Seymour & Nahikian

Chafin Seymour's "Zoology" in Brooklyn March 3

2012-01-26T08:42:00.000-08:00

The Seymour Dance Collective & the Ohio State University School of Dance

will present an excerpt of "Zoology"

Kumble Theater for the Performing Arts

One University Plaza

Brooklyn, NY 11201

Phone: (718) 488-1624

Link here for tickets to the "Zoology" performance or see more information at DanceWave.

See a preview !

Click for directions to the Kumble Theater. The theater is located on Flatbush Avenue between DeKalb & Willoughby Street in downtown Brooklyn.

We will pre-order 10 tickets. Contact us if you want us to save you one!

Gong Xi Fa Ca!

2012-01-24T08:56:00.000-08:00

This traditional Mandarin greeting means "wishing you prosperity." The SeyNah blog started in 2009 with the Year of the Mutt. So it is appropriate for us to welcome 2012 - the Year of the Dragon.

Image credit: Caseman via Wikemedia Commons

Prosperity is an illusive concept. It can be a luxury of time, money, friends. For me, a luxury if following your passion. So my wish for all in 2012 is Follow Your Passion! -posted by Marie

Zoology-New Dance from Chafin Seymour

2012-01-18T15:10:00.000-08:00

It is a rare moment, but if you move quickly you can see Chafin's latest work on-line. http://vimeo.com/34799821

Zoology is the product of a yearlong immersion and collaboration between the cast and choreographer. Inspired by the music of Animal Collective, the piece is meant to reflect the perspective of a generation of young people with an overwhelmingly positive outlook in an otherwise challenging world. Zoology takes a look at us, not necessarily as animals, but recognizing that our social developments and societal habits are not all that different.

An excerpt will be performed at the Kid's Cafe Festival in Brooklyn on March 3, 2012

CREDITS

Choreography: Chafin Seymour

Dancers: Michael Abbatiello, A.J. Blankenship, Cornelius Hubbard, Alyssa LeRose, Devon Jones Rebecca Quintrell, Cheryl Rosario, Alexandra Runyon, Kathryn Sauma.

Music: Animal Collective compiled and edited by Chafin Seymour

Videography: Dante Brown and Stephanie Danyi
Video Editing: Michael Abbatiello

(Chafin does not usually post his work on-line. This is a special opportunity because this piece has been entered into the Ohio Dance Festival.

Gene Seymour's Top Ten Jazz Discs for 2011

2011-12-01T18:53:00.000-08:00

Before we get to this year’s Top Ten, some random thoughts: 2011 has been such a mean, tumultuous, uprooting year for me that it was a challenge to keep track of the latest recordings. With the year almost over, I’m factory-sealed certain that I’ve left several worthy candidates behind. See them? They’re glaring at me from behind, standing with hands on hips or waving at my dust trail as if to say, “What?”
Then again, I find myself wondering what the hell they’re doing there. Seems to me I heard at some point this fall that Termination Day for CDs is approaching even faster than one had been led to believe. If we want the latest Keith Jarrett or Aaron Neville, we need only reach into a cloud -- a.k.a. THE Cloud -- and snatch whatever track we want. I still can’t believe that’s all we’ll eventually be left with. But it’s what all the salespeople insist is happening and they’ve never lied to us before. Ever.
And yet, you’re all here, aren’t you? Even though I haven’t yet learned how to download album covers or to make the necessary links to specific tracks. Someday, maybe even next year, that’ll be in place. For now, some tough choices from a tough year…

1.) Sonny Rollins, “Road Shows Vol. 2” (Doxy) – The Greatest Live Act in Jazz, headlined by the Greatest Living Improviser, keeps rolling along, its every flourish and delicacy captured for what promises to be an epochal series of recordings from past and (one hopes) future concerts. This second installment’s tracks are just a year old, but you understand why they needed to be out there in a hurry. They celebrate the start of the Colossus’ ninth decade as observed in Japan and, most notably, at last September’s “Sonny Rollins @80” concert @ New York’s Beacon Theater. On that evening, the celebrant, leonine and fit, sounded frisky and responsive to the electricity of the moment, his furry tone combed to a bristly sheen. He brought out guitarist Jim Hall, his comparably indefatigable 1960s playmate (to dive into “In a Sentimental Mood,” of course) as well as trumpeter Roy Hargrove who, as with the leader, always brings his A-game in front of onlookers. This disc is the next best thing to having been there. Yet it still makes you wish you’d been able to share the audience’s excitement at seeing Ornette Coleman wander on-stage for a characteristically insurgent solo on “Sonnymoon for Two” wherein he lures the Colossus “outside” the regular changes for some buoyant give-and-take. If Rollins is now the de-facto king of whatever it is we mean when we talk about jazz, then this edition of “Road Shows” shows him to be a wise, benevolent ruler whose domain, however small it may seem to outsiders, feels accessible enough to meet your most urgent needs and expansive enough to contain multitudes.

2.) Ambrose Akinmusire, “When the Heart Emerges Glistening” (Blue Note) – Only four years removed from winning the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition, this 29-year-old trumpeter has delivered on his grand promise with an album of startling depth and range. Once you get past the challenges of pronouncing his intimidating surname (ah-kin-MOO-sir-ee) and of getting past the album’s knotty title, you’re free to acclimate with his big, brilliant sound or unravel the intricacies of his soloing – which, while layered with the trills, glissandos and arpeggios emblematic of the jazz trumpet’s heritage, share the probing detail and varied attack of sax icon Joe Henderson and of pianist (and album co-producer) Jason Moran. For all his agility and command, Akinmusire leans heavily on his band-mates (tenor saxophonist Walter Smith III, pianist Gerald Clayton, bassist Harish Raghavan and drummer Justin Brown); all of whom are worthy collaborators, collectively and individually. Word is out that these guys are all part of a big band that Akinmusire is leading. Can’t wait to hear what that’s like.

3.) Noah Preminger, “Before the Rain” (Palmetto) – At age 24, Preminger, a front-rank tenor saxophonist on just his second album as a leader, plays ballads as if he were a seventy-something road-warrior. He already knows, on instinct, how to approach a melody from behind; where to hang the drapery on a chord change and when to gently pull it away. And he doesn’t seem in a hurry to disclose everything he knows, not even on his original compositions (the title track, “Abreaction,” “Jamie”) or on Ornette Coleman’s “Toy Dance.” As with Akinmusire, Preminger is blessed with a eerily compatible rhythm section of bassist John Herbert, drummer Matt Wilson and pianist Frank Kimbrough, who contributes a couple of his prodigious compositions (“Quickening,” “November”) to the cause. By the time this group gets to massage a sturdy war horse such as “Until the Real Thing Comes Along,” you’re utterly convinced that Preminger is the real thing – and that he’s coming along quite nicely.

4.) Allen Lowe, “Blues and the Empirical Truth” (Music & Arts) – Is it music or is it scholarship? Or musical scholarship? Is it criticism of the blues or just critical of them (or at least of what people say about them)? These and dozens of other questions aroused by “Blues and the Empirical Truth” are far more significant than any answers I or anyone else pretending to know more about music than Allen Lowe can cobble together. Lowe is a gnomic, compulsively idiosyncratic polymath who lives in Maine, plays a red-hot saxophone and has for years put together epic inquiries into the history and nature of American music and how it shapes – or doesn’t – the national character. On this three-disc set, recorded over a two-year period, Lowe arranges, composes and plays “inside” and “outside” jazz as well as such makeshift forms as neo-gutbucket-progressive-punk (at least that’s what I’m calling it for the moment.) He is backed by a typically eclectic guest list that includes guitarist Marc Ribot, pianist Matthew Shipp, trombonist Roswell Rudd and Lowe’s fellow musicologist Lewis Porter, contributing here and there on keyboards. Along the way, tribute is made to civil rights activists Pauli Murray and Ella Mae Wiggins, forgotten or obscure musicians such as saxophonist Dave Schildkraft and pianist Blind Tom Bethune and…Doris Day, who should have been invited to Portland to jam with this crowd; except you have to wonder what she would have made of a song list with such titles as “Speckled Shaw Crippled Pete Boogie,” “Blues in Transfiguration,” “Elvis Died With His Sins Intact,” “In a Harlem Ashram” and “(Bull Connor Sees) Darkies on the Delta.” Guess it doesn’t matter as long as no animals were harmed in the process.

5.) Muhal Richard Abrams, “SoundDance” (Pi) – Just so you know, Sonny Rollins isn’t the only octogenarian legend who’s still getting the job done. Abrams, the peerless pianist-composer who co-founded the legendary Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) nearly 50 years ago, marked his own ninth decade by engaging in colloquies of such breadth and magnitude that they each needed their own disc. One of these is a dialogue with tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson that took place in October, 2009, a year before the latter’s death, though it’s a strain to detect signs of sagging energy in his playing. Both Abrams and Anderson seem energized by the task of extending or enhancing each other’s thoughts and even listeners resistant to free-form improvisation won’t miss a beat (so to speak). A year later, Abrams engaged in a sonic pas de deux with fellow innovator, author and AACM veteran George Lewis, who brought both his trombone and his laptop to the party. These two masters of orchestration create intricate, spiraling patterns that are at once imposing and puckish. You can wander in and out of their gallery of sound and find something strange, shiny and, in a peculiar way, companionable.

6.) Craig Taborn, “Avenging Angel” (EMI) – A title of one track could easily apply to most of the others: “A Difficult Thing Said Simply.” Taborn, who owns one of the most eclectic curriculum vitae in contemporary music (Tim Berne AND James Carter?), approaches the art of solo jazz piano as if he were translating complex code from a distant star. Often, he binds the information in tightly-wound chords struck down as if on anvils to forge unusual shapes. At other times (the aptly-named “Glossolalia”), he lets things twirl in the air like dazed, tiny phantasms squeezed out of an overcrowded basement. As with the early work of Keith Jarrett, Taborn is prone to lean to too hard on a riff, but (again, as with Jarrett) the digging can occasionally lead to an illuminated strike. In what’s been a vintage year for solo jazz piano discs (see the honorable-mention list below), this stood out for one simple reason: It sounded the most different from what its genre had yielded before.

7.) Youn Sun Nah, “Same Girl” (ACT) – Didn’t know a thing about her when this disc slipped into in my mailbox earlier in the year. After one track, I found myself asking, “Where has she been all my life?” (In Europe, apparently, where this album was first released last winter.) She is steeped in the French chanson tradition, but as with the most interesting singers beyond the boomer generation – Is she really 42? – she’s willing to try anything from Broadway (“My Favorite Things”) to Brazil (“Song of No Regrets”), from the folk music of her native Korea (“Kangwondo Aririang”) to the mellow sounds of Metallica (“Enter Sandman”). And she can scat real good, too, as proven on the quiet-fire “Breakfast in Baghdad.” The minimalist backing she gets from guitarist Ulf Wakenius, bassist-cellist Lars Danielson and percussionist Xavier Desandre lets her rangy, limber voice roam, run and leap about at will, even when the material is dipped in deep blue. Nothing seems to scare or stop her. Good as this disc is, it makes you wish she’d dare even more.

8.) Bill Frisell, “Sign of Life” (Savoy) – At its most inquisitive and unfettered, Bill Frisell’s music can be as evocative of the “the old, weird America” as Bob Dylan’s 1967 basement tapes. (Come and get me, Greil Marcus!) He has a boho-folk artist’s affinity for both the pastoral and the abstract. Beneath even his most glowing, spacious-skies landscapes, there are flickering shadows and misshapen objects that don’t distort the view, but are blended to make a slightly cockeyed, but still arresting picture, “Sign of Life,” performed by his 858 Quartet of violinist Jenny Schienman, violist Eyvind Kang and cellist Hank Roberts, is his best-realized sound painting since 2001’s “Blues Dream,” whose noir-ish cloaking devices I still appreciate, even if others didn’t. This is a sunnier compound of motifs and riffs that give off an aura of mystery, even danger – especially when the irrepressible Scheinman starts throwing paraphrases and adornments like left jabs. It’s clearer than ever that with both this disc and the John Lennon tribute released in the same year, Frisell can’t be stopped – or even contained. Only sampled – and what would NPR do for filler between news stories if his music weren’t around?

9.) Miguel Zenon, “Alma Adento: The Puerto Rican Songbook” (Marsalis Music) – Not only was this the year’s best Latin jazz album, it was also among the more inspired examples of that overpopulated subgenre, the tribute album. Zenon’s homage isn’t to a single artist or composer, but to the men and women who wrote the classic pop tunes of his native land. He and arranger Guillermo Klein practically reinvent crooner Bobby Capo’s “Incomprendido” as a slow-drying lament. Conversely, Rafael Hernandez’s “Silencio,” revived by the “Buena Vista Social Club” some years back, is given a near-chimerical, tempo-shifting transformation. The centerpiece, literally and figuratively, comprises two pieces by Sylvia Rexach: the title track and “Olas y Areenas,” both of which are treated by Zenon and Klein with passionate intensity and solicitous intelligence. Zenon may sometimes risk going overboard with his ambition and with his playing, but that’s part of the attraction. And if his alto-sax soars like a rocket plane, he’s becoming more adroit at gliding to pinpoint landings.

10.) Evan Christopher, “Remembering Song” (Arbors) – If you paid close attention to “Treme” this year…no, wait. I have to digress just a little here. I’ve been hearing fans of “The Wire” complain that they find “Treme” too slow, too dense and not as – what? – urgently engrossing as its predecessor. I am compelled to remind these folks that it took at least three seasons for “The Wire” to find a following. And that only when it was nearly over did people begin thinking of it as a “classic.” So though it’s no longer fashionable in pop-culture circles to counsel patience, call me unfashionable. Watch and wait…Anyway, if you did pay close attention to “Treme,” you probably saw Christopher jamming with Tom McDermott and the luminous Lucia Micarelli on Scott Joplin’s “Heliotrope Bouquet.” He has been one of Crescent City’s most lyrical and stalwart clarinetists and this love letter to his adopted hometown is both a wistful lament for the unshakable legacy of Katrina and a bittersweet celebration of the spirit that refuses to wither or retreat from that legacy. His original compositions – e.g., “The River by the Road”, “You Gotta Treat It Gentle” – show that he’s not trying to reinvent tradition, but fulfill its demands. Sometimes, you don’t need to listen to something that changes the world. Easing its pain is enough. And for me, this year especially, it was more than enough.

HONORABLE MENTION:
1.) Gonzalo Rubalcaba, “Fe Faith” (5Passion)
2.) Matthew Shipp Trip, “The Art of the Improviser” (Thirsty Ear)
3.) Larry Goldings, “In My Room” (BFM)
4.) Charles Lloyd & Maria Farantouri, “Athens Concert” (EMI)
5.) Terrell Stafford, “This Side of Strayhorn (MaxJazz)
BEST NEW ARTIST
Chris Dingman, “Waking Dreams” (Between Worlds Music)
BEST VOCAL
Youn Sun Nah, “Same Girl” (see above)
BEST LATIN ALBUIM
Zenon, “Alma Adento: The Puerto Rican Songbook” (see above)
BEST REISSUE
Julius Hemphill, “Dogon A.D.” (Arista/Freedom) HONORABLE MENTION: Bill Dixon Orchestra, “Intents and Purposes” (RCA/Dynagroove)

PREMIERE of SEYMOUR DANCE COLLECTIVE

2011-10-25T11:20:00.000-07:00

An evening with the Seymour Dance Collective

Northland Performing Arts Center
4411 Tamarack Blvd (near Morse and Karl Rd)Columbus, OH

Seymour Dance Collective presents Physical Graffiti a night of eclectic and exciting new choreography.

