Facebook, where WDSU anchor Norm Robinson does a good job leveraging social media, he talked about enjoying the rain. Then somebody mentioned the song "It's Raining" by Irma Thomas, and I thought of the song "Louisiana 1927," Aaron Neville's version, about the great flood of 1927. However, I also like Randy Newman's version; he wrote the song and his is the first version I heard.

And then I talked about our family's neurotic dog, Bolt. He's afraid of thunderstorms (I've learned many dogs are) and we're trying to only bring him inside if the temperature drops below 34 degrees, not a common thing in New Orleans. When he's been inside in the past, however, during a thunderstorm, he's tried to hide under my dad's recliner while Dad, 90, is in it. And if Dad's not in his chair but in his room, Bolt's tried to get into the room to get under him. We don't really understand this since we've had Bolt since he was a puppy. We got him in New Jersey from the Humane Society for my son. Bolt grew up with a few blizzards but also quite a bit of rain and even snow with thunder. We can't pinpoint when he started to be afraid of thunderstorms with rain, and I don't recall him being this nutty in New Jersey, except he was afraid of stairs. That's a long story.

Bolt didn't come to know my father until I moved back to Louisiana more than three years ago and my mother, who's passed on, and my father came to live with me. So, why does he feel this elder can protect him from the storm? Or is it that my dad has metal in his body (artificial hip and femur) and that somehow changes the electromagnetic force around him? Or maybe it's, as Cesar Millan might say, my dad has "calm assertive energy"? I don't know, but I wish this dog knew how many less desirable places we've lived just to keep him. He's about 65 pounds, a Lab Retriever mutt. Most landlords wouldn't allow him when I was renting, which is one of the reasons I bought a house in 2007 shortly after I moved back. I thank God for that miracle, considering my post-divorce credit rating.

Someone said I should get him doggy downers, but I think I'm going to have to find a Cesar-Millan-like way to rehabilitate him and help him at least love his dog house. He is, after all, in New Orleans now. There's no way for him to escape the sound of thunder and raindrops, and if he doesn't go in his house, he'll only get drenched.

Here is Aaron Neville singing "Louisiana 1927" during the Hurricane Katrina telethon.



This is Randy Newman's version with some pictures and history about the flood of 1927.



While looking up Neville's version, I had good laugh when I came across this Tyra Banks Show video of Beyonce imitating Aaron singing one of the songs he recorded with Linda Ronstadt, "Don't Know Much." After the dog's fit outside—his desperate attempts to throw himself against the back screen door—my waking up too early, and oh, I think I just heard my dad drop something in the kitchen, I needed a small chuckle. Blessing of the day is no sinus headache with the tiny bumps of life, and in about 12 days it's back to UNO.

Tea Party Leader Attacks My Church, the UMC

Just when I thought some Tea Party leaders could sink no lower, I learn that one of its most prominent leaders, according to the Huffington Post, is calling for the United Methodist Church to be disbanded. I take this personally since I grew up in the UMC.

My grandfather and great-grandfather were UMC ministers and many of my family members are still on its rolls. In fact, I've been thinking about returning to the UMC. I guess my roots are calling me.

I drifted away thinking I needed a denomination that embraced a pentecostal tradition more and had clearly defined guidelines for living. Ironically, many such churches ostracize members that don't get with their political agenda to force a conservative Christian doctrine onto the nation, and I don't think that's what the Apostles advocated.

HuffPo reports that Judson Phillips, founder of Tea Party Nation and someone who claims to be a former member of the UMC, calls the denomination the "religious arm of socialism" and "the first Church of Karl Marx."

TPM Muckraker says that after seeing a sign at a UMC building in Washington D.C. for the Dream Act (The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, which failed to pass in Congress), Phillips wrote at his blog that he said "I have a DREAM. That is, no more United Methodist Church."

It seems that he divined from this sign that the UMC is "pro-illegal immigration," but he also maligns the UMC because it supports health care reform and helping the poor. He probably holds similar animosities toward the Christians who support the views of Sojourner's Magazine. Apparently in Phillips's mind, Jesus of Nazareth would have objected to helping the poor or being willing to pay more in taxes so your fellow citizens could have access to health care. (Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly also imagines that Jesus believed in locking people out rather than loving people in.) So, Phillips wants "no more" UMC.

Naturally, Phillips tosses around the word "freedom" a lot as though only he knows what the word means. I continue to be amazed at how often people who proclaim themselves "patriots" and "freedom-loving Americans" seek to diminish the rights of others. Speaking of the Methodist church, Phillips writes:

"They want amnesty, they want "economic justice", they opposed "global climate change" (earth to the Methodists, man isn't doing it), fighting global poverty (here is another hint, most poverty is caused by a lack of freedom and lack of a free enterprise system). Not shockingly, the Methodists side with the Islamists against Israel, and of course oppose America in Iraq."

So, there you go. Another Tea Party leader is showing his true colors as anti-freedom of religion. So much for the Constitution of the United States of America they claim to love so much. Perhaps this tendency to want to control other people's religious beliefs is why so many Tea Party members love Sarah "Dominion Theologist" Palin.

You can read Phillips's blog to verify his statements; however, you will have to subscribe. Can you stomach that?

At LoveRadically, writing about Phillips's attack on the UMC after he supposedly saw a Dream Act sign , the blogger says:

I am not going engage Mr.Phillips on his ignorance of the United Methodist Church or his blatant over-generalization of all the members of the UMC as people who hate American. As an aside, I dare you sir to step into my church on Sunday morning and tell our veterans they hate America. Nor will I debate Mr. Phillips's stance on the DREAM Act or any other legislation. I will only ask Mr. Phillips why HE hates America and democracy? I only make that assumption because Mr. Phillips seems to dislike the way a democratic government works, that is debating and discussing the issues of the day instead of condemning an entire denomination because of one sign outside one building.

Yep. But I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Phillips knows the history of the church and its founders, Charles and John Wesley, and thinks that he, Phillips, a Tea Party leader, somehow has greater wisdom.

From what I've read of his rhetoric elsewhere, the man misunderstands "separation of church and state." He denounces the UMC for sending emails to its members about church leaders' positions on political issues. So, he doesn't seem to get that separation of church and state does not mean people of faith lose freedom of speech.

Earth to Mr. Phillips: The evangelical Christian right has been politically active for a long time! Maybe you should read some history books (not those from Texas, however). Also, again, see Sarah Palin.

NOLA's Black Indians: Are These Wild Men?

I took these photos last year during the 2009 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Actually, I shot video that was too crowded with tourists walking in front of my view to post online. More photos are posted on my Facebook page. I probably need to check this with Kalamu ya Salaam, but I think these two black Mardi Gras Indians in the first two photos both serve as the wild man that clears the path for the Big Chief.







This last photo shows the detail on one of the suits.