Sunday, June 20, 2010

I'm opening at for Riverwood's Last Hurrah! Music, then Poetry

The Riverwood Festival has quite a line up for this year!  Check out the poster on the right, which lists the events the venues, the poets - and the many open mics.

This year I will be opening at the Last Hurrah at the City Steam Brewry hosted by Kathryn Kelly.   Starting around 6PM I will be playing a few tunes. At 6:30 the poetry begins. I will read for around 20 minutes followed the fabulous poet John Surowiecki - That's on Sunday, June 27, 942 Main Street in Hartford. A "MEGA" open mic is planned as well.

"Twice before I was asked, but this will be my first appearance there."
// UPDATE AND ASIDE: Actually this is apparently NOT TRUE.  My previous invites were for the CONNECITCUT BEAT FESTIVAL. THIS last one WAS FOR THE RIVERWOOD. I had thought they were the same but apparently they are not at all, though for a while they seemed to converge..... ///

In 2008 Tom Nicotera asked me to read at the venue he was running for the festival.  I accepted and  two days before my scheduled date, my 34 year old boss, friend and music director/mentor suddenly died. We were all in shock. He wasn't' ill. To boot,  for his funeral, I had to learn the mezzo soloist part to a quartet from  the Mozart Requiem  and I only had three days to do it. (I am not a quick study really at this sort of thing.)  Depressed and stressed out, I asked Anne Marie Marra to read in my place. She was a big hit, as she always was and she had a great time.
In 2009,  Yvon Cormier asked if I'd read  at the Outlaw Poets venue - (How cool is that!)  but that March Anne Marie Marra died.  The date of the reading was the same as a memorial gathering for Anne Marie. This gathering given by her brother Reggie, was held on her birthday in June. It was a terrible loss for us all as we'd also lost poet Terry McLain the previous November.And I had lost Rob the year before.  I was really numb and  I needed to be there at the gathering fully present, not thinking about reading or having to rush off to perform.

So this year, Kathryn Kelly kindly asked me if I would read some poems and also add a little music to the festival's Last Hurrah event.  SOOOO  if I live that long - and though the creek may rise, and winds blow  --- I WILL BE THERE on June 27th to read some poems  and play a few tunes at the Festival's last Hurrah at the City Steam Brewery! WooHoo!

The details of the Last Hurrah:

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Hospital cost containment leaves people barefoot with bad breath

At a hospital nearby the new patient's automatic package of freebies apparently has been cut  and I applaud this cost saving measure.  Or maybe they just ran out?

The requisite plastic basin, bedpan, cups, kidney dishes all in hideous matching pink, etc were a useless recycling nightmare.  But there are some notable and useful exceptions ->>>  toothpaste, toothbrushes, and those nonskid slippersocks

When a relative of mine was there this week, she and her various roommates were asked to walk barefoot on hospital floors. After her second night in the hospital she asked for a third time for a pair because her feet were cold and was finally given one. We would have brought slippers in - if we had only been told this was no longer a policy to distribute nonskid slipper-socks to all patients.

In the hospital people leak and staff steps in it. People bleed, puke, have diarrhea, urinate, ooze all sorts of pus which is dabbed at which things that wind up on the floor. Relatives also track in stuff from the street to mix with all of this. Walking barefoot, even on a freshly mopped hospital floor is nuts. (Have you ever looked in a mop  bucket?)  Of course maybe the socks just hold icky stuff close to your feet and carry it into bed with you. No rationale for or against the socks was given.

In addition she went two days without brushing her teeth - we would have gladly provided a brush and paste if we only knew the hospital no longer did.  Dear local hospital -- if you are not going to provide these items - we understand ---BUT YOU NEED TO TELL PEOPLE. Or maybe if she had asked these would have been forthcoming as well. Maybe this is the Don't Ask, Don't Get policy. Fair enough. Just tell us.  Of course some things you ask for and do not get. My relative, whose chart contains a whole era of syncope due to dehydration, asked six times for  water until she got some. This might be the result of understaffing.... But it is a problem....

There were other changes from my relatives multiple previous visits over the last ten years. The method of re-situating people in a hospital bed has changed.  There used to be an extra sheet under the torso, nurses could each grab a side and heave without touching the patient. They have reverted to dragging them by the armpits and asking them to hitch up while pushing - which is sort of futile without nonskid slipper socks.  Another reason to keep the socks. I guess the extra linen was too expensive.

Something happened that has never happened before to us in many life-saving trips - a near miss at a wrong IV treatment.  A person appeared at my relatives bedside early in the morning and said "I have your sugar."  This is my relative who cannot take statins and whose triglycderides are already stellar.  My relative who is not diabetic.  If she hadn't been awake and alert  or hadn't the presense of mind to argue that she didn't get sugar and had never had it before - the drip would have been attached to the pre-installed just-in-case IV Shunt.  No name checking, no order checking, just fill -er up and hurry off to the next mistake.