The Collective involves interchangeable roles between performers and choreographers who are utterly committed to sharing their personal perspective and collective voice through movement.

Physical Graffiti is a night of “tags” or glimpses into the lives and work of these combined artists. Featuring music ranging from dub-step to Animal Collective to original compositions.

Physical Graffiti promises a night of performances with a little something for everyone.

Tickets: $10 at the door

There will be a reception/dance party following Friday's show.

For more information message me or email: seymourdancecollective@gmail.com.

Hope to see you there!

new dance works with choreography by

Mike Abbatiello

Quentin Burley

Rebecca Quintrell

Alexandra Runyon

Chafin Seymour

Funding provided by the Ohio State Univeristy College of Arts & Sciences and Denman Undergraduate Research fund. Additional support provided by the Ohio State University Department of Dance.

Sunrise Prospect Park January 7 2011

2011-01-11T14:02:00.001-08:00

This is what makes walking Bliss worth it!

"Slick Venus" New Choreography by Chafin Seymour - Brooklyn Performance - Feb 5

2011-01-08T15:38:00.000-08:00

See “Slick Venus” – a new dance choreographed by Chafin Seymour
has been selected by Ohio State University School of Dance to be performed at the DANCEWAVE'S “Dance to College” Festival

Saturday, February 5, 2011 – 3pm
Kumble Theatre – Long Island University –
Brooklyn, NY/ University Place (@ Flatbush Avenue & Willoughby Street),

Tickets, $20 from http://www.kumbletheatre.org/ or
$15 group ticket if you reserve with Gene Seymour at seynah@aol.com.

BROOKLYN HOLIDAY GREETINGS!

2010-12-12T11:06:00.001-08:00

And then he said. . .
1. Gene & Chafin are on Facebook; Marie is on the bus.
2. They come & go all the time. I can't remember which of my people are coming home.
3. Do you think Obama will ever have a public employment job program.
4. Do I look like I have matches?
5. What do you mean you forgot to bring treats with you today?

Happy Holidays from All of Us in

Brooklyn, Washinton, DC & Ohio!

Gene Seymour Interviews Dave Brubeck

2010-12-11T11:17:00.000-08:00

Gene Seymour interviewed Dave Brubeck, who turned 90 years old. The interview was published December 5, 2010 in the LA Times
Photo by Carolyn Cole, LA Times

Gene Seymour's Top 10 Jazz Discs for 2010

2010-12-11T11:08:00.000-08:00

1.) Regina Carter, “Reverse Thread” (E1) – For years, I’ve been waiting for the best jazz violinist of her generation to make an album as great as she is. Not that she hasn’t been placed in contexts that complement her range and virtuosity before now, but her previous discs (not counting those where she’s been an often-galvanizing guest star) have in varied ways fallen short of conveying the flamboyant charge of her live performances. This assortment of African-inspired jewels, finally, delivers the goods – and then some. The blend of instrumentalists is zesty – two accordions (Will Holshouser, Gary Versace), two basses (Mamadou Ba, Chris Lightcap), guitar (Adam Rogers) and percussion (Alvester Garnett). Add to this mix Yacouba Sissoko on the kora, a 12-string West African harp used by griots, and you have a disc that is, from start to finish, the most thrilling and gorgeous dance music imaginable from an artist steeped in jazz, but now even more “beyond category” than she was before.
2.) Jason Moran, “Ten” (Blue Note) – The MacArthur “genius grant” he received this year only validates a ticket he’s been carrying around for most of this new century, at least as far as serious jazz heads are concerned. Both the foundation’s gift and this disc combine to provide a fitting capstone to Moran’s decade of habitual brilliance. As with all his best recordings, Moran plays here as if he embodied the whole 20th century of jazz piano from old-time striding to post-bop romanticism to polyrhythmic R&B/hip-hop extensions. (Yeah I know, but if you’re so smart, you come up with a better description of “Gangsterism Over 10 Years.”) “Ten” also firmly establishes his trio, with bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Watts, as one of those all-time, all-world combos whose members seem to anticipate each other’s thoughts and intentions in the quicksilver manner of an elite basketball team overpowering hapless opponents on its home court.
3.) Geri Allen, “Flying Toward the Sound” (Motema) – Sooner or later, someone is going to have to declare Professor Allen a national treasure, which is among the precious few honors she hasn’t collected in a lifetime of laudable accomplishments. This “Solo Piano Excursion Inspired by Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner and Herbie Hancock” (her words) is by far her most breathtaking dare yet; a suite of nine pieces whose deliberately crafted format frees her to take off on stunning harmonic combinations, some lyrical and ruminative, others surging off the keyboard with speed, power and poise. As a storyteller trafficking in mystical and spiritual themes, she can caress and upend, often in the same narrative passage. You hear not only the lessons she’s absorbed from the three influences cited above, but also those she learned from Mary Lou Williams, Bud Powell, Betty Carter, Ornette Coleman and Charlie Haden. I’d be willing to label this her masterpiece if I wasn’t sure she’s capable of even greater astonishments to come.
4.) Henry Threadgill Zooid, “This Brings Us To: Volume II” (PI) –As with Threadgill’s peers who cultivated their artistry under the aegis of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM), it is best to consider his music analogous to scientific or spiritual inquiry. Putting it another way, whenever Threadgill hears something that even vaguely offers possibilities if it’s blended with something unfamiliar and/or intriguing, he follows his impulse and doesn’t worry too much about what others think. A long time ago, this kind of thinking was labeled “avant-garde” and Zooid, a quintet which meshes his flute and alto sax with Liberty Elfman’s guitar, Jose Davila’s trombone and tuba, Stomu Takeishi’s bass and Elliot Kavee’s drums, offers wary and credulous listeners alike (relatively) easy access to what remains both unsettlingly bold and oddly familiar about such experimentation. Take hold of whatever instrument, rhythmic pattern or riff you want for ballast and you may end up captivated by what Threadgill and his gang are up to. Not everyone wants to hang around these neighborhoods, but there are unexpected rewards for those who do.
5.) Ted Nash & Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, “Portrait in Seven Shades” (J@LC) – Nash, a quality mensch as a reed player and composer, has been one of the glittering ornaments of Wynton Marsalis’ uptown confab for a decade. The eponymous suite, commissioned by Marsalis, written by Nash and premiered three years ago, uses seven great artists as inspirations for some colorful sonic painting on a big-band canvas. “Dali,” for instance, is propelled by an inexorably eccentric 13/8 tempo upon which solos by Nash and trumpeter Marcus Printup distend themselves like timepieces in “The Persistence of Memory.” By contrast, “Chagall” brings in Natalie Bonin’s violin and Bill Schimmel’s accordion to help evoke the painter’s winsome, carnival-esque theatricality. Perhaps appropriately, it’s “Picasso” that dominates the whole enterprise with motifs that unfurl like giant flags and fire-breathing solos by trombonist Vincent Gardner and Marsalis (who, as always, sounds serenely locked in his comfort zone as a role player).
6.) Fred Hersch Trio, “Whirl” (Palmetto) – Hersch has pulled himself through physical travail to play with as much craft, energy and passion as he ever did. What makes this characteristically fine album especially gratifying is the showcase it offers for Hersch as composer. He wrote six of the album’s ten selections and each deserves consideration for anybody’s regular repertoire, especially the enchanting title track, the irresistibly hooky “Skipping” and two Brazilian-inspired pieces, “Mandevilla” and “Sad Poet,” the latter dedicated to Antonio Carlos Jobim’s memory. “Snow is Falling…” would be a fine addition to someone’s holiday anthology while “Still Here,” though written in tribute to Wayne Shorter, could just as easily apply to this trio’s imperturbable, seemingly indefatigable leader.
7.) Cassandra Wilson, “Silver Pony” (Blue Note) – It’s been only three years since Wilson’s previous new release, yet it somehow seems a lot longer. Perhaps it’s because so much has happened with her in the intervening years, notably her resettlement in her native Deep South, spending part of the time caring for her ailing mother in Jackson, Mississippi and the rest of it making a new home for herself in N’awlins. What she brings back from that journey is a kind of scrapbook; some live sets, some studio tracks, some original compositions (“Beneath a Silver Moon”), standards (“Lover Come Back To Me”), delta blues (“Saddle Up My Pony”), retro-pop (“If It’s Magic”) and a collaboration with John Legend (“Watch the Sunrise”). In short, she’s throwing everything at you that sums up where she’s been and who she’s become and, even with the disc’s occasional rough spots, you can’t help sensing that she revels in being in a good place now, in more ways than one. And she makes you share her exuberance in ways she never has before on – so to speak – record.
8.) Anat Fort Trio, “And If” (ECM) – The burgundy glow of a winter sunset pervades one’s imagination throughout most of this disc, though “And If” is, in no way, to be mistaken for one of those New Age-y room-fresheners-for-the-ear. Fort’s thematically inventive approach to the piano is aggressive enough to leap off the walls without pushing too far ahead of her trio mates, bassist Gary Wang and drummer Roland Schneider, who respond with some delicate, ingenious probing of their own. Fort’s spare attack and richly layered harmonies conceal a penchant for subtle traps. Just when she’s got you enraptured with her spacious-skies homage to her home state, “Minnesota,” she lands a wicked combination on your senses with “Nu,” a kind of extraterrestrial beat-box exercise that gives the whole trio room to frolic. This seems sufficient reason to keep your eyes on Fort – or, at least, to never turn your back on her
9.) Charles Lloyd Quartet, “Mirror” (ECM) – It’s by now a conditioned reflex to mention Lloyd in the same breath as John Coltrane But the deeper Lloyd gets into the great late-autumnal phase of his career, one is increasingly tempted to find similarities with the most conspicuous of Trane’s employers, Miles Davis. This resemblance is driven home with the opener, “I Fall in Love Too Easily,” which remained a constant in the Miles-ian repertoire throughout Davis’ stylistic transitions. But the plaintive beauty of Lloyd’s tone belongs to him alone, especially on ballads, where Lloyd’s Coltrane-esque thematic variations are offset by the almost offhand grace of their resolutions. His “singing” through his sax is especially pronounced – and effective – when he lets the melody do most of the heavy-lifting, as in “La Llorona” or Brian Wilson’s “Caroline, No.” Once again, he’s served well by his band-mates, especially his drummer Eric Harland and the aforementioned genius on the piano, Jason Moran.
10.) Anat Cohen, “Clarinetwork: Live at the VillageVangyard” (Anzic) – It’s impossible to record a bad album in the Basement Shrine on Seventh Avenue., which on the night of Benny Goodman’s 100th birthday (June 5 of last year), showed typically astute judgment in hosting one of the leading avatars of the jazz clarinet’s late 20th century resurgence. Backed by an elite rhythm section of pianist Benny Green, bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash, Cohen paid the best possible 21st century tribute to Goodman by plucking items from the Swing King’s song book (“After You’ve Gone,” “Body and Soul”, “Lullaby of the Leaves”) and deftly weaving everything she knows about modern and post-modern jazz into the tunes without doing violence to the essential charm of Goodman’s original interpretations. Such solicitous tugging and pulling of classic material is what jazz repertory, at its best, is supposed to do. It’s also supposed to make musicians such as Cohen more famous than they are now. Ah, well, dig we must, as the saying goeth…

HONORABLE MENTION
The Jazz Passengers, “Reunited” (Justin Time)
Kenny Werner, “No Beginning, No End” (Half Note)
Frank Kimbrough, “Rumors” (Palmetto)
Brad Mehldau, “Highway Rider” (Nonesuch)
Keith Jarrett, Charlie Haden, “Jasmine” (ECM)
Bill Charlap, Renee Rosnes, “Double Portrait” (Blue Note)

BEST LATIN ALBUM
Chucho Valdes, “Chucho’s Steps” (4Q)
Honorable Mention: Conrad Herwig, “The Latin Side of Herbie Hancock” (Half Note)

BEST REISSUE
“The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air” (Mosaic)
BEST VOCAL
Wilson, “Silver Pony” (SEE ABOVE)
Honorable Mention: Hilary Kole, “You Are There” (Justin Time)

BEST BIG-BAND ALBUM
“Portrait in Seven Shades” (SEE ABOVE)

WHICH U.S. PRESIDENT SAID THIS?

2010-07-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

Apropos the recent leakages about Our War in Afghanistan, it may be time once again to test everyone on the following:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. Is there no other way the world may live?”

a.) Jimmy Carter
b.) Richard M. Nixon
c.) Dwight D. Eisenhower
d.) John F. Kennedy
e.) Gerald R. Ford
f.) None of the above

email the answer to seynah@aol.com

American Dance Festival-Jerome Robbins West Side Story

2010-07-07T06:27:00.000-07:00

July 19-21, Chafin Seymour, will perform on the ADF main stage (Reynolds Theatre @ Duke University). Chafin is part of the company presenting the Jerome Robbins choreography of West Side Story. You can buy tickets online and learn more at http://www.americandancefestival.org/performances/2010/ADFatDuke/PastForward.html

Memory Snapshot: Gene's Lunch With Lena

2010-07-05T14:03:00.000-07:00

Appreciation: The Ferociousness of Lena Horne
By Amy Alexander
Published: May 11, 2010
http://www.thewrap.com/deal-central/article/appreciation-ferociousness-lena-horne-17218

Gene Seymour, former film critic at Newsday and an expert on jazz, also found Horne to be few clicks more complex than most of her press clippings -- 70 years’ worth -- indicated. I remembered reading something he’d written about one of Horne’s last public performances, in the early 1990s.

So yesterday, I hit Seymour up on Facebook. He wrote back right away, saying he’d first met with Lena Horne in ‘94, at a restaurant in New York. They sat for 90 minutes and had a wide-ranging conversation-slash-interview. I never met Lena Horne, but Gene Seymour did. I trust his eyes, ears, heart, and his journalism. He will have the last word in this space on Lena Horne, a great performer:

Sitting elbow-to-elbow with a 20th-century myth is intimidating enough to keep you incoherent for weeks afterwards. But five, 10 (at most) minutes into the conversation, she had so completely put me at ease that I felt I was talking not with someone who fueled the steamiest fantasies of several generation of African-American males (including mine), but with one of my brighter, sassier great-aunts.

Today's New York Times obit was about as comprehensive & as unsparing against the people high & low who done her wrong, while remaining attentive to the glories of her youth and to her principled political stances. And yet ... and yet ... there was something missing from the piece, which managed to barely evoke the magic her image could evoke; the terror & wonder of her breakthrough appearance in "Cabin in the Sky," where she & Miss Ethel Waters fought to a fare-thee-well on and off-screen; how she was able, even through the worse times, to cultivate her innate talent for dramatic presentation and siphon a galvanizing array of emotions through her singing; most especially, her brittle, yet playful wit, which I always believed was the most undervalued weapon in her musical quiver.

Overall this masterly juggling of passion & intelligence made her one-woman Broadway shows so theatrically effective and biographically illuminating.

