words
Go and catch a falling star…
Got this in the mail from Poets.org this morning:
“Dear Friends,
We are less than $900 away from our year-end goal of raising $10,000 to ensure the strength of the Academy of American Poets’ programs in the year ahead. We need your help to support our work to offer poems and resources on Poets.org and through Poem-A-Day, to inspire new readers to come to poetry during National Poetry Month in April, and to provide new materials that enable educators to inspire their students to write poetry on our Online Poetry Classroom.
Please consider a tax-deductible contribution to the Academy of American Poets.
All of the resources we provide are made available for free. But of course they’re not actually without cost. Each year we rely on contributions from generous individuals like you to underwrite our work, enabling us to offer our programs to the widest possible public.
As we head toward a new year, we at the Academy aspire to the day that poets in the U.S. are as revered as they are in other countries, where they are celebrated in great halls and pubs alike. We believe poetry can matter to everyone, and that our lives are deeply enriched by the art form. In the words of Langston Hughes, please help us “hold fast to our dreams.”
Your tax-deductible contribution to the Academy of American Poets will enable us to continue our important work to promote poets and poetry in the year ahead. We’re resolved!
I thank you in advance for joining us, and in appreciation of donations of $50 or more, we will happily send you a copy of our Poem in Your Pocket anthology.
Yours,
Jennifer Benka
Executive Director, Academy of American Poets
I don’t know how many of you use Poets.org but they run all sorts of programs from the “poem-a-day” sent out in email (kinda my favorite) to providing support and exposure for poets. You can even adopt a poet. If you have a few bucks you can spare please consider sending a donation.
Thanks – Kit
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So shake the dust off of your wings and the sleep out of your eyes…
Yes, I am basically nocturnal now. Sigh.
Just think of the blog as Words Music Baseball…at Nite.
Or maybe as a late night radio show? The kind where the DJ would spin some obscure progresssive/psychedelic rock opus at 2 am and then go across the street to buy a bottle of Jack from the all-night liquor store during the 20-minute long epic guitar solo?
(assuming DJs even did that? Maybe they just dozed while the record played? Or read a book? Or maybe they did yoga?)
No epic guitar solos here, just Ryan Bingham playing a nice little cover of Townes Van Zandt’s To Live Is To Fly -
Kit’s Awesome Vid of the Day Night
Ryan Bingham – To Live Is To Fly
Break out the coffee folks, I’ll be here all night.
- Kit
(from the video notes – please note that the camera flipped the image – Ryan is not left-handed)
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Persecute, you defy, execute, crucify, crucify…
I’ll make this short since I have an awesome vid of the day to upload and you know…dishes to wash. It’s political so if that isn’t your thing you can skip to the video in the next post.
Dear National Organization for Marriage Hate Group:
Although in the past I have only been an occasional Starbucks customer, I have decided to frequent my local shop on a regular basis to help offset the loss of your 18,000 bigoted boycotters.
FYI – maybe if you all spent as much time on your own marriages as you do on trying to prevent others from marrying we might not be saddled with a 40-50% divorce rate in the US. I won’t even get into how your behavior on this isssue is so counter to true Christian ideals as to be unrecognizable as such. I guess the thrill of teaching your kids to hate is just too enticing to pass up.
Gee, aren’t you all so proud? Oh wait, isn’t excessive Pride the most serious of the…cough…right.
- Kit
** For those interested, visit SumofUs to sign a thank you card to Starbucks for standing up for gay rights. **
Ooh, yeah, kickstart my heart…
I am baking bread today. I was going to make garlic-parm but since I am out of cheese I went with garlic and herb. It goes pretty well with the beef and barley soup I’ll be starting in a little bit and should be extra good if it ever decides to rain today.
- avenging the evils of the world…with coffee.
Kahuna got a new recliner.
I know, I know. Just typing the sentence is painful. On a scale of “please burn it now” to “okay, I can almost ignore it“ the chair falls closer to the ignore side. To be fair it has been over a decade since Kahuna last had a recliner so I am not complaining.
Well, not much.
So he got a new recliner and I got this:
Because, you know, I needed another coffee cup. Really I did.
