Planetaki Planet sokratees

New York Photos of the Week February 4th – February 10

2012-02-11T01:34:11Z

From left, Miss Universe Leila Lopes, Miss Teen USA Danielle Doty and Miss USA Alyssa Campanella at the 57th Viennese Opera Ball at the Waldorf-Astoria’s grand ballroom Feb. 3. (Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal)

A model waited for last-minute wardrobe alterations backstage before the start of the Juan Carlos Obando Spring 2012 collection show at the Lehmann Maupin Gallery on West 26th Street in Manhattan Thursday. (Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal )

New York Police Officer Kevin Brannan was released from Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan Friday, 10 days after being shot in the head in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Wearing a New York Giants jersey, he was accompanied by his wife and greeted by a crowd of police officers. (Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal)

Actress Kristin Chenoweth Kristin Chenoweth stole a kiss Monday from Sesame Street’s Elmo at the Drama League of New York’s annual benefit gala at the Pierre hotel. (Amy Sussman for The Wall Street Journal )

The pop-up SoHo gallery Museum of Chocolate Art—open to the public through the weekend—chronicles the ‘Life in Milk Chocolate’ of Ms. Brown, the Mars Chocolate company’s brown M&M character. This 300-pound chocolate sculpture is among the items on display. (Amy Sussman for The Wall Street Journal)

Seared diver scallops with a cauliflower purée at North End Grill, 104 North End Ave. in Manhattan. (Julie Glassberg for The Wall Street Journal)

FAMnyc team member Travis McMichael moved a piece of art at the Essex Street Market last Friday, in preparation for the group’s Exquisite Corpse project, which opened Thursday. (Related article: Bringing a Corpse to Life) (Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal)

This disputed pedestrian plaza in Jackson Heights spans 37th Road between 73rd and 74th streets. For local merchants, the emptiness symbolizes the state of their affairs since the plaza’s creation in September. (Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal)

Joy White left Manhattan Federal Court after a hearing in which Ann Pettway pleaded guilty to stealing Ms. White’s infant daughter, Carlina, from a Harlem hospital 24 years ago. (Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal)

The second course of the stinky cheese meal prepared by Chef Andy D’Amico, below, at Marseille on West 44th Street: a creamy polenta with Taleggio, porcini cream, sage and a sunny-side up pullet egg. (Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal)

Young Giants fans crowded a window on Broadway Tuesday to watch the Manhattan parade celebrating the Giants’ Super Bowl victory. (Rob Bennett for The Wall Street Journal)

Photos of the Day: Feb. 10

2012-02-11T01:34:11Z

CLOTH OF MANY COLORS: A worker arranged a sari, a traditional garment for women, on a line to dry after it was dyed at a workshop in Shardarpara village, south of Kolkata, Friday. (Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters)

FIGHTING WITH WATER: Belgian policemen stood guard at the entrance to a cabinet office as firefighters sprayed water at them during a demonstration in Brussels against pension overhauls, part of Belgium’s austerity plan. (Zuma Press)

GETTING READY FOR THE RUNWAY: A model prepared backstage before the Peter Som fall/winter 2012 collection show during New York Fashion Week Friday. (Carlo Allegri/Reuters)

HANGING OUT: Sheep grazed in a field near a coal-fired power plant in Neurath, Germany, Friday. (Ina Fassbender/Reuters)

SNOWY SQUARE: A woman walked across a snow-covered square in the center of Ostrava, Czech Republic, Friday. (Petr Josek/Reuters)

The Beating, Black Heart of a Chick Embryo

2012-02-11T01:34:11Z

The Nikon Small World contest, which selects some of the best examples of photomicrography annually has added a new category to include movies made under the microscope. This year’s winner is a stunner of a video by Anna Franz in the School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. Ms. Franz cut a window into an egg to expose the 72-hour-old chick embryo and carefully injected ink using a glass capillary needle into its artery under a stereo microscope. Here is an edited transcript of an interview with Ms. Franz:

“I am currently doing a Ph.D. in developmental biology studying centriole duplication [cell behavior] in Drosophila [fruit flies]. In 2010 I took a six-week course in embryology at Woods Hole [Marine Biological Laboratory] where I learned several techniques used to study embryogenesis in a number of organisms. One of these techniques was the injection of ink into an artery with the aim to visualize the vasculature of the chick embryo. This image/movie gives the viewer the opportunity to observe a biological process as it is happening and gives an overview of how the blood system works. The films also demonstrates beauty in simplicity; what could be more simple than an egg?