Savion Channels His Inner Miles (and Trane)

2010-07-05T14:00:00.000-07:00

“SoLE PoWER”

To read Alastair Macaulay’s June 23 New York Times review of Savion Glover’s latest extensions of the tap-dance genre, one would have thought Glover mugged him in a dark alley. See for yourself if it doesn’t read, even a little, like an old-fashioned grievance against modernity (at best): (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/dance/23glover.html?scp=2&sq=Savion%20Glover&st=cse)

Glover, in turn, was the one who felt mugged by Macaulay’s review, having opened that night’s performance at the Joyce Theater by invoking Macaulay’s name with saturnine disdain. (Few in the audience seemed to acknowledge his barbs. Don’t people read reviews anymore? Oh, right. They don’t read newspapers either.) He did this, as with everything else in the show’s lengthy first half, with his back to the audience. If this stance was reminiscent of Miles Davis, then the fusillades of syncopated footwork resounding throughout the theater brought to mind the “sheets of sound” attack of Davis’ greatest band mate John Coltrane.
It was enough to make you wonder whether a jazz critic would have been a better choice to review “SoLE PoWER.” Macaulay’s comparisons of Glover’s long-form cadenza to woodpeckers, electric drills and dental equipment were themselves reminiscent of the peevish reactions hurled more than a century ago against modernity in the arts. Glover’s “make it new” impulse to stretch and, if possible, pierce the parameters of tap dance doesn’t seem all that unreasonable; if anything, his sense of adventure seems almost archaic in what we’re supposed to believe is a totally post-modern cultural universe.
This isn’t to say that everything worked. There were times during the first half, (especially when Glover had all the stage lights dimmed except for the starry-sky backdrop), when his efforts to answer his riffing query, “What does sound look like?,” lost their bearings and scattered the energies he was trying to coalesce. But based on this one night’s performance, I’m guessing that “SoLe PoWER” intends to be elastic enough to accommodate whatever dare Glover wishes to take. “We play what the day demands,” Miles Davis was fond of saying and Glover”s program asks (warns?) its audience to make its own adjustments to the imperatives of the moment. As with the modernist innovators of the past, Glover is acknowledging risk and accepting whatever consequences or rewards may come from defying conventions – even those that made him a star. You may not want to go with him. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not onto something.

Gene Seymour

TRIBECA 2010-WEEK ONE GAME PLAN

2010-04-27T14:59:00.001-07:00

Gene Seymour's Tribeca Film Festival Notebook

By Gene Seymour

The party line on this year’s Tribeca Film Festival has thus far been the same as it’s been every year: The documentaries own most of the buzz and carry all of the weight while the features are…well, pick any guttural sound that adequately expresses your own ambivalence. This has always seemed to me a kind of lazy-hazy shorthand on the part of movie pundits. Over the last decade, it’s struck me that not all Tribeca docs have been five-star hotels and not all of its features have been flea-ridden SROs. And even if the festival’s percentages favor what we now call “nonfiction film” over what we now call “narrative film,” you have to concede that those skewed percentages apply to American movies in general. Good, original stories either are unsubstantiated rumors or exist beyond the reach of most writers and directors at every strata of the movie marketplace – which, by the way, seems to care less than a monkey dropping for anything that isn’t pre-tested, i.e. any comic book franchise you can name.

So, as always, I wonder as I wander from venue to venue; all of which, by the way, seem to be getting further away from the eponymous neighborhood every year. You have your Tribeca game plan. I have mine. These are a few of things I’ve seen – and, mostly, liked:

The Two Escobars -- Compared with all the chatter about this year’s edition of Tribeca being the “Alex Gibney Festival” because of all the stuff he’s showing this year (“My Trip to al-Qaeda,” In-progress print of “Elliot Spitzer,” part of “Freakonomics”) and the stuff he’s shown here before (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” “Taxi to the Dark Side”), hardly anyone has mentioned the return of Jeff and Michael Zimbalist, whose award-winning “Favela Rising” from five years ago was one of the festival’s biggest coups. They return with yet another one of their own trips to the dark side: The sad tale of how soccer in Colombia became one of the many casualties of that country’s extravagantly violent and immensely stupid drug war.
The title refers to two legendary, unrelated figures of the country’s late-20th-century folklore: Pablo Escobar, CEO of Medelin’s most notorious drug cartel and Andres Escobar, charismatic heart-and-soul of the Colombian national soccer team. Sifting through miles of archival footage and extracting remarkable interviews with everyone from Andres’ sister and fiancée to Pablo’s incarcerated henchmen, the Zimbalist brothers orchestrate a dual portrait that connects the rise of Pablo’s fortunes with that of the sport itself. Because of Pablo’s geek-like infatuation with soccer, much of his blood money (and you’d swear you see every drop of that blood spilled throughout the movie) went into soccer. Images of dead people in the streets are juxtaposed with those of the national team in its full, lightning-strike glory – and you’re a little startled by how the latter images, almost but not quite overcome the other.
After Pablo’s untimely, inevitable death, gloom and tension permeate the once-mighty national team. Their nerves are so shot by the 1994 World Cup that they lose in the first round (to the U.S. team, no less) on a goal scored by Andres himself in his own net. Two weeks later, he was gunned down in Medelin, allegedly by vengeful drug lords who lost gambling money because of the team’s collapse.
At times, you wish the Zimbalists would have taken their feet of the gas and refrained from piling on as much detail into each development as it can bear. It mucks up their momentum, which otherwise carries the movie with an almost rock-arena fervor. That propulsive, riveting style is reason enough to check this thing out when it surfaces on ESPN sometime later this spring.

Legacy – Thomas Ikimi, a writer-director educated in Nigeria, England and Columbia University, assembled this deep, dark puzzle thriller about a former “black ops” soldier (Idris Elba), who’s holed up in a Brooklyn flophouse sorting through the shattered remains of his psyche. He was captured and tortured for the unit’s slaughter of an arms dealer’s family. It’s not entirely clear how he made it back to the world, but now that he’s there, he intends to take some revenge of his own against his older brother (Eamonn Walker), a right-wing senator who’s campaigning for president on a radical anti-terror platform.
Ikimi shows considerable talent for wooly atmosphere, serrated dialogue and calculated enigmas. Still, “Legacy” mostly comes across as a referendum for Elba’s ability to carry a movie on his own. Anyone (anyone?) who saw the just-released “The Losers” (anyone?) or has followed Elba’s career since his breakout performance in “The Wire” knows that he’s got the brooding magnetism to carry any action movie he gets. “Legacy,” though not quite big enough to raise his status, gives him plenty of room to twitch, roar, smolder and kick ass. He’s got my vote for a star vehicle. Only thing is: I’m not sure commercial American movies as they exist now are going to be able to do much better than this for Elba. And if they can’t do it for him, they’re certainly not going to do it for any other emerging black actor with his range and mobility. I hope I’m wrong – but I doubt it.

Please Give – Nicole Holofcener (“Walking and Talking,” “Lovely and Amazing,” “Friends with Money”) brings forth yet another of her droll, understated comedies-of-(ill) manners with her trademark themes of (quoting the program notes here) “mid-life crises, insecurity, materialism, accumulation of wealth and the liberal guilt and moral paralysis that accompany them.” After two movies set in L.A., she’s back among the New York hip-wah-see. Catherine Keener, who’s been a constant in all Holfcener’s movies, is Kate, an antique dealer who shares both the business and her seemingly blissful life with her husband Alex (Oliver Platt). Yet she’s nagged by the feeling that she’s not doing enough for those in need, hence her habit of handing out $20 bills to every homeless person she can find. (Biggest audience laugh at the screening: When Kate tries to give money to a scruffy-looking, gray-bearded black man standing outside a restaurant and is told, with no inflection or rancor, that he’s waiting for a table.) Meanwhile, her hormonal 15-year-old daughter (Sarah Steele) wonders why Mom can’t be as attentive to her needs (like a $200 pair of jeans).
Adding to Kate’s expanding portfolio of guilt feelings is her sense of watchful waiting over their next-door neighbor, a prickly nonagenarian (Ann Guilbert, best known as Millie Helper from the old “Dick Van Dyke Show”). Even the latter’s two granddaughters, mousey nurse Rebecca (Rebecca Hall) and bitchy spa worker Mary (Amanda Peet) acknowledge that Kate and Alex are waiting for the old lady to die so they can expand their own apartment. Still, the granddaughters’ lives carry psychic baggage of such proportions that they get tied up with Kate and Alex’s own.
Holofcener’s approach has previously seemed seem as sour and as brittle as some of her characters. But “Please Give, for all of its deadpan veneer and gimlet-eyed humor, ends up being as moving as “Lovely and Amazing” without that latter film’s traffic jam of complications. And Keener, Hall and Peet are each luminous, but in different ways than they’ve been before. I’m not seeing the commercial prospects here that are found in, say, “It’s Complicated.” But I’ll take Holofcener’s chamber music over Nancy Meyers’ brass band slapstick any day. And yes, I know that makes me a snob. I feel SO guilty about that….

My Trip to al-Qaeda – The aforementioned – and, as noted, ubiquitous – Alex Gibney directed this not-quite-filmed-theater adaptation of a staged monologue by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Lawrence Wright about his experiences covering the rise of fundamentalist Islam in the Arab world and the ongoing consequences of that upheaval both here and abroad. It’s an adroit blend of travelogue, archival material and memoir; much of it reviewing and rehashing ideas, indignities and misperceptions catalogued by many post-9-11 documentaries, including Gibney’s. Still, Wright carries his hard-won knowledge with charm, ease and, at times, dry humor. Familiar points are made, warnings are repeated and the untenable-ness of the situation we’re in is depressingly reinforced.
Of all the things mentioned by Wright, the most chilling, to me, was his description of how the people of Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Middle East states don’t care about facts; rather they carry alternate visions of reality choked with conspiracy, dogma and hype. When one contemplates what’s happening to the media universe in this country and the nasty polarities that have emerged in what used to be “civil” public discourse, you can’t help but wonder if these United States we live in are headed for the same collective mental state – and what manner of jihads and sectarian chaos could emerge as a result. Just because the movie doesn’t make such connections (at least, not blatantly) doesn’t mean you can’t infer them.

The Arbor
– My first weekend of Tribeca 2010 ended as it began: With an innovative documentary invoking harsh, rueful truths about the failure of collective and individual responsibility. Clio (pronounced “Cly-oh”) Barnard’s movie leaps in, out and around the barriers separating fiction and non-fiction movie convention in chronicling the complicated legacy of British playwright Amanda Dunbar, who became famous for her semi-autobiographical dramas about growing up in the tough Yorkshire housing project (or, as they’re called in England, “estate.”) that gave the name to both her first play and this movie. Dunbar died in 1990 at age 29 of a brain hemorrhage, leaving behind not only her successful dramas but a troubled mixed-race daughter named Lorraine, who remained in The Arbor, grappling with alcohol and drug addiction – and worse.
Barnard re-introduced Lorraine to her mother’s life and work, through news clips and performances of her work. The movie does likewise with readings of the play,”The Arbor”, staged on the project’s terrain. But Lorraine declined to be interviewed on camera, compelling Barnard to make her most audacious move of all: Using actors to lip-synch recorded interviews with Lorraine and other Dunbar family members and friends. These seemingly disparate tactics risk creating an alienation effect from all the heartbreak. Yet at the conclusion Sunday night’s premiere screening, one heard a stunned silence that was even louder than the applause that followed several seconds later. Other storytellers have breached the walls separating fact and fiction, but few have carried it out with as striking a balance of boldness and delicacy. It’s the best thing I’ve seen so far…with less than a week to go.

.

REMIX: CULTURE _chafin seymour joins DanceDowntown2010

2010-04-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Don't miss it! Video Preview - select

LET'S DANCE

when Friday & SaturdayMay 7-8, 2010, 8pm

where Riffe Center’s Capitol Theater

77 South High Street, Downtown Columbus

$20 general admission$10 seniors, students w/ID, BuckID, (614) 469-0939. OSU Theatre Box Office in Drake Union. (614) 292-2295.

Ticketmaster: (614) 431-3600 or ticketmaster.com

Jules Feiffer "Backing" Up at the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Art

2010-03-29T13:58:00.000-07:00

These days, if I decide to spend my limited resources on a book, it’s only because I need to read it right away. In this economic wallow we’re in, there’s just no sense in buying something just to take up space unless you’re going to eat it or sit on it. I’ve followed this imperative fairly well, though I long to return to the days when I read books the way the animated animals in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” take their meals: greedily, sloppily and noisily.

But whether in good times or bad, I still would have dropped everything to read Jules Feiffer’s new memoir, “Backing Into Forward” ($30, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday) (See www.julesfeiffer.com for more information, plus art, reviews, etc.). In my personal Mount Rushmore of cartoonist-icons (Charles Schulz, Will Eisner, Chuck Jones and Walt Kelly), Feiffer may well stand out the most conspicuously for me, if only as a crucial gateway to What Was Hip. Throughout the early 1960s, his drawings disclosed, in elegant, accessible layers, a grown-up world where even superheroes were awkward with women, military leaders were baleful bullies and no politician’s word could be taken at face value.

Over a half-century of cartoon strips, plays, movies and children’s books through which my son came to value him as much as I did, Feiffer has followed his instincts, impervious to catcalls, even from those who otherwise seemed sympathetic to his politics. (Blockheads at both ends of the spectrum often accused him of being “too liberal.” At this hour in our history, I no longer think there’s any such thing.) I’ve never missed a chance to find out through the occasional interview or documentary how he did it for so long and so well. And when I first heard that he was finally getting around to a memoir (from him, in fact, two years ago during a phone interview he gave to me on Newsday’s dime from his Martha’s Vineyard summer house), I couldn’t wait for its appearance.

So far (I’m savoring it, not devouring it), everything seems to be here: Details of his sometimes rocky apprenticeship with Eisner; his tortuous military stint (which, however painful, called forth the masterpiece that is “Munro”); what it felt like to live, love and work in the Greenwich Village of the 1950s; the ups and downs of his theatrical work; the movies (for me, “Carnal Knowledge” – Overrated, somewhat, “Popeye”—Underrated, egregiously) and how he came up with such Feiffer fixtures as the Dancer. There’s also a lot of stuff I didn’t know before, much of it pertaining to his childhood and a mother who, even before the Army kicked his ass, helped honed a hostile edge that remains dangerously sharp to carry around, even/especially for an 84-year-old man.

Some of these stories were told March 24 at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in Lower Manhattan where Feiffer appeared for a standing-room-only slide-show/Q&A with writer-editor Danny Fingeroth. Asked if he did any research for “Backing Into Forward” to clarify or verify what he remembered, Feiffer replied dryly, “Research? I hate homework. What I remembered, I put down and what I didn’t, I left out.” (Is he sure his memory didn’t make up a few things, inadvertently or not? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.) He alluded to his most enduring movie idols, John Garfield (“The Jewish movie star.”) and Fred Astaire (“I had no interest in science-fiction or space travel. Fred Astaire. That was where my real fantasies were!”)

Of course, because it was an audience of comic aficionados, he had to engage in some art criticism and he made some insightful remarks about the artwork of Joe Shuster, who co-created Superman with Jerry Siegel. “It’s primitive and raw,” he said of Shuster’s artwork in the early Action Comics. “But when a punch is thrown, you feel the power of that punch in every panel. And nobody created the illusion of flight with as much simplicity of detail, yet as much force.”