After my splurge I had a few bucks left and being so far behind in my music listening that I will likely never catch up, I decided to use my money to purchase media in a different way. I donated (and will be donating) to a few Kickstarter campaigns that have gone by on my Twitter feed.
Music – Cassie Taylor – Middle Class Rock Star – My name is Cassie Taylor and I’m a 25 year old singer/songwriter/foot stomping/blues women…Please help me release “Cassie Taylor and the Soul Cavalry’s” full length album so we can keep rocking out and sharing our music.
Books – Tales of the Emerald Serpent – Shared worlds anthology – This rich anthology links characters and tales in an interwoven mosaic that helps draw the reader on, and with authors like Lynn Flewelling, Harry Connolly, Juliet McKenna, Martha Wells, Robert Mancebo, and Julie Czerneda sharing characters with newcomer Michael Tousignant and iconic fantasy artist turned writer Todd Lockwood, the book plumbs the depths of dark city-born fantasy.
Film – Lost Brothers – a documentary by mythic films – LOST BROTHERS is a documentary about legendary photo journalist Tim Page and his relentless pursuit to find out what happened to his fellow journalists in Cambodia in the early 1970s.
The great thing about Kickstarter is most projects allow you to donate anywhere from a single dollar to whatever amount you want to give. Even if you only have a few bucks you can still contribute to helping a project along.
While it is not a Kickstarter project, I would also like to mention The Fender Music Foundation as another music program that you can support even if you have very little money to give. (I bought a song for .99)
Finally, if you are scraping the bottom of the barrel (or had to sell the barrel for gas money) as many are in this economy you can still support the bands, artists, writers, filmmakers, etc you enjoy by passing the links to their projects along to others. Whether it is a kickstarter to publish a book or a tweet to announce a live show anything you pass on gets seen by that many more eyes.
Okay, must go start the soup.
- Kit
The Week in Music…Blogs – Feb 12 to Feb 18, 2012
Rachel from Adobe and Teardrops reviewed the new Ani Defranco album, Which Side Are You On.
Michael Barwise interviewed 17 yr old singer/songwriter Nina Nesbitt on Michael’s Music Madness.
Damian interviewed Frank Turner on the Mostless Harmless podcast show:
Frank was kind enough to sit down with me and talk about his early music years and the roads that brought him to becoming a singer song writer. We talk about his upcoming plans for world domination and the daunting task of filling London’s Wembley Stadium…”
Casey Ragan over on American Blues News took on the monumental task of reviewing Omar and the Howlers Essential Collection.
Musician Peter Parcek profiles Hollywood Fats in Unsung Heroes of the Blues Guitar.
Sheryl Bryant at the Raleigh Music Industry Association gets her Piedmont blues on with an article and concert review of blues musician ‘Boo’ Hanks:
His brand of acoustic guitar playing, sometimes known as “frailing” is indicative of an older technique of guitar and banjo “pickin” whereby Boo’s thumb picks the bass sound while his forefinger picks out the melody on the treble strings. The unique and rhythmic sound creates the illusion that two guitars are being played when in reality it is just one lone acoustic guitar and his master at work…”
More Piedmont blues as Autopsy IV from ninebullets.net reviewed the new Charlie Parr album, Keep Your Hands on the Plow.
Walter Trout discussed his upcoming new release, Blues for the Modern Daze, in a youtube video.
As usual, only a fraction of the cool music blogs out there. If I missed you, send me an email or drop a comment below with the addy to your blog post and I’ll toss it up with the others. Have a great weekend!
- Kit
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Some of the Mondays that I’ve been through…
Bleh. Did the whole ‘go have your bloodwork done or we won’t insure you any more’ thing Kahuna’s work requires every year. Forgot to tell the lab tech I can’t do latex so I came home with a rash all over my incredibly sore arm.
I have scoured the Amazon site and can’t find my pre-order for Serpent Sea by Martha Wells anywhere. Sigh. I keep thinking I saw a tweet where someone had a few signed copies left so I may go check that out and pick one up from them.
According to Google, it would take 41 hours to drive to E3 from my house.