The reason why researchers study the vasculature of chick embryos is because it is very similar to the human vasculature. A better understanding of the development and function of the heart and the vasculature may help spur the discovery of novel therapeutics, which can be used to treat cancer (since tumor growth relies on blood vessel growth) and cardiovascular diseases.”

Courtesy Anna Franz, University of Oxford/Nikon Small World

One Not To Miss: Hybrid Thinking Closing Day Reception, Sat Feb 11th in NYC

2012-02-10T15:04:58Z

Please join us tomorrow afternoon, Saturday February 11th, at 3 - 5pm for a closing day reception of our new group show HYBRID THINKING at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in New York City. The show features new work by Herakut, ROA, Vinz, Hyuro, Dal, and SIT. While much of the original show has sold out, there will still be pieces available for purchase.

Hybrid Thinking Closing Day Reception
Saturday Feb 11th, 3pm - 5pm
Jonathan LeVine Gallery | 529 W 20th St Ste 9E | New York, NY 10011

Hand Drawn Google Maps

2012-02-10T14:40:39Z

With the help of over 200 students from University College London, the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis created this UCL Hand-Drawn Map of London.

The hand-drawn map has been imported into Google Maps, presumably using the department's own GMap Image Cutter. It is interesting to zoom and pan around the map and explore how the students' perceive the world around them and how they view London's many suburbs and areas.

They Draw & Travel is a collection of wonderful user submitted hand-drawn maps.

A Google Map of submissions lets you browse the hand-drawn maps submitted to the They Draw & Travel website. You can click on any of the map markers to view the hand-drawn map submitted for that location.

Claire Murray;s Map of Edinburgh

Claire Murray is the creator of a hand-drawn map and guide to Scotland's capital city, which you can buy for only $10. The guide includes: where to find the best breakfasts; real pubs; fancy cocktails; what to do on a rainy day; how to conquer Arthurs Seat and a hell of a lot more.

Claire has used the Google Maps API to present her hand drawn map of Edinburgh on-line. The map uses the Google Map controls so it is possible to zoom in on the lovely detail of Claire's map, for example the naked ladies next to the Blue Blazer.

Nigeria's BattaBox

2012-02-10T17:21:55Z

Upload your video to Battabox:

Guerilla gardening – Zimbabwe style

2012-02-10T16:38:32Z

On a walk on one of Harare’s upmarket streets in Borrowdale Wednesday, I turned a corner and was struck by this perfect square patch of tall, lush mealies planted in the verge outside a house. It reminded me of an urban gardener in London, who plants tiny gardens in sidewalks.

1st Constitutional Draft published without COPACs knowledge?

2012-02-10T16:38:32Z

This morning I phoned COPAC Communications to try and get an electronic copy of the first draft of the COPAC Constitution. Maria, the Communications Assistant refused to give it to me, saying that they didn’t have an electronic copy available and in fact had no idea how it had been published in The Herald.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST: The Corrib Gas controversy

2012-02-10T17:01:33Z

Jourdan Anderson: A Letter to His Old Master

2012-02-10T08:59:17Z

On August 7, 1865, Jourdon Anderson, a former slave of Colonel P.H. Anderson, respoded to his former master's request to return to work on the farm for a wage.

Here is Jourdon Anderson's reply, which was published in The New York Daily Tribune.

LETTER FROM A FREEDMAN TO HIS OLD MASTER.

[Written just as he dictated it.]

Dayton, Ohio, August 7, 1865.

To my old Master, Colonel P. H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee.

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the[266] folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq.,[267] Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson.