This led to reminiscences of his aforementioned work with Eisner whose facility with creating atmosphere was matched only by Milton (“Steve Canyon”) Caniff. One can find more of these perceptions in Feiffer’s introduction to 1965’s groundbreaking anthology, “The Great Comic Book Heroes.” And he also mentioned the source of his timeless Dancer character, which he traced back to a youthful romance during the 1950s with a real-life modern dancer in the Village. (She’s identified in the book as Jill.)

The movie work also came up for discussion. Fingeroth seemed as under whelmed with Robert Altman’s 1980 movie musical of “Popeye” as most critics at the time were. Feiffer seems very happy with it, estimating that about fifty percent of his original dialogue ended up in the final cut – which, given Altman’s legendary propensity towards improvisation, might have exceeded his grandest expectations.

A few questions were fielded from the audience. With your kind indulgence, I’ll just share my own. I asked how he was able to keep the past so close to him when he wrote this memoir (and, for that matter, the children’s books, most especially his sort-of autobiographical novel, “The Face on the Ceiling.”) Are there any triggers to his memory, such as Proust’s madeleine?

“The triggers,” he replied, “come during the writing. If I’m in the middle of writing something, something else will occur to me that I hadn’t thought about for a long time. It’ll just turn up, completely different from the thing I’m working on at the moment. But I’ll always find a way of saving it and using it for something else along the way.”

So how does he keep up this vibrant activity? How does he keep his edge? It may have something to do with something he writes at the dedication of his new book; an admonition he repeated at the museum: “Do not let your judges define you.”

Gene Seymour

The Winter of 2010 - SNOWED IN OR SNOWED OUT?

2010-03-04T13:59:00.000-08:00

February's blizxzards were an adventure. The question I heard most often, especially in DC was: “Were you snowed in?”

Snowed in? Snowed out? It all depends on your perspective. And perspective gets stretched when you get hammered by snowstorms every other day - or so it seemed at times.

Here is a picture of the 41 inches where I live in Washington, DC

Here are pictures of the 20+ inches from Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

Marie's Travel Itinerary: DC to Brooklyn or Brooklyn to DC

On Friday morning, Feb. 5, I left D.C. at 5:30 am – driving. I beat the snow and was in Brooklyn by 9:30am where I was able to “telework” (until the Federal offices were closed at 1:00pm).

By Sunday, Feb. 7 very little was moving anywhere. There were no buses, but I got the latest Amtrak reservation available to get back to be ready for work in DC on Monday morning (@ 5 times the cost of the bus!). While I was on the train, the Feds announced that the government offices would be closed on Monday.

The D.C. METRO (operating only underground) got me from Union Station to Friendship Heights only about 2 miles from where I live, in time to watch the Super Bowl. It was still snowing. Not a cab, no public transportation in sight.

I started walking. A few cars were on the road, so I resorted to my history and stuck out my thumb. I walked a hard ½ mile in fresh snow when a jeep, with two teenagers, stopped.

Driver, leaning toward open window, asked, “Are you okay?” “Sure,” I responded, climbing over snow drifts to get to the vehicle. “I just need a ride down Western Avenue.”

A look of shock and disbelief greeted me. “A ride?” and that is when it hit me. These kids had never seen anyone hitchhike. “Yeah, a ride,” I confirmed. “Aren’t you afraid?” came the question. “Nope,” I assured them as they finally opened. the door.

The ride down Western Avenue brought a barrage of questions, “What does it mean when you do your thumb like that? We thought it meant okay. Have you ever done this before?” I answered them all, sharing my hitching experiences in California and across the U.S. in 1968, in Europe in 1965, and yes, of course, into and out of Woodstock.

As I walked the last distance from Western Avenue to my D.C. abode, I knew that these two were planning their first hitching adventure.

Tuesday, February 9 dawned bright under DC’s 30+ inches of snow, with more on the way. The Federal offices closed again, so I managed to snag one of the few early morning buses from DC to NY.

Including the President's Day holiday, for 7 days, I was snowed in Brooklyn and snowed out of DC.
--By: Marie

TOP 10 IMPROVEMENTS TO DC METRO

2010-01-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

HOW I MISS THE NYC SUBWAY!

If anyone had every told me that I would miss the NYC subway, I would have laughed from one end of the 2/3 line (New Lots to Bronx)!

Starting my fifth month of my mostly five days a week in Washington, DC, I have contemplated DC's METRO Mess almost everyone of those days.

Since the General Manager just resigned, I figure this is a great opportunity to provide the new METRO GM with my Top 10 Things to do immediately.

1. Install some lights - at least in the NYC subway, you can see enough to read. the METRO is dark...and I mean dark hole, not just "you have old eyes" dark. It is virtually impossible to read on the METRO platforms. It is sad to see people huddled on the platforms next to the big display advertising kiosks trying to read. A very early lesson every NYC kid learns is ALWAYS carry something to read (adults traveling with small children can add food, drinks & playing cards! And yheah, we know - now it includes IPODS, games & other electronic entertainment). So, when the system screws up there is enough light to read & you can avoid personal combustion! And...if you are reading something really good you don't remember how long you waited.

2. All the METRO stations look alike & you never know what station you are at. In NYC even if you don't know how to read you can figure out ways to know what station you are in. Ok, I know the "conductors" are supposed to announce what station you are at...but they don't...and why don't they? They don't know what station they are at either! I asked them and was told "I get really confused day after day so we just say which way we are going"...to Glenmont or Shady Grove if it's the Red Line.

Suggestions for Metro management - the stations need some personality. Give the conductors incentives (like an extra day off ) to tell folks what station they are at - riders could vote on the best messages/methods - poems, perhaps a serial verbal novel that takes place from station to station, a rap or even songs.

3. Get rid of the carpet in the cars - it stinks. Install linoluem that can be hosed down. The carpet is filthy and smells like mildew, aggravated by the constant "smoke conditions" that delay the trains.

4. Ban the free EXPRESS newspaper - you can't eat or drink on the METRO - so most of the litter mid morning or afternoon is from advertising shopper papers (masquerading as news) that are handed out by the Washington Post at every station.

5. Pay the General Manager a decent salary - as I understand it, the GM (who just resigned) is the most poorly paid executive in the City.

6. Make Vice President Biden the MTA Boss & get him to ride the METRO - Granted, it has not really helped Amtrak (which no one can afford to take anymore.)..but maybe it would help with the insane governance standoff which now allows any one vote from one of the 3 jurisdictions (VA, MD, DC) an absolute veto & derails significant improvements. It is the problem of too many bosses...(Congress, the MTA Board, etc. etc.)

7. METRO should be a Federal stimulus project with a direct grant from Congress. Get the Federal workforce to refuse to work if smoke conditions persist.

8. Send METRO conductors & drivers for OJT in NYC - these folks only learned to drive on computer-assisted trains & have a very hard time stopping at the right place on the platforms...and we won't even talk about what happens when the platforms get over-shot.

9. Personal space (even if it is small) is a concept not understood on DC Metro. On the NYC subway, if you roll your kid's stroller over someone's foot, block a vacant seat with a suitcase or knock someone in the face with your bulging backpack...you will hear about it & incur wrath in multiple languages about how you need to get that "$%** outa my face, leg, etc." I think if we could bring some NYC subway riders to DC and place them strategically on the trains during rush hour for a couple of weeks the problem would get solved!

10. Finally - give everyone a transit subsidy - Federal employees get "Smart Card" benefits - if private employers also provided a subsidy perhaps they would demand some serious attention to METRO.

2010 GREETINGS - BREAK THE CODE!

2010-01-03T20:20:00.000-08:00

Dear Friends, Family, Colleagues and Brooklyn Patriots!

You will soon get the formal "2010" New Year's Greetings via the U.S. Post Office. Without spoiling the fun, here's the code for what has been referred to as the "U" card.

Ohio State University

Housing & Urban Development

City University of New York

INDIE ALBUMS-TOP 20 IN 2009

2010-01-03T20:03:00.000-08:00

CHAFIN SEYMOUR EARNS MUSIC CRITIC STATUS

TOP 20 INDIE ALBUMS IN 2009

You have a rare treat - 1st edition of Chafin Seymour's indie music blog!

There is an interesting strategy here - starting with No. 20.. you'll have to read all the way to the bottom to get to No. 1. (You can only assume this is what happens when you grow up with your father's music, film, television books and cultural criticism.)

Enjoy!

20. Wavves – Wavvves
This album is the best of the lo-fi revival that has been perpetuated this year. I can’t say that this style of rock is my favorite…but I can say that what singer Nathan Williams is able to do with just himself and a computer is impressive. What Mr. Williams has essentially done is create melodic surf pop glossed with a heavy layer of fuzzy guitars. The laid-back, California punk vibe gives this particular song, and the album as a whole, a tossed off, insensitive, quality that makes the songs that much more enjoyable. The layering of these hazy guitar lines makes gems like “Sun Open My Eyes” so hypnotic. The way the album shifts tempo from track to track keeps me from getting bored with the monotonous element of the production style. Beyond the fuzz, however, there is some great songwriting and actual melody. “I’m So Bored,” the first single from the album, is exemplary of this. The only things that keep this album from being higher on my list are the ambient, grating, noise tracks like “Killer Punx, Scary Demons” “More Fur” and album opener “Rainbow Everywhere.” While I can appreciate musical experimentation, I believe these inept forays into the avant-garde realm hold back what is otherwise a wonderfully simple noise-pop album.
19. Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms
First time I encountered Neon Indian I wasn’t quite sure what I thought of them (or I should say him). Alan Palomo does a masterful job arranging these blissful electro grooves so that they almost makes you want to dance…if only you weren’t so fucked up. True, one might find it hard to get into these monotonous songs without the aid of narcotics but I would argue that the songs do enough on their own to induce a state of catatonic euphoria, complete with head nodding. While standout tracks “Deadbeat Summer” and “Terminally Chill” have their rightful place as singles, I believe simply letting the whole album play from start to finish without interruption for the best experience.
18. DOOM - Born Like This
Yes, this album is only forty minutes long. Yes, most of the songs are terribly short and underdeveloped. And, yes, this album pales in comparison to some of this artist’s past endeavors such as Madvillainy and Operation Doomsday. All this being said, DOOM came back on this album after a long hiatus with a rawness and vitality that we haven’t seen from him in a long time. That alone made this one of the most entertaining records I listened to all year. We also hear on this album that DOOM still has the knack for the verbally abstract and rhythmically a-typical rhymes that make him so endearing to his many followers. To quote Nate Patrin, “Madlib, Jake One, J Dilla, and DOOM himself make up a four-man army of beat creators that give Born Like This that extra layer of grit and haze, combining it with a deep headknock pulse and some memorable guest spots (Ghostface, Raekwon, Empress Stahhr) to seal it as another diabolical masterpiece.”
To clarify: I concede, once again, that this is not the man’s best work. However, isn’t it kind of sad that even a half assed effort from DOOM can best pretty much all of the vast ocean of radio blip trash that’s passed off as “rap music” in today’s market? I certainly do.
17. Girls – Album
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a huge Brian Wilson & Beach Boy fan. Therefore, these Cali boys quickly garnered a soft spot in my heart for their garage, fuzzed out, version of sixties surf pop. From the brazen opening track “Lust for Life” you are instantly pulled onto the beach and into the sun. I will admit that upon repeated listening the limited variety of tempos and mildly depressing subject matter (mostly concerning forlorn loves or hopelessly fucked up babes) does gets tiresome and all in all, I like the record a whole lot less than I first thought I did. However it still makes the list because, like I said initially, I’m a sucker for good Beach Boy imitators. These guys pull it off with such dexterity and charm (and guitar distortion) that you can’t help but smile while you listen.
16. Cold Cave – Love Comes Close
Hey didja hear the 80s are cool again?!?!?! This decade offered a whole slew of artists who emulated (for better or worse) the synthesized wonderfulness that the decade brought us. Cold Cave is another of these bands. Anyone of the tracks would not have sounded out of place on the soundtrack to a brat pack movie. These synth-pop tracks have a distinct new wave spin that give the whole album a very dark party vibe. You can tell they don’t take themselves totally seriously and that’s totally ok. In fact, it makes distinctly better than many others in the same vain. The unsubtle Joy Division references in style (lead singer Wesley Eishold doing his best Ian Curtis impression on vocals) and album title (riffed off of “Love Will Tear Us Apart” if you missed it) only strengthen the album’s appeal.
15. Kid Cudi – The Man in the Moon: The End of the Day
There’s just something about that kid from Cleveland. Kid Cudi creates a stoner hop gem on this super synthy, super hook oriented album. From start to finish the listener is never bored. The diverse array of production from the likes of Ratatat, Kanye West, and Plain Pat (among many others including Cudi himself) gives the album the ability to be played both at a party and alone in your room depending on the track. Cudi adopts qualities and tricks from some of the best indie music today to create such songs as “Sky Might Fall.” In my opinion, this album was the best and definitely the most successful release this year from the designated “Freshman” class of rap (see such artists as Wale, Curren$y, and Asher Roth). He was also one of the first rappers in awhile whose album material at least matched and in some cases exceeded his mixtape work.
14. Black Lips – 200 Million Thousand
If the listener comes away with one thing after listening to the Black Lips’ album 200 Million Thousand: these guys are fucking crazy. If getting run out of the country of India for their profane stage antics (including exposing themselves and kissing each other on the mouth) wasn’t enough of a clue to their insanity, the songs on this album provides ample evidence. These Atlanta boys clearly go all out when the party (drugs, drunk driving, bad life decisions) and they seem to party all the time (on record and in real life). That influence comes through in their quick, trashy, brutish garage rock that Iggy Pop should be proud of. Their arrangements are simple and melodic and vocals and instrumentations are highly distorted (or otherwise impaired). This combination is irresistible when tracks are arranged in a tight, quick hitting package as the album is. This is a great album for anyone who loves sex, drugs and rock n’ roll. And let’s be real: who doesn’t?
13. Passion Pit – Manners
First time I listened to Passion Pit their pop melodies, funky synth lines, and danceable drums drew me in. I wasn’t even fully cognizant of how ungodly sugary and crossover ready these guys actually were. Then their song, “Sleepyhead,” shows up in a phone commercial and all hell breaks loose. Their helium induced vocal arrangements complete with shout along chorus and even a children’s choir (you didn’t misread that, I said children’s choir) have made these guys instantly irresistible to every female and most males between the ages of 16 & 24. I myself have had trouble not putting them higher on my list, except for their insatiable knack for over-saturating their songs sugary cuteness. It’s almost too much most of the time. Despite all that Passion Pit definitely produced the best electronic dance-pop album I heard. Not bad for a project that started as a bedroom recording for a pissed of girl friend. The song hooks wrap themselves around your brain stem and don’t let go no matter how many times you choose (or are forced) to listen.
12. jj - jj n° 2
If you didn’t get it from the album art. jj makes druggy music. For those who prefer to get their highs the legal way, this album is a pretty good substitute. The ADD nature (and consequently the best aspect) of this album comes from its ability to shift musical influences at the drop of a hat. From afro-pop, to acoustic folk, to the best bit of copy-write infringement put on record this year in “Ecstasy.” This track (that directly steals the beat and synth line of Lil’ Wayne’s hit “Lollipop”) is a prime example of what these Swedes do best and that is making the familiar original and interesting again. There’s nothing on this album I haven’t necessarily heard before. But I can say pretty honestly I haven’t heard it all in one place or in the distinctive atmospheric way in which jj does it. jj n° 2 is a great album from start to finish (it runs a quick twenty-seven minutes) and definitely one of the cleanest in terms of arrangement and song writing.
11. Here We Go Magic – Here We Go Magic
This was easily the best under-rated album of the year. It slipped under the radar and a lot of ways and I’ve heard a lot of people dismiss them as just “Animal Collective knock-offs.” While the similarities are there in the catchy melodies and sampling but that’s about where it ends for me. I haven’t listened to much of front man/ main song writing contributor Luke Temple’s previous work but in looking for the best description of what Here We Go Magic does to build on it I reluctantly quote Pitchfork’s review: “Four-tracked and supposedly cut in ‘a two-month period of stream-of-consciousness recording,’ the album filters Temple's psychedelic muse through a much more muted palette: hazy electronic textures, endlessly-spiraling lyrical loops, occasional forays into extended sections of ambience and noise.” These extended periods of ambiance and noise are (like so many albums) what hold it back. The actual songs are so interesting and so engaging that when you realize the noise track you’ve been listening to isn’t going to morph into that it’s quite disappointing. Still, I absolutely love the first four songs on the album along with “I Just Want To See You Underwater” enough to have the album just miss being in the top ten.
10. The xx – xx
Who knew that minimalist, new wave influence rock could be so damn intimate? At first, these artsy kids from London might seem like they’re just messing around in a garage with some instruments and a beat machine. If you’re really listening though, underneath (or better: on top of) the slick beats that move in and out of ambient silence and the plucky guitar and bass lines there’s some real emotion. Singers Madley Croft and Oliver Sim hush and coo about they’re love in a sleek and whimsical way that only young people can emulate. The subject matter of these whisperings can range from supposed pillow talk to declarations that “sometimes I still need you,” as they say in the song “Heart Skipped a Beat.” The best description of these songs I can give is that they are a new age R&B, every bit as emotionally intense but subdued to the point that its as if they’re afraid of fully committing to a song…or each other. If they demonstrate nothing else on their cover of the late singer Aaliyah’s “Hot Like Fire” (that sadly does not appear on the album) these guys have a formula for breaking an R&B groove and melody down to its bear bones and reconstructing it in their distinctive style. I grow more and more attached to this album every time I listen to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m just as enamored with it a year from now. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
9. White Denim – Fits
I’ve been a huge fan of these guys ever since I first listened to their EP Workout Holiday last year. I have found since then that very few people really understand what these guys do. To put it as simply as possible: they rock! All three band members are vastly consummate musicians as they demonstrate from track to track on their latest album Fits. The best parts of this album come when the three of them just jam the hell out and shred on their respective instruments (guitar, bass and, of course, drums). The musical styling they pull from in their songwriting could be most closely associated with garage rock but really stems from everywhere: dub, soul, alt-rock, country, post-punk, blues, psychedelic rock, the list goes on. This album seems particularly reminiscent of the last of these influences, the psychedelic, which was all over independent music this year (Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Neon Indian, Here We Go Magic etc). This feeling is only heightened by their love of looping and unconventional songs structures. All of this with James Petralli’s feral howl soaring over the top makes for a gem of a rock album. This is certainly deserving of its place as one of the best of the year. Coincidentally it is one of the albums most often ignored by many critics.