If I were Tony Stark I would invent a device so every time I walked through a door ‘Fire‘ by Viv and the Revival would play. It would be like having my own personal theme song. People would still be humming it after I left the building. Captain America would (in a long-suffering tone) tell me to keep it off the coms during battle and that no, I could not organize a cheerleading squad and band to play the song live every time I smacked Dr Doom or a Hydra agent with a repulsor blast. Sigh…Cap never lets me have any fun.
Okay, maybe I really need another cup of coffee.
- Kit
Tomorrow’s gonna be a new day…
So I took yesterday off (mostly) from the internet. I played Oblivion and napped with the baby and just kind of vegged the day away.
Martha Wells has the first chapter of her next book, The Serpent Sea, up on her blog. Pop over and read it for free. I have a review of her Cloud Roads that will be going up some time next week. Once I, you know, finish it.
I have a short article on Blacklight Retribution up over on GamingHUD. Mechs people. It has MECHS!
I don’t listen to much Gospel. Maybe a little by default from Mavis Staples but I don’t seek it out. So I was very surprised by how much I liked Charlie Spraggs.
Beautiful voice. Check out his Reverbnation page for information about him and his music.
- Kit
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War, children, it’s just a shot away…
Young Army nurse Mary Damico dreams the deaths of soldiers before they happen, but cannot save them. Only when she is recruited for a secret unit of other “esp talents”–one run by a rogue CIA psychiatrist who may be a “talent” himself–can she become the psychic commando she needs to be to stop the psychiatrist’s insanity and save those she loves.
While Dream Baby sits firmly in the speculative fiction genre, at its heart it is a story about war. For most people in the United States the reality of the Vietnam War was long ago replaced by the mythology. Vietnam is all gruff old men, cool tv shows and Oscar winning movies. It has been pulled apart, torn down, discussed and put back together with as much distance from the real events as possible.
Dream Baby eliminates that distance and drags the reader right into the middle of the conflict. Bruce McAllister did years of extensive research and 
interviewed hundreds of soldiers before he wrote the book. This research along with his talent for place writing combine to produce a vivid and powerful story that can often be overwhelming to read. Whether they are in the field hospital or walking down a jungle path, everywhere McAllister took the characters looked and felt like it existed. I had no trouble visualizing the characters in the jungle, on a boat or deep within a hidden cave. His images were so vivid I could not only see the jungle, I could almost feel the heat and smell the rain.
In fact, McAllister does such a good job building his world it was very difficult to distance myself from it. This war is violent, bloody and most of all unrelenting. I was with the characters in a nightmare and it often felt like I was taking the hits along with them. The worst part was I had to keep reading; once I got into the story I was hooked until the bitter end. It was worth every bruise because while Dream Baby was brutal it was also absolutely brilliant. When people say they ‘got lost in a book’ they are talking about stories like this one.
You can pick up a copy of Dream Baby on Amazon. There is a version available for Kindle and other reading devices and you can preview the first chapter online. You can also watch a trailer for the book on the Dream Baby webpage.
Dream Baby – Bruce McAllister – ISBN – 9781453880937
- Kit
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- Blurred…
February 12, 2013 | 4:06 pm
I have been trying to write the review for Blurred, by San Francisco singer/songwriter Alex Wise for a few months now but can’t seem to finish it. This is difficult for me to say but I get about halfway through the process and find myself so homesick I just can’t continue. The past few years have been full [...] - Arc & Stones…
February 11, 2013 | 4:53 am
Now that Scooter is back sleeping nights I proclaim this ’dig myself out from under the mountain of un-reviewed music‘ week. Kicking off the week o’reviewing is Arc & Stones, the debut EP from Brooklyn band Arc & Stones. The guys are Dan Pellarin (vocals), Ben Cramer (guitar), Joe Doino (drums) and Eddy Bayes (bass). I had [...] - Telegraph Taboo…
January 21, 2013 | 8:45 am
So, I was in the mood for some blues and whoosh – blues appeared. Other people get coupons, bills and news updates in the mail while I get blues music. Cool new blues music in the form of the debut release Telegraph Taboo from the Chicago-based band Nick and the Ovorols. This is not a pretty album. The vocals on a few tracks [...] -
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