G E T • V I S I O N

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Jon Fromer

Jon Fromer, originally uploaded by B I R D.

JON FROMER 1946 – 2013 He lived every drop of his life with his heart as they say, "Staid on freedom." He was a passionate man, a quietly courageous man, a gentle bear of a man. Jon dedicated his life to educating people and persuading them to crusade for peace through justice. Jon didn't know where the sidelines were; he thrust his soul into his work--showing up when people needed some steel in their backs. Thoughtful and talented, he could have chosen many paths--in fact, he could have been "privileged" in the traditional way. Instead, he chose to give his innumerable skills to the struggle for equality, peace, and justice. He was rewarded as most like him are by the vibration that wells up in other peoples hearts when you sing of hope and faith. He was treated to the feeling of being part of the chorus, a voice lifted among many, a rich baritone. It is bittersweet that we now have these songs that he sang; unfortunately, too few got recorded. His work extended into television production and programs like this one that he produced: "Jimmy Collier: His Music and Travels with Dr. King," which aired on KQED's This Week in Northern California. JON FROMER Presente! More at GreatworkProductions.com A CALL FOR PHOTOS & Memorial Info

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Good Vibrations

By Lang Kenneth Haynes

For the November 29, 2012 edition of

The Capital City Hues

About 1,200 words

About forty years ago an esteemed person told me that one atom deprived of vibration would destroy the universe. That’s pretty deep if you think about it. What I find even deeper is the notion that I have spent many years trying to stand in the way of vibrations or vainly attempting to direct the movement of the river that goes where it wants to go anyway.

Fact of the matter is (to the extent that facts exist in the first place) that music is the most common and generally acknowledged form of vibration and musicians are the bearers of that particular form of expression. I wrote a version of the poem below a few years ago. It’s about an actual person I know. I bump into him in different contexts from time to time. The mall that the poem mentions is near the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library by State and Park Streets. The gentleman, featured in the poem, was playing sax and flute for money. Open instrument cases on the cold, hard ground said so. I was privileged to know a little more of his story. He was an excellent musician who inspired me to practice harder and play better a long time ago. He gave me the music to Green Dolphin Street and Take Five. I never dreamed that I could play either tune, but I Iearned to play both pretty well. There are many interesting things about good vibrations. One constant seems to be that we never know how, when or where they’ll make themselves known. He never became a household name. No aspect of his life showed up on the Jeopardy television game show. And if you were to stand in front of him on line at the grocery store you wouldn’t have a clue as to who he was or what he had contributed to the world of vibration.

The Musician

His eyes, black half-moons that scream out

Through the blackness of his face cloaked in night

A flute note makes the sidewalk list

Sweet, heavy tone with sour edges

I avoid his silhouette on the wall of the Library Mall

As though it is something other than my own

Unrealized mornings left to mildew

In the faint light of memory

At times the bridge contracts

Past and present merge in the space between breaths

As passersby slog by unaware of his accomplishment

But pretend to know and drop dollars in his hat

I add a twenty, walk past, and then stop,

Turn to face the music and

Realize that I am a passerby too, just before the

"Thank you" in G-flat

Our eyes promise to not

Make assumptions about each other

We are each trying to make music

In this discordant place

You guessed it. The musician is me and the musician is you and the poem is about an actual person whom we conveniently regard as living outside of ourselves. The instruments can be sax, flute, camera or no visible instrument at all. It is about vibrations and we need not worry about their point of origin. It is enough to know that there is one point of origin and that point is called creativity. The beauty is that we are all creative. Maybe we are musicians or accountants or dancers or wallflowers or maybe we are required to spend most of our time surviving in novel ways – but we are all creating. We are all vibrating.

Are you interested in knowing how this particular column came about? O.K. I’ll tell you. It’s a long story but that doesn’t really matter. The column can most easily be attached to marvelous photos of musicians taken and gloriously embellished by a sage who happens to be my brother-in-law. I have lived in Oakland, California for over one year now. In that time I have noticed many things. One is my tendency to believe that what I need necessarily exists someplace other than where I am. For example, I used to be a fan of the New Yorker magazine. I got a big kick out of looking at the entertainment section that told (among other things) readers which musicians were playing and where they were performing. I wrongly thought that geography was the sole determinant in shaping my experience. I am not saying that where we are is never important, but I am saying that we often give geography more power than it deserves.

Long lists of famous musicians would be playing a stone’s throw from each other. I was privileged to be in close contact with a number of well-known people. My father had a friend who lived near Clark Terry. I remember those Saturday afternoons driving over the Tri-Borough Bridge and being deliciously assaulted by the smells of a bakery somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge followed by the sweet notes of a trumpet that I later learned was being played by Mr. Terry. I was born in the hospital that the acclaimed television and radio host, Arthur Godfrey, used to be treated. I attended dances with my grandmother at the ballroom where Malcolm X was murdered. I used to routinely ride my bike underneath the bridge where Sonny Rollins is alleged to have practiced during the wee hours of the morning. Jackie McLean and his family lived in my old neighborhood at one time. Mongo Santamaria brought his band to the housing projects one week-end. Jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot to death in a little club, across the street from Tompkins Square Park, where I had heard McCoy Tyner play 44 years ago.