8. Mos Def – The Ecstatic
I have no qualms saying that the mighty Mos, besides being this era’s true renaissance man, is one of the best to ever rock the mic. Therefore it makes sense that his strongest and most cohesive effort since his classic Black on Both Sides would make my top ten. It is simply a pleasure to hear the man sounding strong, confident, and, above all, defiant over some heavy beats. With a slew of production credits from Madlid and Oh No, Mos makes a perfect assimilation into today’s indie-rap culture; borrowing from contemporaries like DOOM (MF Doom, Viktor Vaughn, King Geedorah…whatever) on his quick, dense, free association rhymes. The rest of the production seems to come from all over the map. Through all of it we acquire a couple of things: 1) Mos can still rip it (if he doesn’t get too lazy) 2) His voice is still silky smooth and 3) he wants to conquer the world. I embellish, but with the multitude of influences (from the Middle East, Latin America, and even East Brooklyn), he seems to try to touch on culture he can. Despite that, he still remains true to his roots as well as his contemporary culture, everything a great comeback should do. Keep up the good work Mr. Smith! Let’s build on this one.
7. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
I admit, I was initially tentative about this album. Maybe I was overwhelmed by the hype, or the synthesized pop rock, or that they were French. Yeah… that was probably it. Even their snotty countrymen couldn’t keep this band from making one of the best pop albums of the year. As conventional as it is investigative, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is an opus of over-sized sound packed into very tight places (9 songs and only 37 minutes). When you have radio gold (that you’ll never hear on a Clear Channel station… damn the French) like “1901” next to seven and a half minute epic instrumentals such as “Love Like A Sunset” you can’t help but be smitten. Phoenix can take what The Strokes do best, simple melodies and kinetic rhythms, and make it make the most grandiose electronic sound storm you’ve ever heard in a single song. Thankfully, they also know their limits; pacing themselves and making you enjoy every minute of their songs. This is another album that continues to grow on me the more I listen to it. Yes their sell-out enough to be in a Cadillac commercial. But any self-respecting crossover would do the same. It’s a recession remember?
6. Atlas Sound – Logos
My roommate has been trying to convince for almost two years now that, “Bradford Cox is the songwriter of out generation.” I’m not sure if I completely buy that yet, but I can say that his latest album under his solo masquerade Atlas Sound is a significant step towards being convinced of such a claim. Cox shows that he can adopt pretty much anyone’s musical styling’s (Stereolab, Panda Bear) and do it well. On “Walkabout” featuring the aforementioned Panda Bear (Noah Lennox) Cox shows his sampling chops. Taking a sample from French 60s pop band The Dovers' "What Am I Going to Do?" he loops it and creates a perfect pop doo-wop like sing-along about moving on with your life. This knack for sampling (which Cox learned from Lennox) comes up even on the Deerhunter sounding tracks like the shimmering “Shelia,” with similarly unique results. Bradford Cox seems to be able to do everything with ease, even breaking into Stereolab box of tricks for drawn out prog-pop and even getting Stereolab singer, Lætitia Sadier to helm the track. Does all this collaboration mean the Cox is becoming less self-involved as Atlas Sound? Considering the cover features a shirtless picture of the man and most of the lyrics involve deep-seated introspection the answer is probably not. However, this album provides clues and exciting ideas about what Atlas Sound could become in the future.

5. Raekwon – Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II
This is not one of the best albums of the year because it is terribly experimental or pushes the boundaries of its genre, quite the contrary. It is one of the best albums of the year because of how great it is at what it’s supposed to be. OB4CLII picks up right where part I left off. Raekwon sounds as strong as he ever has and with excellent features from clan members (specifically Ghostface Killah and Method Man) as well as the likes of Jadakiss and Busta Rhymes, the lyrics and rhyming stay consistent and hard throughout. In terms of production: As expected the album is comfortably rooted in the minor keyed, heavy based, street music that the Wu-Tang Clan is known for. RZA contributes some of his best work in years. The J-Dilla (RIP) beats are bangin’ as always. GZA, Dr. Dre, Pete Rock, Marly Marl, Erik Sermon, and The Alchemist all produce a track apiece and every single one is fire. Essentially, it’s mind-blowing how many good beats are able to fit into one place. If you’re someone who prefers their Gangsta rap from the East Coast and the early nineties, this one is for you. Rae produces an album that easily sits next to any of the number of classics in the Wu-Tang catalog.
4. Fashawn – Boy Meets World
Every couple of years a hip hop record comes along that reignites my love of the genre. It pushes boundaries while remaining as authentic as possible. Usually this happens when a producer and a rapper are so in sync that they become a single unit. MF Doom and Madlib do this on the decade classic Madvillainy. Two years ago California rapper Blu and producer Exile did it on criminally under-rated and ignored Below The Heavens. This time the rapper is the up and coming Fashawn who, like his contemporary Blu, also hails from Cali. While Fash is not quite as prolific on the mic as Blu, the two rap about similarly deep and introspective subject matter. Boy Meets World, as a whole, is a complete study of a young boy’s transition to an un-easy and premature adult hood. The autobiographical nature of the album is a further strength. Fashawn candidly speaks about his struggles growing up with a father in jail and a mother addicted to drugs; about contemplating suicide, being on the road, encouraging the present youth, about lost loves, and about the past and continuing state of affairs in America’s inner cities. He is eloquent and succinct in his dissertations and his flow stays on point. On this album Exile helms the production boards again with his distinctive mix of lush soul and jazz sampling and popping, highly percussive drums. The two make for an irresistible combination for anyone who loves real and conscious rap. Now that Exile’s has worked with two of the best young emcees from California: what are the hopes of getting the three of them together for a collaboration? The track “Samsonite Man” that features Blu provides and exciting look at this prospect.
3. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
It’s no secret to anyone’s who has followed (or simply listened to) the Dirty Projectors discography that this experimental Brooklyn band is about as artsy as they come. Dave Longstreth’s distinctive wail is ever present and they to really relish in the sound of blaring sideways harmonies and off tempo guitar noodling. While all these elements tend to make their music more difficult to ingest, in the case of Bitte Orca it makes it all the more original and compelling. By filtering their avant-garde tendencies through more conventional song structures the Dirty Projectors succeed in creating the most accessible art-rock album of the year. Longstreth was quoted as saying that this album was recorded with “the band as a whole in mind.” That sentiment is evident throughout especially on dramatic vocal turns by members Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian on the tracks “Stillness in the Move” and “Two Doves respectively. By stepping back and letting his band do the talking Longstreth is able to say more to a wider audience. The abstract nature of the album makes it a concise and complete piece of art that captures a band realizing their full potential for collaborative creativity.
2. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
I can’t say enough good things about this album. Songwriters Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen seem to have found a perfect balance between their experimental and pop sensibilities. They still have a knack for extreme key and tempo changes in their songwriting that keeps the listener guessing and it sounds as if every single snare hit, piano splash, and guitar twang was meticulously tweaked and endlessly considered before being recorded. This attention to detail lends itself to some absolutely gorgeous pop songs (specifically “Two Weeks,” “Cheerleader,” and “While You Wait For The Others”). Their vocals have never sounded so beautifully arranged and performed. The lush orchestrations of harmonies, strings, percussion, and wind instruments often astound in their complexity. The album flows very well together from track to track and doesn’t lull you to sleep despite never advancing beyond a moderate chug of a tempo. This mellow and reverence-laden atmosphere contributes to its appeal and repeat listen ability
All that being said: It’s true Veckatimest doesn’t really break into uncharted territory historically speaking and there is a period in the middle of the album where you’re not quite sure exactly what’s supposed to be going on. However, what really defines this album for me are the final three songs. It begins the grinding, wailing, guitar and harmony filled stomp of “While You Wait For The Others; then lists into the freakish, pounding choral “I Live With You.” And flourishes with the final haunting ballad, “Foreground,” a perfect crescendo and finale to a melodious, ethereal experience. The way in which the band has made the transition from 2006’s excellent Yellow House to this feat of notoriety has been stunning to witness but they seem to have found a very comfortable niche. One has to wonder if they really have anywhere to go from here. If where they go is anything even remotely like where they’ve been: let’s hope that they do.
1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Honestly, what can I say about this album that hasn’t already been said by every hip, music savvy bastard that thinks his musical opinions are as important as I do? To start: there’s a good reason this album ended up at the top of mine and so many others’ list for this year. What AC has done on this album is almost indescribably impressive. All those years and all those albums experimenting with strange noises, arrangements, and chord progressions finally pay off on this album. Panda Bear and Avey Tare’s vocal arrangements float over the top of the sonic ocean of indecipherable noise and melody. Geologist finally seems to have taken a bigger role in song writing as well. His electronic beats, blips, and twinkles, act as the percussive pulse of the album driving it forward and, in some cases, creating some highly danceable rhythms.
They take what they do so well: folky, ambient, psychedelic, and experimental songwriting, and turn it all into electronic pop. Songs that are just as appealing as anything released by The Beatles during their Sgt. Pepper phase or the Beach Boys on Pet Sounds infuse the album from start to finish. It’s impossible to choose a single song that is the best (although “My Girls” comes pretty damn close) because the more you listen to the album the more your favorite song can, and will, change. All of this is not to say that Animal Collective in any way abandons the elements that made them so popular to the experimental and independent music audience over the past decade. Avey Tare still has the tendency to shriek on cue. There is sonic overload early and often throughout the record and you’re still never totally sure if they’re really singing about familial duty and unconditional love or just tripping balls on acid. This has never mattered very much to their fans or to me and certainly doesn’t affect my feelings about Merriweather Post Pavilion. The boys of AC are all grown up and this album in tone, musicality, and complexity demonstrates this with flying (and very bright) colors. The album succeeds in cementing Animal Collectives place as the independent artist of this decade while suggesting that there is still so much they can and want to do.

GENE SEYMOUR’S TOP TEN JAZZ DISCS OF 2009

2009-12-13T19:31:00.000-08:00

1.) Keith Jarrett, “Testament: Paris/London” (ECM)

His liner notes offer a harrowing tale of marital upheaval, depression, a near nervous breakdown, bruising mood swings; all of which took place around and within the two-week period last holiday season when these marathon solo concerts were recorded. Then again, you could discern all that from listening to the music, which is by turns ecstatic, somber, acerbic, wistful, enigmatic, pugnacious and, above all, relentless. As a solo artist, he’s far removed from his 1970s merry-wanderer days. And what he’s doing lately with this form is by now nothing short of transfiguring. No one, not even Cecil Taylor, has so nakedly stretched himself through spontaneous keyboarding as Jarrett does here. (Did I just write, “Not even Cecil Taylor”? Yes. I did.) You get the sense throughout that you’re listening to someone trying to save his own life with every bent, splintered or rococo phrase he can coax from his shattered nerves. You, too, may get rattled at various points in the journey. But you can’t turn away.

2.) Joshua Redman, “Compass” (Nonesuch)

Building upon the success of “Near East,” his impressive 2007 set of trio riffs, blues and standards, Redman mines the sax-bass-drums format for greater expressive possibilities and delivers his rangiest, most daring soloing in years. Often, he’ll up the ante by having two drummers (Brian Blade, Greg Hutchinson) and two bassists (Larry Grenadier, Reuben Rogers) backing him up on the same track as if the added weight will propel his horn into a higher orbit. Speed and power, however, aren’t as important here as making the best use of the spaces opened up by the rhythm section(s), whose members are every bit as inventive, resourceful and (whenever the occasion demands) discreet as their leader.

3.) Dave Douglas, “Spirit Moves” (Green Leaf Music)

With all the bands he’s got going at the same time, this horn player’s about as busy as a preposition. (That’s a deep, hard wink to those of you who still have a place in your hearts for “Schoolhouse Rock.”) This particular throw-down is coming to you from his Brass Fantasy ensemble: Four horns (Douglas on trumpet, Vincent Chancey on French horn, Luis Bonilla on trombone, Marcus Rojas on tuba) and a trap set (Nasheet Watts), blending more tone color and intricate harmonies into the big-foot brass band genre without skimping on the fun -- or the funk. The album is an homage to the late avant-prankster Lester Bowie, whose archival-pop spirit is honored with shrewd, soulful covers of “Otis Redding (“Mr. Pitiful”) and Hank Williams (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”) and whose insurgency is acknowledged with such originals as Douglas’ send-off to the Bush years (“Twilight of the Dogs”).