Another thing was going on - rooms I noticed were being scrubbed out by people in disposable blue suits.  My relative was not allowed to use the bathroom in the second room she was in (which is why she was asking for water)  --  and she believes that was because the rooms other occupant was contagious and was already using it.   The doctors who visited this patient spoke to her with masks on....  One can only imagine-  and still they were all walking barefoot.  It makes you wonder for sure.

I will give kudus for niceness. People were very pleasant.  And to the transport people who repeatedly asked for names and dates of birth to make sure they were wisking away the right patient. Of course this is academic for me, as this hospital which is a three minute drive from where I live will not take my Charter Oak Insuranse. I have to drive to Waterbury, Hartford or New Haven. After this recent encounter -  I don't really mind.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Oddities: The British Invasion 40 Years Later



This incredulous expression, on an aging brit face with pursed lips and plentiful bags under crossed eyes - is worn by one of my polymer clay sculptures currently hanging in the Artwell Rocks Show in Torrington. The colors are acrylic and permanent ink pens mostly. The hair is a doll wig..... The theme was music. So this is the British Invasion, 40 years later.....

Saturday, May 22, 2010

"False Faces" - masks (1916-1948) by W.T. Benda were at WCSU


W.L. Benda's amazing masks were shown at Western Conn. State University's Alumni Hall this past week, by his grandson Thatcher Taylor who is a theater student there, with the assistance of Elizabeth Popeil an associate professor. Taylor is a personable sort and was there to act as a tour-guide. He is studying set design and theater tech at the college.



Alumni Hall is full of glass and has a chandelier. The masks were all in plexiglass cases. This arrangement made reflections difficult to avoid. So instead I gave in to them and tried to position them in the photo frame with some mixed results.
GOLDILOCKS >
THE EXECUTIONER:

What I find odd, thinking back, is that male masks could have the full range of humanity, could be old or evil However, female masks were all idealized as youthful, beautiful, unblemished.
I wish I had seen a wider variety of the women characters so I could know if this was an artistic choice or just the whim of the curator. I think I will paint some women as they are, warts and all. I really enjoyed this exhibit.



















Friday, May 21, 2010

Monday, May 17, 2010

Poet Jason Labbe recommends daily writing discipline


Waiting for inspiration won't help you find some, according to Jason Labbe, who read at Wednesday Night Poetry last week at the Blue Z Coffeehouse in Newtown.

It's important to write every day, and out of that discipline discoveries come, he told the Wed. Night Poetry crowd during the Q & A following his reading. (I think that might be good advice for practicing almost any skill or art form - a discipline of playful, purposeful exploration.

Labbe has an unassuming, understated reading style. His work is evocative, surreal, yet somehow spare and stoic. I really enjoyed his featured reading. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Vigrinia and a chapbook called Dear Photographer (Phylum Press, 2009) which is out of stock already. He's also a musician and drummer actively involved in performing and recording. Visit his website for details of his doings www.studyinblue.com (If you run the cursor towards the top of the page a menu will appear.)

Friday, May 14, 2010

Tom Flynn of Free Inquiry Magazine spoke on statistics of unbelief

When someone rattles off statistics 
ask about source and method

Information - on the demography of unbelief -was exactly what Tom Flynn (shown in my rather blurry picture) was sharing at a meeting of The Humanist Association of Connecticut this past Monday evening. Flynn is editor of Free Inquiry magazine, and executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism. Flynn is a lively speaker and gave a very interesting talk with lots of laugh lines as well as some terrific insights into the meaning of statistics. He looked at multiple sources, and also looked into their methods.

I came away with two things: 1) the number of unbelievers is indeed growing and 2) comparative statistics don't mean anything unless the methodology by which they were created is objective and consistant. This brings to mind a story I've heard from a administrative assistant for a statewide organization whose representatives were sometimes called on to speak before local civic groups. After typing up a speech for one - this admin asked where his statistics came from. "Oh I just make them up - people don't question...."  he said adding he'd never been challenged. The lesson is when someone, even someone who should know, rattles off statistics:  ask about their source and its method.  People are free to say whatever they like - that does't make it true.

Thanks to Tom Flynn and to HAC for the opportunity to hear him speak.   Flynn is author of a number of books, among them a debunking of modern Christmas traditions called The Trouble with Christmas and two science fiction sagas: Nothing Sacred and Galatic Rapture. He is also editor of the New Encyclopedia of Unbelief.