In the time I’ve lived in Oakland I’ve been blessed to experience Amiri Baraka, Reginald Workman, Jon Santos, Omar Sosa, Archie Shepp and Ron Carter. No. Not all of the people mentioned are musicians in the way we normally think about music. But they all vibrate. The stone in front of me vibrates. The fact that I usually fail to detect movement does not make its vibration any less relevant. Some of the names I’ve mentioned will be familiar while there are others that you’ve probably never heard of. That’s the point! You need not have grown up in New York to have rubbed shoulders with these folks and the entertainment section of the New Yorker magazine is purely optional. It doesn’t matter if you live in Madison, Wisconsin, Paris, France or Paris, Tennessee. You do not need to become an instant extrovert to access creativity. You can begin right where you are. Might as well because that is where you are at this very second. You can start with yourself as easily as I can begin with myself. One of many things that is good and wonderful about good vibrations is that we have no way of knowing how, when or where they will show up. A photo that my brother in-law gave me is the basis for my drawing of a jazz musician and this column. Disfrutes. I hope that I just told you to enjoy. And the next time you’re in a store take the time to experience (in whatever way seems appropriate and non-threatening) the person in the check-out line with you. You’ll likely be surprised with what you find. Who knows? You may even find yourself.

(End)

Monday, December 03, 2012

Hot Tuscan Extra Virgin Olive Oil

There is an art inherent in every human endeavor. The people at Big Paw have perfected the art of infusing exquisite tastes into olive oil and balsamic vinegar. One of our present favorites is thier HOT TUSCAN EXTRA VIRGIN OLIVE OIL.

Hot Tuscan Extra Virgin Olive Oil - 250 ml Big Paw's Hot Tuscan Summer Extra Virgin Olive Oil [250 hot tuscan] - $12.95 : Big Paw Sales, unique olive oils and balsamic vinegars, first in flavor - foods best friend!

Sunday, November 18, 2012

PIECE FOR PEACE

World Peace, originally uploaded by B I R D.

Many years before the Arab Spring there was Mississippi Summer. Mississippi Summer came after years of struggle. The campaign against the flagrant violation of the civil rights of in the U.S. developed over many years and in many ways. The Niagara Movement of DuBois, the separatism of Garvey and the Nation of Islam, labor organizing in the industrial cities north and south all chipped away at defacto and dejure discrimination. From the mid fifties extending the late seventies it was the Civil Rights groups like SCLC, CORE, SNCC who time in which the U.S. Civil Rights movement. We were faced with a supreme challenge, state governments were using their police at every level to harass and intimidate the movements for social change. It is of course a documented fact that these same police and militia had been thourouly infiltrated by the Klan and the White Citizen Councils and other racist paramilitary forces. Our churches were being bombed, Civil rights Workers were being assassinated, interstate buses were being set ablaze and their occupants set upon by mobs. State sponsored terrorism was being unleashed in waves, supiror force and fire power had always been used to keep southern blacks in line. Through all this the movement maintained a disciplined focused adherence to peaceful protest.

Yes it is true that the usually unorganized mainly young and mainly urban lashed out out in a series of riots from the middle to the end of of the decade. It is also true that shadow groups of armed black men like the Deacon's for Defense guarded some of the young organizers and leaders as they slept. There was also armed resistance in Natchez Mississippi which will be chronicled in the forthcoming bl=ook "We Will Shoot Back." Fannie Lou Hamer head of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party Confided that she slept with a gun under her bed.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
-Nelson Mandela

- MORE -
I have been interested in the symbol of "the white hands". I found this article that offers an explanation. I hope that a Spanish member of Flickr or anyone else for that matter, will tell us more

From the English version of SUR
--
The “white hands” (“manos blancas”) symbol did in fact originate in Spain, when students in Madrid used it in 1996 as a sign of innocence and of their revulsion at the murder, by the ETA terrorist group, of Francisco Tomás y Valiente, Professor of Law at the city’s Universidad Autónoma. Since then it has been used in numerous demonstrations, mainly against ETA. It was later associated with the “Spirit of Ermua” - the resounding “Enough is enough” response by Spanish society to the cold-blooded murder of Ermua Councillor Miguel Angel Blanco in July 1997. There is now also an association, the Asociación Manos Blancas, which gives awards to those who are outstanding in their defence of the principles of freedom.

WAGE PEACE

World PEACE 8.1, originally uploaded by B I R D.

Another reason that I'm happy to live in this period is that we have been forced to a point where we're going to have to grapple with the problems that men have been trying to grapple with through history, but the demand didn't force them to do it. Survival demands that we grapple with them. Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"Been to the Mountaintop"
April 3, 1968
His last speech....

What is this about? Please Click Here

Peaceful Protest Against All Kind of Terrorism / Protesto Pacífo
--
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
-Nelson Mandela

- MORE -
I have been interested in the symbol of "the white hands". I found this article that offers an explanation. I hope that a Spanish member of Flickr or anyone else for that matter, will tell us more

From the English version of SUR
--
The “white hands” (“manos blancas”) symbol did in fact originate in Spain, when students in Madrid used it in 1996 as a sign of innocence and of their revulsion at the murder, by the ETA terrorist group, of Francisco Tomás y Valiente, Professor of Law at the city’s Universidad Autónoma. Since then it has been used in numerous demonstrations, mainly against ETA. It was later associated with the “Spirit of Ermua” - the resounding “Enough is enough” response by Spanish society to the cold-blooded murder of Ermua Councillor Miguel Angel Blanco in July 1997. There is now also an association, the Asociación Manos Blancas, which gives awards to those who are outstanding in their defence of the principles of freedom.

STOREHOUSE OF DREAMS

STOREHOUSE OF DREAMS, originally uploaded by B I R D.

Best Viewed L A R G E

The light falls down on the wick
a blessing, a prayer at the point of ignition
a little darkness is pushed away
a moment to join the expectation
a chance to join hands
mother who has seen soldiers
fade into the silence
when the gunfire stops
father rocking his son to sleep
because there is nothing but love to eat
sister packing a lunch in darkness
headed for the factory instead of school
The light falls down on the wick
A blessing, a prayer at the point of ignition
a little darkness is pushed away
from a small corner of the world
B I R D
Poem and Image Copyright
©2007, Frederick Douglass Perry, All Rights Reserved