4.) Joe Lovano Us Five, “Folk Art” (Blue Note)

The best tenor saxophonist of the boomer generation presses on through the Aughts (Oughts?) imperturbably expanding his own horizons and, as with Redman and Douglas, tweaking traditional combo formats. Here, he gathers four young sensibilities around him to find fresh variations on the hallowed Blue Note tropes of “inside/outside” polyphony and rhythmic blends. The title track is an enchanting marvel of shifty motifs, thematic manipulation and collective interplay that’s both open-ended and tightly-packed. The rest of the disc will keep you on the edge of your chair waiting for the next cagey inspiration to emerge from Lovano, bassist Esperanza Spalding, pianist James Weidman, and percussionists Otis Brown III and Francisco Mela.

5.) Nellie McKay, “Normal as Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day” (Verve)

Even the way she pronounces the last syllable of her name (rhymes with “eye”) suggests that McKay will never be everything she appears to be. She’s adorable, to be sure, in a retro, vaguely punky way. And smart enough to make you wary of her intentions here. (Remember the snarky title of her last big-label album, “Get Away From Me”? Nyah-nyah, Norah!) But she turns out to be as tender as she is incisive, letting such warhorses as “Sentimental Journey”, “Close Your Eyes” and “The Very Thought of You” stand and deliver on their own terms while gently unearthing unanticipated possibilities in such Day-related ephemera as “Black Hills of Dakota” and “Send Me No Flowers.” Throughout, her phrasing is impeccable, her command of melody unfettered and her sense of swing nimble enough to please the stuffiest neoclassicist.

6.) Fly, “Sky & Country” (ECM)

Mark Turner may be not be the only underrated-or-overlooked saxophone player on this list (see number 8 and, for that matter, 9). But enough can’t be said for his lithe, deceptively smooth style along with the range of his tonal vocabulary and his keen interaction with the other two members (bassist Larry Grenadier, drummer Jeff Ballard) of this appropriately-named trio. This is the kind of disc where repeated listening may be needed to allow you to get cozy with it. But after a while, you wonder how could have lived for so many months without these guys included in your personal soundtrack, especially when Turner soars as pure and true as he does on “CJ”.

7.) Vijay Iyer Trio, “Historicity” (ACT)

The combination of incantatory aggression and mordant insistence that made up jazz’s cutting edge in the 1960s persists most conspicuously in the work of such young tyros as this pianist, whose trio (bassist Stephen Crump, drummer Marcus Gilmore) is a storm-making machine of fearsome beauty. With the Bernstein-Sondheim classic, “Somewhere” from “West Side Story”, Iyer and company ramp up the inquisitive resentment simmering beneath its plaintive yearning while the ironies embedded in Stevie Wonder’s “Big Brother” resound harder and deeper even without the benefit of a lyric sheet. Iyer’s playing shimmers and soars as often as it challenges and engages; whatever this country’s struggling to become in the wake of the last election, you sense that Iyer’s trio is finding a way to both describe and facilitate the changes.

8.) Jon Gordon, “Evolution” (Artist’s Share)

Gordon’s gorgeous tone, solid center of gravity and quicksilver facility on the saxophone were never in question from the time he won the prestigious Monk competition in 1996. What has gone relatively unnoticed, however, are his considerable gifts as a composer and bandleader; all of which get their most formidable display on this ambitious, varied blend of pieces for large ensemble, duo (with pianist Bill Charlap) and string section. Each piece, no matter what its design or tactics, braces you with a dual charge of broadening possibilities and heightened stakes. The effort alone reinforces one’s certainty that jazz, in whatever form or venue, has a future for anyone who isn’t afraid to issue or take a dare.

9.) John Surman, Brewster’s Rooster” (ECM)

His home nation of Great Britain has no trouble identifying Surman as one of the world’s leading baritone and soprano saxophonists. But he still doesn’t get the props he deserves on this side of the Atlantic for his rich, supple playing and his creative, eclectic body-of-work. Here, he’s placed, like a valuable jewel, in a solid-gold setting (guitarist John Abercrombie, bassist Drew Gress, drummer Jack DeJohnette) that glows throughout with grace, wit and warmth. The interplay between Abercrombie and Surman may evoke for some of us greybeards, the magic aroused forty years ago this year when Surman played on John McLaughlin’s breakthrough album, “Extrapolation.”

10.) Abdullah Ibrahim, “Senzo” (Sunnyside)

We end as we began: With a masterly solo piano recital that serves as both a summing-up of a glorious, tumultuous career and a benchmark for wide-ranging, often intimately-felt self-expression. The 22 short pieces pour into each other as a kind of seamlessly-crafted montage of riffs, phrases, preludes and themes. Some reflect his South African heritage, others the direct influence of John Coltrane and Duke Ellington. It is all of a spellbinding piece and one hopes there is still many more like it to come.

HONORABLE MENTION

Kendra Shank Quintet, “Mosaic” (Challenge)

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, “Yesterdays” (ECM)

James Moody, “Moody 4A (IPO)

Henry Threadgill Zooid, “This Brings Us To, Volume 1” (PI)

John Abercrombie, “Wait Till You See Her” (ECM)

BEST BIG BAND ALBUM

Charles Tolliver Big Band, “Emperor March: Live at the Blue Note” (Half Note)

HONORABLE MENTION: Roy Hargrove Big Band, “Emergence” (Verve)

BEST LATIN JAZZ

Mark Levine and the Latin Tinge, “Off & On: The Music of Moacir Santos” (Left Coast Clave)HONORABLE MENTION: Arturo O’Farrill, “Risa Negra” (Zoho)

BEST REISSUES

Ella Fitzgerald, “Twelve Nights in Hollywood” (Verve)

“The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions, 1935-46” (Mosaic)

And, though I know yawl didn’t ask, but was asked anyway by someone else…

MY BEST OF THE DECADE

(I am SUCH a weirdo):

Ornette Coleman, “Sound Grammar”

Rudresh Manhanthappa "Kinsmen”

“Maria Schneider “Sky Blue”

Jason Moran “Modernistic”

Bill Frisell “Blues Dream”

Dee Dee Bridgewater, “Live at Yoshi’s”

Cecil Taylor, “The Willisau Concert”

Wayne Shorter, “Footsteps Live”

Ted Nash, “Sidewalk Meeting”

John Abercrombie, “Cat ‘n’ Mouse”

Our "Uppity" President

2009-07-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

OUR “UPPITY” PRESIDENT

From: Gene

Most days, I’m nowhere near as impressed with Maureen Dowd as she is with herself. I have often found her, especially in the post-Bush era, to be straining for effects and for laughs. Even when she was on her Pulitzer-winning roll, smirking and snarking her way through the Ken Starr inquisition and its grubby sideshows, I thought there was little in the core of her “analysis” except glib, even smug emptiness.
But today (7/26), I have to hand it to Dowd. She earned her Pulitzer and my respect with her Op-Ed column on Skip Gates vs. the Cambridge police. She got at the essence of the matter a lot sooner than anyone else, including the president (about whom, more later):
“As the daughter of a police detective, I always prefer to side with the police. But this time, I’m struggling.
“No matter how odd or confrontational Henry Louis Gates Jr. was that afternoon, he should not have been arrested once Sergeant (Jim) Crowley ascertained that the Harvard professor was in his own home.”
Ten-four, period and Amen. This was a situation where embarrassment, more than racism, was the prevailing malady. And embarrassment, more than violence, is as American as apple pie. Sorry, Rap Brown, but Kurt Vonnegut’s observation gets the cupcake this time around.
Dowd goes on to say that “President Obama was right the first time, that the encounter had a stupid ending, and the second time, that both Gates and Crowley overreacted.”
Not that this conclusion was all that difficult to reach, especially as the heat of the moment subsided and all those in the maelstrom, including Obama, were ready to put the whole thing behind them, continue paying the electric bills and keep obnoxious, “acting-out” argumentativeness where it belongs: Among loved ones.
Much as I, too, would like to leave it at that, there’s a sour taste lingering with me that has nothing to do with either Gates or Crowley, but with the immediate reaction to Obama’s charge of stupidity – for which he later apologized.
Don’t ask why, but I happened to watch the “Today” show the morning after that presidential press conference and the show’s spin-meisters had apparently decided that Obama’s spontaneous intervention in l’affaire Gates-Crowley overshadowed anything he had to say about health care reform – the ostensible purpose of that prime-time showcase. So it was the lead story for the show’s first (and least-brain-dead) hour.
The use of the word, “stupid”, especially seemed to unnerve the Victorian Beast that is mainstream media (Thank you, Tom Wolfe). Matt Lauer and his interview subjects seemed to obsess over whether the president had been presumptuous at best in using such strong language on a neighborhood dust-up.
“Stupid” is strong language? Granted, along with “shut up”, it’s one of the few non-curse words that grown-ups discourage their small children from using. But compared with saltier effusions of Harry Truman and the only-on-tape scatological riffs of Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, it’s hardly the verbal equivalent of public defecation.
In fact, in the implied chiding of the president’s emotional, yet still rigorously contained outburst, I could hear a kind of collective gasp over the fact that the nice, well-spoken and thoroughly-educated African American man we’d elected president had…raised his voice in such a conspicuous manner. It was almost as if, for however long this story lasted before flaming out, Obama had assumed a kind of better-modulated, but no less pronounced belligerence towards those who’d believed him to be, well, less…obstreperous than other African American leaders.
Far more than the encounter between Crowley and Gates, I felt something in this reaction more than faintly reminiscent of the Bad Old Days of race relations in this country; that Obama had, by showing his anger on behalf of another Harvard-educated black man, behaved like a …yes…uppity negro to the mainstream; a mainstream that had apparently, but not surprisingly forgotten the president’s own insightful and eloquent words on racism’s lingering scars during last year’s campaign.
The Cambridge dust-up will recede, if it hasn’t already, to the precincts of celebrity gossip whose stories evaporate like Mountain Dew on linoleum, leaving, albeit, a sticky residue requiring more diligent scrubbing.
But the president is smart (or non-stupid) enough to know that however sincerely or deeply felt, his comments on such matters make him more vulnerable to the ditto-heads, both in public office and on the radio, waiting to trip those old, but still sturdy wires of condescension and dismissal threatening every person of color in and out of positions of authority. He also knows that there are two-faced, cunning greed heads who can’t wait to use such outbursts against the president in his push for, say, reforming health care.
I don’t blame him in the least for saying what he said about the Cambridge police. I said and thought the same things as an African American male. And I would have said the same things the president did after roughly 48 hours. But I also know how easily our humanity can be used against us as if it were a captured weapon.
Again: I don’t think I’m saying anything President Obama doesn’t know already. I’m just making sure the rest of us do, too.

--30 --

Michael Jackson: Special to CNN

2009-06-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

You can read the full text of Gene Seymour's commentary at CNN.com

(excerpt)

"We wanted the loop of performances and hit singles. Retrieve for us, please, the electricity of the 10-year-old wunderkind who literally leapt into our consciousness in that shattering year of 1968 with "I Want You Back" and "ABC."

Let us see that transfiguring moment 15 years later at the Motown Anniversary TV special when Jackson seized dominion over the pop firmament with his shattering, moon-walking recital of "Billie Jean." We wanted the videos -- "Beat It," "Bad," "Thriller," "Black and White" and all that incredible, unearthly dancing. That was all we needed to see and hear. Save the armchair psychoanalysis for later. Maybe, much later."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Michael Jackson had an on-going presence in our household for many years. His music, videos and yep, his dance moves were watched more than once. This photo was Halloween, probably 1998. The biggest event was yet to come.

September 10, 2001: Chafin Seymour performed with Michael Jackson

Madison Square Garden was the venue for what is now Michael Jackson's last solo concert - it was the first live concert he had done in 11 years & was the 1st reunion of the Jackson 5 in 20 years.

The event was billed as the all-star salute to "The King Of Pop," MICHAEL JACKSON: 30TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION, THE SOLO YEARS."

Chafin Seymour sang with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus at this performance - doing "Heal the World." The concert was also a CBS television special that aired in November. The line-up on the stage at Madison Square Garden was star-studded, to say the least. The list included for starters Liza Minnelli and Elizabeth Taylor. Gene (Seymour) was in Toronto at the Film Festival, but I remember Chafin talking with him at home after the concert and asking him, "Who is Elizabeth Taylor?"

Watch Michael Jackson sing Billie Jean at this concert.

The next day - September 11, 2001 - is the day we will never forget!

BLUE GRASS @ DANCE DOWNTOWN COLUMBUS

2009-05-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

On Friday, May 8, you cannot imagine our surprise when we were greeted by this poster as we walked up to the the Capitol Theatre at the Ohio State Office building.

This piece, Blue Grass, was created by choreographer Susan Hadley, now at the Ohio State University. Blue Grass was originally commissioned in 1998 by Hubbard Street Dance Chicago with support from the Choo San Goh and H. Robert Magee Foundation.

To see the full performance, here is the video.
(Just so you know, the piece is 20+ minutes long.)

Chafin Seymour is the dancer in bright blue shirt and black pants. The other dancers are:
Jolene Bartley, Loganne Bond,Rachael Fullenkamp, Sarah Gibbons, James Graham, Daniel Holt, Kristen Jeppsen, Leigh Lotocki, Jeff Marras, Michelle Maroon, Lauren Smith and Sherrell Whitmire. Music is by Marc O'Connor & muscians.

"Chafin Dance" Updated: BlueGrass

2009-04-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

Make your travel plans now to see "Dance DownTown" on May 7-9 in Columbus, Ohio. See a rehearsal preview of "Blue Grass"

This piece, created by Susan Hadley, is set to blue grass music played by virtuoso fiddler Mark O’Connor. Susan Hadley notes that to set this piece she needed "dancers who were athletes."

Chafin is in various parts of the rehearsals. FYI, he is wearing a grey OSU sweatshirt, a black & grey striped sweat, and a green tshirt & navy sweats!

Enjoy!

St. Augustine's - "Emancipated From the Shadows"

2009-04-21T07:41:00.000-07:00

St. Augustine's has been "our" church for many years. The church life includes Sunday school, confirmation and of course, raising money. Sunday services are unique combining traditional Episcopal traditions and liturgical music with the gospel choir and praise dancers. Meals at St. Augustine's are affairs that require fasting before and after. St. Augustine's has a very unusual place in the history of New York City.

Following is a description of St. Augustine's today (written by Marie) which provides a backdrop to the New York Times article from Sunday, April 19, reprinted below, with links to a slide show.
--By: Marie
St. Augustine’s is located in the ethnically diverse lower east side of Manhattan. Today, we are the largest African American congregation of any denomination on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. This year marks the 180th year of Episcopal Ministry in this now historic landmark building.

Our contributions to the community and to the Diocese of New York are many. St. Augustine’s has consistently opened our arms wide enough to celebrate our cultural and racial history, including our gospel choir and the St. Augustine’s praise dancers. We have sung mass and our acolytes are trained to support the traditions of the Episcopal Church.