Newspaper: http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7035/6790780585_466117fe88_o.jpg

Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38479/38479-h/38479-h.htm#Page_265

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Freedmen's Book, by Lydia Maria Child

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Freedmen's Book

Author: Lydia Maria Child

Release Date: January 3, 2012 [EBook #38479]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

Produced by Suzanne Shell, Henry Flower and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Image Source:http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ashp/toer/whowastoer.html

Love in Fanon

2012-02-10T08:43:12Z

My (lightly edited) comments at GWU today. I’m not sure where this particular avenue is headed, but it helped me clarify some thinking about race and the academy and the role of the minority professor.
*

Today we believe in the possibility of love, and that is the reason why we are endeavoring to trace its imperfections and perversions.—Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon is not someone we turn to for advice on love. Far from it. His biographer, David Macey, claims that if there’s a “truly Fanonian emotion” it’s “anger,” and Alice Cherki insists that Fanon was “a thinker about violence.” While we can certainly talk about the range of emotions in Fanon, from rage to ecstasy, and from despair to hope, love seems to be a stretch. For love, we turn to Barry White and Marvin Gaye and Luther Vandross. Never Fanon. Indeed, while Fanon claims to take love seriously in Black Skin, White Masks, by the end of Black Skin, Fanon has turned to Hegelian recognition and a deep-rooted bodily skepticism, as noted in his famous closing “prayer”: “Oh my body, always make me a man who questions.” Against the possibilities of love, Fanon embraces the inevitability of skepticism. What has happened to love? Why does it appear in Black Skin only to disappear? And what might be useful in thinking about Fanon and love?

Because Fanon is foundational to black studies, black diaspora studies, and postcolonial studies, he is the gateway for scholars working in transnational black queer studies. However, Black Skin, White Masks, his major contribution to black ontology and epistemology, has posed a major stumbling block for black queers scholars. Today, I want to move away from the problem of Fanon’s homophobia to consider strategies through which black queer studies can engage Fanon. I will suggest that love is a crucial, understudied element of Fanon’s thinking and an essential component of his vision for an anti-racist, anti-colonial world.

In Black Skin, Fanon explores love in a two-chapter sequence focusing on interracial relationships. The first chapter condemns Martiniquan writer Mayotte Capecia for her “self hatred” while the second empathizes with the Martiniquan author René Maran. I’ll focus on Fanon’s engagement with Capecia. As is well known, Fanon condemns Capecia for desiring a white man, which he misreads as her desire to be white. In a moment of strategic misreading, he argues, “Mayotte loves a white man unconditionally. He is her lord. She asks for nothing, demands nothing, except a little whiteness in her life. And when she asks herself whether he is handsome or ugly, she writes: ‘All I know is that he had blue eyes, blond hair, a pale complexion and I loved him.’” Fanon continues, “If we reword these same terms it is not difficult to come up with: ‘I loved him because he had blue eyes, blond hair, and a pale complexion.’” It may not be difficult to reword Capecia, but note here that Fanon changes coincidence to causality. Capecia’s inability to control how she loves demonstrates her self-alienation. All interracial love is suspect. Perhaps all love is suspect.

Feminist scholars have rightly critiqued Fanon for how he depicts women, but few have asked why Fanon doubts Capecia’s love. This scholarly absence can be attributed, in part, to how we have inherited Fanon. Within the U.S., Fanon comes to us from a predominantly U.S.-based black studies. Rooted in the political and aesthetic radicalism of the 1960s and 1970s, black studies privileged a binary understanding of racial feeling: one experienced pride or self-hatred. Literary and political works were revolutionary or assimilationist. Love was a bourgeois emotion. Given this paradigm, Fanon’s claim that Capecia was self-hating went unquestioned.

Let me suggest that we set aside Fanon’s indictment of Capecia as an individual, and focus on the larger conceptual problem he lays out: authentic love can neither be experienced nor sustained under conditions of oppression. Here, I take my cue from anthropologist Jennifer Cole and Historian Lynn Thomas. In their introduction to a wonderful book called Love in Africa, they argue, “contemporary discourses, sentiments, and practices of love are the product of complex historical processes and intersections.” In their work, love is not a method of disengaging from the difficult labor of politics or removing oneself from the complications of history. If anything, the complications of history and the labor of politics make love more difficult to recognize and realize. To return to Fanon’s indictment of Capecia: the problem with her declaration of love is that it is abstracted from its historical condition. Fanon believes that Capecia does not grant enough weight to the role of history and politics in matters of the heart. She believes, wrongly, that love is a refuge from the complexities of colonial modernity.

But this is not simply a problem for Capecia.

Toward the beginning of Black Skin, Fanon claims, “In our view, an individual who loves Blacks is as ‘sick’ as someone who abhors them.” As Fanon will later clarify, he objects to the idea of anyone loving “Blacks” because the “black” is a constructed fiction, an abstraction that ignores the lived experiences of individual subjects. To love “Blacks” requires one to believe racial fantasies about irreducible racial difference. Put otherwise, it requires one to believe in the existence of the black as a distinct category, something Fanon challenges when he concludes, “the black man is not.”