Who are we? We are an African-American congregation. We worship in the shadow of a slave gallery, existing since the current building was constructed in 1828, a year after the State of New York outlawed slavery on July 4, 1828. We have an historic commitment to restore the slave galleries in order to preserve them, but also to make them accessible to visitors. We are listed in the International Sites of Conscience and this work is carried out through the St. Augustine’s Project

We are diverse: approximately 20% Hispanic and some two percent of our members are white. Our members are teachers, government workers, librarians and sanitation workers in the City of New York. A few of us are writers, or lawyers, or work in the criminal justice system. Many of us are retired and we are members that come from three and four generation families who have lived and grown up in the lower east side community. Today the youngest members of our families must often travel distances from Queens, New Jersey and the far neighborhoods of Brooklyn to St. Augustine’s because they can no longer afford housing in the neighborhood.

Our deeds speak to the character of our Christian ministry:
• We had one of the first ministries to persons living with HIV and AIDS, opening our doors for a needle exchange when it was illegal. We supported our Rector, Rev. Dr. Errol Harvey, who was prepared to go the jail to maintain the service.
• The second collection in every Sunday service is given to feed the homeless and the hungry.
• We have served as a beacon for union organizing, support for our extended family who are incarcerated; we have been home for displaced African communities living in New York City.
• We host youth groups from Colorado and Maryland; we host international visitors who are participating in programs with the Volunteers for Peace.
• Every high school graduate who goes on to college receives a $1,000 scholarship. From time to time, the men of St. Augustine’s send our college students a “stipend” – sometimes $50.00 or $20.00 – whatever can be afforded.
• Our Seniors organize a Christmas celebration for the mothers and children who live at Helen’s House, a shelter for victims of abuse and domestic violence.

And from the New York Times, April 19, 2009. . .

"FROM two tiny rooms high up and far back in St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church, with its neo-Georgian archways, straight-backed pews and simple, graceful detail, the legacy of slavery in Manhattan looks down.

The stone church, on Henry Street near Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side, was built for a patrician white congregation. But although it was completed in 1828, a year after slavery was legally abolished in New York State, behind the balcony and on either side of the organ are two cramped rooms, built so that black churchgoers could worship there without being seen by white parishioners.

“These spaces were never talked about,” said the deacon, the Rev. Edgar Hopper, an agile, bald gentleman of 79. “People knew there were instances of them being referred to as slave galleries.”

For decades, these galleries languished in a state of disrepair and were hardly discussed. Children often scrambled up the narrow staircases to play on the bleacherlike seats.

But after a decade-long restoration project led by Mr. Hopper, work on one gallery was completed late last month, and the space will open for tours at the end of this month.

The project began when the Rev. Errol Harvey, Mr. Hopper’s supervisor, noticed that census data showed a diminishing

African-American population in the gentrifying Lower East Side. Mr. Harvey suggested looking into the silent heritage of St. Augustine’s, which today serves a primarily black congregation, and the task fell to Mr. Hopper.

Not everyone applauded his efforts.

“Many were uncomfortable with the restoration,” he said. “Slavery is still a sensitive subject, and not just the guilt associated with owning slaves. There is also a lot of denial associated with being descended from slaves.”

To research the subject, Mr. Hopper searched vaults at the diocese, reading archives and vestry minutes from the early 1800s in search of the names of those who may have worshiped in those rooms. Their numbers included Henry and Phoebe Nichols, a couple baptized there in 1829.

With help from the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, a quarter of a million dollars was raised for the project.

The other day, Mr. Hopper led a visitor up a steep, twisting staircase to the space. It is painted beige and lighted with a single bulb. Six crude steps face an opening high above the sanctuary. Because of the angle, worshipers here could not be seen by those below.

Still visible on one wall are faint pencil scrawls made by children. Until the 1930s, the gallery was used as a Sunday school for African-Americans.

Mr. Hopper sat down on a step. “In the summer,” he said, “it’s stifling here."

ASSEMBLING THE SPACE STATION

2009-04-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

(Posted by Marie)

The Seymours of sey-nah are truespace aficionados. The first full-length movie Gene introduced to Chafin was "The Right Stuff." From age two, Gene would fast forward through the borning parts of the two reels. When Chafin was about 4, he and Gene could spent an entire afternoon watching the movie - over and over again. They still do.

On a trip to Washington, D.C. I spent a whole day with Chafin looking for Gus Grissom's grave.

Don't miss this amazing piece of graphic info. Many thanks to my brother, Bob, for linking this up.

Assembling the Space Station

POINT & CLICK ON RIGHT SIDE TO SEE MORE !!! AFTER IT COMES TOGETHER - WAIT FOR PICTURE THEN CLICK ON TRIANGLE FOR MORE DETAILS.

Goldman-Sachs: The Profit Should Have Been Higher

2009-04-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

(Today, I gave my friend the following letter to include in the Goldman-Sachs' mail delivery. Posted by Marie)

Edward Liddy, Chief Executive, AIG - % Goldman-Sachs
David Finiar, Chief Financial Officer, Goldman-Sachs
Wall Street
New York, NY

Dear Mr. Liddy & Mr. Finiar:

I am writing to invite you to receive the 2009 "Best Capitalist Business Practices” Award. While only the first quarter of 2009 has been reported, a panel of experts has determined that no other capitalist could possibly out distance the achievements of Goldman-Sachs in what's left of 2009.

This is a unique award. You were selected by a panel of experts from the Prospect Heights Entrepreneurs Without Portfolio (PHEWP).

I am pleased to highlight the Goldman-Sachs "best practices" achievements since receiving $10 billion from the US. Treasury in October 2008 and $12.9 billion from the AIG bailout.

Goldman-Sachs Best Capitalist Business Practices
1. Oil the VERY BIG Revolving Door: Have many alumnae with real power in high places. This is a traditional practice of a good capitalist. However, Goldman-Sachs has taken this to a very refined level. Going through the revolving door are:

Henry Paulson, a former GS chief executive, while Secretary of the Treasury, is credited with the singular achievement of “forcing” GS to take $10 billion dollars for toxic asset relief, while getting rid of all the possible competition – (Bear Sterns, Lehman Brothers – gone and Merrill-Lynch force-fed to Bank of America at a hefty price).

Robert Rubin, pioneered the VERY BIG Revolving Door practice in 1993 when he left the G-S Chairman’s door to become National Economic Council director and then Secretary of the Treasury for the Clinton Administration.

Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (a protégé of Robert Rubin)has given “Steve Shafran, a former favorite of Paulson's, and Bill Dudley, Goldman's former chief economist and now the successor to Geithner as head of the New York Fed the task of resurrecting the market for securitized assets” Goldman Sachs has more than 30 ex-government officials registered to lobby on its behalf

2. Oil the VERY BIG Revolving Door Often with all partners who might “owe you money". This was very successful with Edward Liddy, appointed by Henry Paulson as the current AIG Chief Executive and who was a former GS Board member, has achieved a significant best practice. All those bad business practices investments got paid off by those pesky credit-default swaps from the $170 billion AIG Federal rescue package – authorized by – (back to the top) Henry Paulson. Goldman received just under 10% of the $170 AIG bailout to day.

Now, that is a class act!

3. Change Your Underwear Often. This best practice should be used regularly. The most recent success was how Goldman-Sachs successfully changed itself into a bank holding company last year (with the blessings of the Feds, hmmm, Goldman-alumnae of course). Why is this important…? See No.4.

4. Change The Calendar. When Goldman changed underwear to become a bank holding company, it required changing the accounting fiscal year to end on December 31 (2008) instead of November 30, 2008. Who would have guessed but this changes the quarterly reporting and the result is that December doesn’t count in the First Quarter profit reports. Goldman lost approximately $2.6 billion in December, 2008.

This is brilliant.

5. Share The Wealth but OUTSOURCE to Insure Not Sharing the Wealth Too Far. According the the Wall Street Journal, over 900 Goldman employees received bonuses of $1 million for their stellar accomplishments in 2008. In contrast, Goldman-Sachs mail is delivered by persons who make $15.00 an hour ($10.00 an hour to start), with no bonuses. All made possible by outsourcing.

The Best Capitalist Business Practices Award ceremony will be presented on May 1, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. (in order to make the evening news on NY1). The ceremony will be on the steps of the Brooklyn Public Library at Grand Army Plaza.

While you are here, the Prospect Heights Entrepreneurs Without Portfolio (PHEWP) will present a special investment proposal to Goldman-Sachs that will increase your profits next quarter (it is guaranteed by the U.S. Treasury).

The PHEWP is seeking your investment in the
Fund to Save the Luxury Greenbrier from becoming A Toxic Asset. Our research shows that luxury hotels are being forced into bankruptcy which certainly makes them toxic. While there are several properties that will soon be bankrupt, our first choice is The Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia. We are proposing to make this location a luxury retirement home for us, oops, I mean the shareholders of the PHEWP. If we purchase this toxic asset now, we can train the staff so that they won't hurt us when we become really old. This is a win-win proposal because we know how much the bank and finance industry executives have enjoyed their conference held every fall with representatives from the U.S. Congress and Federal Agencies.

We look forward to your visit on May 1, 2009. There will be a brief dance of the Maypole prior to the award presentation. Please rsvp as soon as possible to PHEWP@seynah.blogspot.com. We want to arrange for the appropriate media coverage.

SEYMOUR WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH

2009-03-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

--posted by Marie

Every year the Seymour Family collaborates on a series of family questions to celebrate Black History Month. This year, the Seymours added - Seymour Women's History Month to the mix.

Today, I am sharing not only one of the current questions - but an article about the person.

Question (thanks to Alan Green): Name the Seymour to have joined the labor party in Connecticut, ran for a seat in the Connecticut legislature and was a suffragette?

Answer (thanks to Gene): Mary Townsend Seymour

and the 411 (thanks to Doug Cordwell):

AUDACIOUS ALLIANCES

http://www.hogriver.org/issues/v01n04/audacious_alliances.htm

By Mark H. Jones

Mary T. Seymour in the only known photograph of her extant. (Hartford Courant Sunday Magazine, Sunday, September 14, 1952)

In early 20th century Hartford, Mary Townsend Seymour fought battles and formed daring alliances to promote the cause of local African Americans. She was a charter member of the Hartford chapter of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and, during the First World War, served in various war relief groups. Her public life even extended into the arenas of union organizing and politics-she was the first African American woman to run for state office. The years 1917-1920 were Seymour's most concentrated in terms of her public advocacy, but she remained influential in Hartford's African American community for decades afterward. Hers is the remarkable story of the rise of an African American woman into a position of community leadership during the early decades of the 20 th century.

Mary Seymour's origins were humble. She was born in Hartford May 10, 1873, the youngest of seven children of Jacob Townsend and Emma Smith, who had come to Hartford from Flushing and Brooklyn, New York, respectively. By 1880 Jacob Townsend had disappeared from the city directories and his fate is unknown. In August 1888 Emma Townsend died, leaving 15-year-old Mary with an uncertain future. However prior to her mother's death, the Lloyd G. Seymour family had her taken in.

On June 3, 1888 Mary visited the city's old Halls of Record at Trumbull and Pearl streets to see her birth record. Since her first name was not listed, she asked the clerk to write in "Mary Emma" in the appropriate column. The clerk also wrote in the margin that on this date the young woman had given her name as "Mary Emma Townsend Seymour." It was an emphatic declaration of selfhood. Perhaps it was her difficult childhood, tempered by her adoptive family, which led Mary Seymour to develop her empathy for impoverished mothers and children and her fierce independence.
While a member of the family, she began a friendship with Frederick Seymour. In 1891 he landed a position with the U. S. Postal Service, one of the better jobs African American males could obtain at that time. The relationship between the two blossomed, and they married on December 16, 1891. Mary was 18 years old, but the marriage register listed her as 22. In 1892 the couple had a boy they named Richard, but he died within the year and was buried in Old North Cemetery next to Mary's mother. Though Frederick and Mary were childless for the rest of their marriage their tragedy freed her to work on social causes.

Hartford's African American Community
African Americans had lived in Hartford since colonial times and over the years had achieved a tenuous peaceful coexistence in a White city. African American men found jobs as messengers, porters, cooks and chauffeurs, while African American women worked as domestics and laundresses. On October 24, 1915, the Hartford Courant ran an article entitled, "The Colored People Who Live in Hartford." A sub-headline declared, "They Have Their Own Churches, Fraternities and Other Organizations and Have Been and Are a Peaceful and Orderly Contingent, Industrious and a Credit to the City in Which They Live."

Yet this so-called harmony was relative. Hartford's African Americans resided in poor housing, paid exorbitant rents, and were not hired for better paying jobs. When investigating serious crimes, police cordoned off African American residential areas and checked every person coming in or going out.

Within a year of the Courant's assessment of them the world of these Yankee Blacks would change dramatically, and that change brought about Seymour's awakening to political and social activism. Across the industrial North, a great migration of thousands of African Americans from Dixie transformed the cities. In 1916 and 1917, hundreds of African Americans from the South moved to Hartford for better jobs and education for their children and to flee lynchings. At first, students from southern African American colleges came to work in the local tobacco fields, but letters and word-of-mouth descriptions about opportunities soon attracted families and entire church congregations. By 1917 the city's African American population more than doubled, rising from 1,600 to, according to the highest estimate, 4,000. Overnight the African American Yankees in Hartford were outnumbered by southerners who dressed differently, worshipped in a more exuberant style, and spoke with a noticeable dialect.

Whites noticed this influx and worried about its effects. For example, 700 to 800 African American students had entered Hartford schools in 1917/1918. In order to protect these students, many of whom attended evening classes, from harassment by Whites Superintendent of Schools Thomas Weaver announced that he would introduce a proposal for consideration by the Board of Education to segregate evening school classes by race. In a letter, the African American Ministerial Alliance vigorously condemned segregation, and Weaver dropped the idea. Instead, in one district there was a separate room for students of color, which educators referred to as "specialization."

Cofounded NAACP Chapter in Hartford
It was during this time that Mary Seymour emerged as a leader in her community; she led 20 Whites and African Americans in the formation of a chapter of the NAACP in Hartford. Back in January 1917, after attending an NAACP fundraiser against lynching, she and other attendees had discussed forming a local chapter. During the school controversy, they put their plan into action.
The NAACP was a fledgling national organization formed in 1909 by Whites and African Americans. By 1917, local chapters had multiplied, and it had gained a reputation as an active opponent against discrimination and lynching. Its field secretary was James Weldon Johnson, a former teacher, novelist, poet, musical lyricist, and diplomat. Mary White Ovington, a White Socialist and settlement worker, was a vice president of the organization who worked out of the New York City headquarters. Another leading force behind the NAACP's founding was Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois, a pioneering African American sociologist and eloquent advocate for equal rights for African Americans. He edited The Crisis, a magazine associated with the organization.
On October 9, 1917 James Weldon Johnson, Mary White Ovington, and W.E.B. Du Bois came to Hartford and spent an evening in the living room of Fredrick and Mary Seymour at 420 New Britain Avenue.

On October 9, 1917 these three officials came to Hartford and spent an evening in the living room of Frederick and Mary Seymour at 420 New Britain Ave. Others present included Reverend R. R. Ball of the A. M. E. Zion Church; Dr. Rockwell H. Potter, Dean of the Hartford Theological Seminary and a leading White reformer; and three White female reformers and suffragists: Mary Bulkeley, Josephine Bennett, and Katherine Beach Day. They agreed to form an NAACP chapter, and elected an African American, William Service Bell, as president. On November 26, Johnson, Du Bois, and White returned to Hartford to attend the chapter's first open meeting held at Center Church.