At this point, it might seem that I am conflating two very different definitions of love: love as individual psychic and libidinal experience and love as an expression of goodwill and affection for a collectivity. That is, the love one might have for a lover versus the love one might experience for one’s political, religious, or ethnic community. However, if, as I have suggested, love takes root and flourishes within the material circumstances of politics and history, then it becomes very difficult to distinguish between the two kinds of love. To extend Fanon’s thinking: all love becomes impossible to experience or sustain under conditions of oppression.

At this point, you might be wondering why a discussion of love in Fanon matters. In fact, as I was looking at the poster for this event and noted the range of topics—the Algerian revolution, decolonization, Occupy Wall Street, Malcolm X, and Edward Said—I experienced palpitations. I worried that talking about love felt too frivolous. I worried that I would be the literature professor who proved, once again, that literary scholars are removed from reality and inhabit an ivory tower filled with tea and poetry and violins.

Yet, over the past few years, I have been stunned by how often we talk about Fanon and black scholars in general in terms of resistance and revolution, anger and rage, resentment and bitterness, disappointment, and for a very brief moment a few years back, hope. We who work in black studies and related fields are tasked with discussing anger and rage and survival, asked, always, to discuss struggle and pain. And while all of these are necessary, I have wondered about the price we pay. It is difficult to sustain a career that focuses exclusively on negative emotions. And it is strange to believe that black scholars and activists spent their lives wandering around in a haze of rage and anger, unable to think about love and tenderness, unable to understand or theorize why these facets of human experience matter.

When Fanon declares, “Today I believe in the possibility of love,” he gestures toward a future that is unmarked by the paranoia of racism. More than that, he suggests that political resistance and social revolution have, as one of their goals, the cultivation of love. Simply, love flourishes under conditions of freedom and equality. This kind of love, this kind of free love, should be one of the goals of political labor.

However, when he wrote and published Black Skin in the early 1950s, this ideal of love was only a possibility: he did not believe it existed or could exist in the world as it was then.

When I started writing this series of reflections, I hoped to suggest the importance of love in Fanon by embedding his statements within their historical context. I hoped to suggest that understanding love as a historical formation and as an end-goal of politics would add richness to discussions about political freedom and economic equality.

Yet, I find myself stuck.

Like an annoying character from a movie, I keep wanting to ask, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

I have no answer.

We no longer inhabit the world Fanon described in 1952.

Much of Africa is decolonized, if still largely neo-colonial; while the shadow of racism continues to haunt Africa, often transforming into a destructive poltergeist in the guise of global policies and aid, many Africans nations act with self-determination; and while many across Africa continue to pursue various freedoms and equalities, these do not seem as impossible as they once did.

If we no longer inhabit Fanon’s world, then it might be time to take love seriously, time to ask whether we are closer to realizing its possibilities.

Wind turbines made by Kenyans, for Kenyans

2012-02-10T00:44:05Z

Support this Jua Kali supporting Indiegogo project:

access:energy’s approach to energy provision is quite different from solar power projects – we build our turbines from scratch at small workshops in Kenya, install them as energy hubs in rural villages and distribute power very locally. This local approach means we can deliver electricity far cheaper than mass-produced solar panels and even, in many cases, grid electricity. It also means that as we grow we create skilled jobs in the places where people need them most...[continue reading]

Photos of the Day: Feb. 9

2012-02-10T00:44:04Z

METH IN MEXICO: A soldier stood in a room full of barrels containing powder after the seizure of a small ranch in Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Mexico, Thursday. According to the Mexican army, 15 tons of pure methamphetamine were seized at the ranch. (Bruno Gonzalez/Associated Press)

CARRYING A COFFIN: Funeral parlor workers transported a coffin on a motorbike Thursday in Negros Oriental Province, Philippines, along a road destroyed by a deadly earthquake. (Ted Aljibe/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)

SMOKE STACK: Smoke from a wood-burning stove wafted from a car as Pascal Prokop on a cold day near Mettmenstetten, Switzerland, Thursday. Mr. Prokop received a permit to operate the stove in his car. (Arnd Wiegmann/Reuters)

SWEET VICTORY: Duke’s Austin Rivers, facing up, raised a fist as he celebrated his game-winning three-pointer with teammates after their 85-84 win over the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., Wednesday. (Chuck Liddy/The News & Observer/Associated Press)

STANDING GUARD: Soldiers stood guard near their riot gear in Male, Maldives, Thursday. A court issued an arrest warrant for former President Mohamed Nasheed, one day after his supporters rampaged in the capital amid his claim of being ousted in a coup. (Gemunu Amarasinghe/Associated Press)

MULTITASKING: A man covered his eyes and took a nap as he rode a subway train in Tokyo Thursday. Taking naps during commutes is relatively common among the Japanese. (Franck Robichon/European Pressphoto Agency)

CONVENIENT SERVICE: Flo Watson, seated in a car, and her daughter, Nina Watson, center, viewed the body of Robert Sanders, 58 years old, at the Robert L. Adams drive-through funeral parlor in Compton, Los Angeles, Wednesday. The funeral parlor is thought to be the area’s only drive-through funeral home. (Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)

Eugene Atget: “Documents pour artistes”

2012-02-10T00:44:04Z

“Eugène Atget: ‘Documents pour artistes,’” an exhibition of photographs by Atget that opened this week at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, takes its name from the sign outside Atget’s studio door. The sign underscored his humble intention to make “documents” that could be fodder for the creative output of other artists. Atget’s work to document the old Paris that was disappearing as it yielded to modernization began in the late 1880s and continued into the 1920s. Far from being a mere record-maker, Atget is remembered as a forerunner of modern art and photography, and was particularly admired by the surrealists. Man Ray lived down the street from Atget, but it was Bernice Abbott, an American photographer, who bought the contents of his studio when he died and brought the contents to MoMA. The current exhibition is the first extensive presentation of Atget’s oeuvre in 25 years and is accompanied by the rerelease of the book “Atget” by John Szarkowski. On view through April 9.

Marchand de paniers en fil de fer, 1899-1900. Albumen silver print. Eugène Atget, MoMA

Fête du Trône, 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print. Eugène Atget, MoMA

Avenue des Gobelins, 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print. Eugène Atget, MoMA

Parc de Sceaux, June 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print. Eugène Atget, MoMA

Romanichels, groupe, 1912. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print. Eugène Atget, MoMA

Rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève, June 1925. Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print. Eugène Atget, MoMA

Sigma Electric

2012-02-09T15:59:39Z

Africa Awards for Entrepreneurship winner Sigma Electric:

is engaged in the design, manufacturing supply, and installation/erection and commissioning of electromechanical equipment, plant, systems and turnkey projects and also in electromechanical services and trading activities.

The Canadian Census on Google Maps

2012-02-09T13:18:17Z

Global News has been busy mapping the 2011 Canadian census for 15 cities. Mapping the Census, Tract by Tract maps the population data captured by the 2011 census down to individual tract level.

Users can click on any of the individual tracts displayed on the Google Map and view the 2005 and 2011 population at that location and the population change in those five years. Individual tracts are also colour-coded on the map so users can tell at a glance which areas in each of the cities mapped are showing population growth or loss.

Shell Gannet Alpha platform in trouble again

2012-02-09T15:39:24Z

Shell Gannet Alpha platform evacuated over gas leak

2012-02-09T15:39:24Z

Royal Dutch Shell Gets Comfortable in Papua New Guinea

2012-02-09T15:39:24Z

Motiva Port Arthur FCC, Alky, HCU back in production -sources

2012-02-09T15:39:24Z

Public meeting on financial and ecological crises banned

2012-02-09T15:17:38Z

Police yesterday banned a public meeting in the MDC’s New Zimbabwe lecture series which was to have been addressed by South African economist Patrick Bond, the topic being “Global Financial and Ecological Crises, and Implications for Third World Countries.”

As one observer commented about the ban: “Hundreds had turned up for the meeting only to be greeted by baton wielding anti-riot police. Is this the state of the GNU we want?” The real question however is did we ever say we wanted any kind of GNU? The people of Zimbabwe didn’t vote for a compromise. The politicians decided to force one on us when none of them could get their own way.

Meanwhile, “The Principals” (Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambara), signatories to the Global Political Agreement met for 2 ½ hours yesterday to “deliberate key issues affecting the country.”

Amongst other things, they discussed elections, media reforms the land audit, and sticky issues like the Attorney General’s Act and Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri. The gist of the statement after the meeting? Yes, these are issues. And something should happen about them.

Somehow, I wouldn’t have thought that “something” would have involved banning a public discussion. . .

Totally Broke

2012-02-09T15:17:38Z

Abduction

2012-02-09T15:39:14Z

for bui thi kim thanh

men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
to the clinic of biên hòa.

that same day
it rained: the god of rain
got very drunk.

men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
past the dông nai valley
filled with war junk,
out where rain nicks
bark and bast away.

men entered her home,
took her in a trunk
to the clinic of biên hòa
that same day.

I figured they'd catch up to Tooks eventually...

2012-02-09T07:29:13Z

I mean, I should've known that the authorities would get wise to his antics sooner or later, after a lifetime of misdemeanor thespianism and felonious cartoonery! So here I stand before you, finally convicted for my bohemian lifestyle. Where do I begin?

Well, for starters... I've been (Choke!) acting again despite previous claims to the contrary, (Click HERE) in a couple of small capers (petty crimes against Art, I swear) here in Madrid. I've managed a brief cameo in director Violeta Brana-Lafourcade's new film short, "La Dulce Voz", which will be finished very soon... then I went on to appear in another TNT Spain commercial for director Jose Skaf, promoting J. J. Abrams' recent American TV series, "Alcatraz"... which should serve as a flimsy enough alibi for the photo above. I'm conspiring now to shoot another film with Skaf in a few weeks... more news about that, and the other bits, another day.

I was interviewed by the usual suspects at the terrific Black Tribbles webcast and that'll be online Thursday, February 9th @ 9PM Eastern Standard Time, and thereafter... I sing like a canary about the wonderful Graphic Novel Anthology "African-American Classics" and babble on about my 30-Plus year Rap-Sheet as an Artistic repeat offender. (I figured it would be easier than going door-to-door to warn the neighbors.) Click HERE for details.

"African American-Classics" has been the talk of the town, getting great reviews and making a genuine Black History Month spectacle of herself! Check out the Facebook page HERE, and if you haven't got your copy, order now from Amazon or the GraphicClassics.com webpage! You won't be sorry, I swear... and you know you can trust me!

From my cell I've also been concocting a pair of mindblowing new Graphic Novels simultaneously. They've been in the planning stage for a loooong time and I'll be finally unleashing them onto an innocent public before the end of this year! I'm glad to be able to talk a bit about them now... let me know what you think!

I've long been an admirer of Dr. John Polidori's horror tale, "The Vampyre," and after having completed an adaptation of his close personal friend Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's "The Mortal Immortal" for the upcoming comics anthology "The Graphic Canon," I've decided it's time to give his spooky tale a try. I've attached a couple of images of the work in progress, and I'm having an electric time piecing it all together, as Dr. Frankenstein might say! (By the way... Two other upcoming Tooks adaptations are of W. Somerset Maugham's "Rain" for the same Graphic Canon Three volume series, and a revised version of Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp," for Graphic Classics' new Stevenson volume. Both due in 2012!

And most thrilling of all, I'm writing and drawing my first original Graphic Novel since my "Lucifer's Garden of Verses" series! I've posted a couple of images over the past year without saying what they're for, but it's time to let this cat out of the bag... it's called "Thug Midwife," and tells the story of a young thug who, upon his release from prison, decides it's time to stop taking life out of this world and to start bringing it in... so he becomes a midwife! I've attached an unfinished version of the cover (sans his very unusual tattoo) and a couple of images depicting the thug and midwife parts of the protagonist's nature.

I've been doing a huge amount of research for this project... strangely enough, the midwife part of the story's been a breeze... all I had to do was deliver a baby! But the thug part's tougher, I can't honestly admit that I've ever been one, although I have played one on TV!
Best, Lance

(PS... Check out my brilliant friend Gwyneth Box and her amazing blog about all things poetic! She very kindly posted another sketch of mine HERE! Someone's gotta stop me before I draw again!)

Classically Composed

2012-02-09T07:49:04Z

Saxophonist Benny Golson played his composition “Whisper Not” in his neighborhood, Manhattan’s Upper West Side, on a warm day earlier this month.

All photographs by Daniella Zalcman for The Wall Street Journal.