Like other African American female members of local NAACP chapters across the country, Mary Seymour carried out the day-to-day administrative work of the chapter. In the early days of the chapter she also served as its spokesperson in the absence of Bell, who was fighting overseas. In the 1920s this dual work would become a burden for her.

During the war years, women in African American Hartford formed clubs to address the problems of caring for soldiers and their families and helping the newcomers from the South assimilate into the urban North. But Mary T. Seymour went further than that. She joined the home service section of the Red Cross and observed the wretched conditions of African American soldiers' families. In the spring of 1918, she was instrumental in forming a local chapter of The Circle for Negro War Relief, Inc. to care for soldiers abroad and stateside and their families. Seymour and two allies from the NAACP, Rev. R. R. Ball and William S. Bell, served on the executive committee. Around this time, Seymour joined the newly formed Colored Women's League of Hartford. The League intended to teach the newcomers basic "domestic sciences" and bought a house on North Main Street with donations from the city's Whites and Blacks for meetings and classes.

In May 1918 Seymour corresponded with Caroline Ruutz-Rees, a suffragist, scholar and educator, who was chairperson of the Woman's Committee of the Connecticut State Council of Defense. Seymour informed Ruutz-Rees about the Hartford chapter of the Circle for Negro War Relief, and wrote a report on its activities. She also detailed the discriminatory practices that African American men and women faced from the army, navy, and the Red Cross. Seymour referred to the lynching of a pregnant African American woman in Georgia a few days before while the victim's brother was serving the cause of "freedom" abroad. "If we are to win this war," she exhorted Ruutz-Rees, "this thing of color prejudice has got to be reckoned with by those friends of your race who have the courage of their convictions to talk about it."

Involvement with Labor Issues
Her war relief work led Seymour to become interested in labor issues-especially regarding African American women working on the tobacco warehouse assembly line, whom she had visited in her capacity as a Red Cross home service worker. Seymour and Josephine Bennett interviewed African American female tobacco workers and learned how White warehouse foremen, some from the South, were cheating them out of an honest wage. The workers were never told what the piecework rate was each day and they never knew whether those who weighed each worker's tobacco leaves were ensuring an honest total. In a long letter sent to the NAACP that was later published in the June 1920 issue of The Crisis , Seymour described her own experience on a tobacco warehouse assembly line: She appeared at a warehouse in working clothes and spent time tobacco stripping and stemming. In this manner she was able to verify the women's complaints.

Seymour and Bennett urged the African American female tobacco workers to organize their own union to fight for their rights. This was a daring notion because, as Seymour noted, the idea of forming a union was not supported by the local African American clergy, who railed against unions from their pulpits. Bennett and Seymour were able to secure the signed union cards from sixty courageous African American women; Seymour served as the local's secretary. However the local remained stagnant, members became discouraged, and within a year it fell apart. In Hartford, as well as other cities in the North, White unions viewed the migration of southern Blacks as a threat. Certainly racism was one reason for this viewpoint-the bosses and the white unions believed that African Americans did not have skills or aptitude to work on the assembly-line machines-but there were also economic reasons. Industrialists had used the African American migrants as "scab" labor to break strikes.

Bennett and Seymour, on the other hand, believed in a different vision. They foresaw a day when African American and White workers would form an alliance to advocate their shared rights and defend their common interests. As an officer of the local, Seymour sat on the Central Labor Union, an assembly of representatives from the city's locals. During meetings, she discussed the racial attitudes of White workers and the common stake of the two races. Mary T. Seymour even read articles from The Crisis .

African American Women and the Vote
Seymour also worked to enfranchise African American women, particularly after WWI ended. For her generation of White and African American female reformers, the suffrage movement should have been a unifying cause. But unlike their White counterparts African American women had to fight gender and class as well as racial barriers. After the Armistice, as women revived the fight for the 19 th amendment, many White suffragists, such as Alice Paul, head of the National Women's Party, declared that they were interested only in removing the gender requirement for the vote. How states chose to qualify voters was of no interest to them. They announced this position in order to retain the support of southern White women and to reassure southern senators and congressmen that extending the suffrage to women would not enfranchise African American women. It was a stance that African American suffragists like Seymour naturally opposed.

On February 18, 1919, The World quoted Alice Paul's remarks regarding the intention of "Negro women" in Carolina to vote if the 19 th amendment were passed. Paul reaffirmed that if passed, the amendment would not enfranchise these women. "We are organizing the White women in South Carolina but have heard of no activity or anxiety among the negresses." The article inflamed Mary Seymour so much that she wrote to Paul demanding an explanation and called the NAACP headquarters. As a result NAACP national leaders did ask Alice Paul and the National Woman's Suffrage Association to clarify their stands on votes for African American women. But their responses were evasive and unsatisfactory.

In April 1919 Seymour wrote NAACP national headquarters assessing the commitment of prominent White suffragists in Hartford for extending the right to vote to all women. She noted that Josephine Bennett, a member of the Hartford NAACP and the Women's Party, who knew Alice Paul, did not engage in "expediency" in order to get the 19 th amendment passed. Katharine Houghton Hepburn (mother of the actress), on the other hand, who served on the executive board of the Woman's Party, was "very democratic in some things-but not to be trusted too far on the Negro question. She is a politician," Seymour cautioned, "in every sense of the word."

There is much more to Mary Seymour's story. The 1917 Hartford school controversy notwithstanding, Seymour knew that she must address the issues of education and literacy among the newly arriving southern Blacks. Having learned how to work the system, Seymour formed one of her more audacious alliances when she convinced Hartford's Americanization Committee (entrusted with teaching English and reading to immigrants and instilling patriotic values) to sponsor literacy classes for the African American newcomers. In 1920, she ran for state representative on the Farmer-Labor Party ticket. Though the party did poorly in the election, Seymour had the distinction of being the first African American woman to run for the Connecticut State Assembly. She remained active in the local chapter of the NAACP in the 1920s and continued to exert influence behind the scenes long after she had resigned as chairperson of the chapter's executive board in November 1926. Her word was trusted, and for years she recommended African Americans for jobs in the White community, a duty usually reserved for the male African American Ministerial Alliance. At her death on January 12, 1957 newspapers eulogized her. In 1998, My Sister's Place in Hartford dedicated a new apartment building, named the Mary Seymour Place, on North Main Street as a shelter for women. Seymour would have approved.

Going Back Up the Down Staircase

2009-03-20T13:23:00.000-07:00

From: Gene

Though it feels strange to recall now, “To Kill a Mockingbird” was one of my first “forbidden” films. I was, after all, only 9 or 10 when it came out and when my mother found out from my aunt that the subject of “r-a-p-e” was woven into the storyline, she said that movie was definitely not the kind of thing for my weak eyes to behold. My aunt took me and my cousin anyway; to Hartford’s Blue Hills Drive-In on a Saturday night (no less), which made it seem even more transgressive (all together now) than it actually was. It was late enough at night to make me wonder now whether I even began to understand all those unsavory aspects my mother didn’t want me to see, Mostly, I thought “Mockingbird” was a more exotic and far spookier species of the Disney melodramas we’d see whenever they showed up at a downtown palace like the Strand or Loews Poli. Disney himself, according to Neil Gabler’s biography, reacted to “Mockingbird” with envy. (“That’s the kind of film I wish I could make,” he said after a screening. What kind is that, Uncle?)
Since then, “To Kill a Mockingbird” has been turned into such a rite-of-passage movie for succeeding generations of pre-adolescent cineastes (see “Almost Famous”) that its reputation is in danger of collecting mold. Some reviewers at the time thought it arrived with plenty of mildew. But as far as most of us were concerned, it was right on time – and as the decades pass, it’s still very much a part of a transformative moment in history and a collective consciousness-raising whose legacy we still treasure. Much later, I would discover how much Harper Lee’s story owed to Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust”, whose blunt-edged, superior 1949 film version by Clarence Brown has YET to appear on DVD! (Someday, this space will have to take up the “Free Juano Hernandez” cause.) But both her novel and its movie version have become so ingrained in our cultural DNA over the last half-century that it’s hard to find anyone who gripes about it now.
“Mockingbird”, of course, is the centerpiece of the Film Society of Lincoln Center “American Auteurs” retrospective tribute to its director, Robert Mulligan, which begins March 18 and runs through March 25 at the Walter Reade Theater. (See the full schedule here http://www.filmlinc.com/) Mulligan, who died last year at age 80, left behind an erratic, but still intriguing body-of-work. Somehow, his first two, 1957’s “Fear Strikes Out” and 1960’s “The Rat Race’ (with Don Rickles playing a psycho thug) didn’t make it onto the schedule, but 1965’s “Baby the Rain Must Fall”, 1969’s “The Stalking Moon”, 1971’s “Summer of ‘42” an 1972’s “The Other” are there as are 1978’s Richard Price adaptation, “Blood Brothers” and 1991’s “The Man in the Moon” (Mulligan’s last, notable now as Reese Witherspoon’s debut.)
The catch-phrase about Mulligan’s career was that he was especially good with kids, though it should also be noted that, much like his contemporary Sidney Lumet, he seemed especially inspired by New York City; not that any of his Gotham-centric movies surpassed “Mockingbird” either in quality or impact, but there were flashes of inspiration in those movies that came within a spiked-hair’s distance of “Mockingbird.”
Of these, the one that I’ve lately rediscovered with the most pleasure is 1967’s “Up the Down Staircase.” It’s one of those relics of one’s movie-going past that you’ll never regard as great or even consistently good; yet somehow, you cherish even its messier moments in different ways than you covet the masterworks in your DVD library.
Back to my side of things: I went to an inner city high school very much like the one along Manhattan’s fringes that was cast in the movie as Calvin Coolidge High. The building was as drab, creaky and aged as the one I attended at about the same time. It, too, had “up” and “down” staircases and, because, before my freshman year, I’d read the Bel Kaufman novel from which the movie was adapted, I knew the perils of using the wrong stairwell; not that knowing such things mattered very much in the end.
Also because I’d read the book, I remember looking forward to the movie version when it was first released, not just to see how Kaufman’s epistolary narrative would be transferred to the screen, but to watch how it evoked day-to-day life in mid-1960s urban public education.
More than anything, I remember being caught up in the movie’s coating of New York grit which to me evoked an edgy glamour and seedy authenticity I found back then in pseudo-documentary TV cop shows. I had reservations, too: The musical score tried too hard to be winsome and cute, making it seem even more like a Hollywood product, despite the presence of such New York-based character actors as Sorrell Brooke, Vinnette Carroll, Ruth White, Eileen Heckart and Jean Stapleton. (Yup, that’s Edith Bunker herself as the school’s by-the-book secretary.)
Still, the school’s overall racial mix was pretty much in line with the urban school I attended. If, to contemporary eyes, there are a lot more white students than black students in this fringe neighborhood school, well, as the late, great comedian Godfrey Cambridge used to say, “Dats the way it wuz in dem days!” Most formerly all-white suburbs are exactly like that now.
What hasn’t changed much, if what my younger sister, a teacher in a working-class Hartford suburb, tells me is the grim mood and simmering sense of helplessness teachers find at their twilight parent conferences. (If anything, my sister says it’s gotten worse – and she teaches elementary kids.)
Though there are a couple of big melodramatic moments that become as over-emphatic as in any high school movie (the attempted suicide and its aftermath), the movie gets many of the little details right; their recognition is often funny, sometimes rueful. For instance: An African-American student, praised by his teacher for a cogent answer, is heckled outside the classroom as a “white-loving plowboy.” (If you’re guessing this moment landed on my chest with an especially resounding bump back then, all I’ll say in response is that it still does.) Overall, “Up the Down Staircase”, in its unwieldy blend of big and small vignettes somehow retains a vivid tableau of what such a public high school looked like in the Great Society years before metal detectors, cramped classrooms and fraying budgets. It’s awkward and gangly and sometimes too solemn for its own good. But then again, so was I back then. I watch this movie and it’s almost like watching my own hesitant sense of where and who I was when it was still possible to believe the Dream not only wouldn’t die, but actually come true.
Carrying this whole story with mild, tentative poise is Sandy Dennis as game, but perpetually flustered rookie teacher Sylvia Barrett. This was one of the very few lead roles (likely the only one) Dennis had in a mercurial movie career characterized by prodigiously neurotic characters. She was, after all, a devotee of the Method and, even here, once in a while, a mannerism will poke out of her performance like a loose thread. But she seems animated here by a sense of purpose that borders on vivacity – which isn’t a word that often shares a sentence with her name. In “Staircase”, she evinces a lemony composure that, for one of the few times in her on-screen career, never allows you to see the wheels turn. You wonder, 17 years after Dennis’ death from ovarian cancer, what her own body-of-work would have looked like if she’d had more chances to show this side of her. Maybe she did – and chose not to.

“Up the Down Staircase” is being screened at Walter Reade March 21 and March 23. It’s also available on Warner Home Video.

Chafin Seymour Updated

2009-03-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

http://minuet.dance.ohio-state.edu/~seymour77/

video to come

We want all of the dance aficionados in our reader following to know about this New York City Resource www.eyeondance.org

Watching "Cabin in the Sky" for Lent

2009-03-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

From: Gene

At the hinge of the 1960s and 1970s, “Cabin in the Sky” embodied just about everything we young, gifted & solemn black college students thought we were fighting against. All we blinkered baby cultural-nationalists could see back then in those idyllic depictions of small-town African American folk life were unhealthy levels of honeysuckle and hambone. Away with those rolling dice and eyeballs, all that cornball piety & undignified shucking…Is that really what we wanted our collective profile to look like after King and Malcolm and countless others had died for our advancement?
It’s a measure of how much time has passed that I can’t even LOOK at that previous sentence, much less write it, without wincing; the same kind of wincing we aforementioned Children of the Movement were doing whenever “Cabin” poked out from TV’s wee-hour wilds or was screened at collegiate film societies. Exaggerated nose-turning-in-a-vertical-direction is at least as embarrassing as pronounced eye-rolling – and not nearly as funny. Given the choice between retroactive scoldings from what some new-jack pundits have come to label the “soul patrol” and the to-be-or-not-to-be anxieties displayed by Eddie “Rochester” Anderson and I know whose party I’d rather go to,
The distinction no longer needs raising, much less stressing. A few days ago, I’d hosted a screening of “Cabin” for a Wednesday-night Lenten supper at our predominantly black Episcopal church in lower Manhattan. It was a small audience, mostly older and just about all of its members had seen the movie before and loved it without predisposition or qualifiers (even though the DVD released three years ago opens with Warner Home Video’s contemporary disclaimer apologizing about “stereotypes” that were “wrong then and wrong now.”) The tiny audience appeared to appreciate the concern, though it didn’t need to be told what was or wasn’t appropriate. They just wanted a warm black-and-white memory bath. Even the sole 20-something in the room, recruited to help with projection, was caught up in a movie old enough to be his (grand) mother.
Each time I see the movie, I’m more galvanized by the sheer magnetism of its performers. Even in the reproachful seventies, it was hard not to be waylaid by the glory that was Lena Horne in her twenties. What she was then and what she remained throughout the sixties and beyond was so legitimate & enduring to young black fogies like us that we gave her quick dispensation for “Cabin”; the kind of pass that that didn’t easily go to, say, Ethel Waters (about whom, more later),“Rochester” Anderson or John “Bubbles” Sublett, whose song-and-dance recital of “Shine” is at once the movie’s most glaring anachronism and its most flamboyant affirmation of poise and skill.
Which in no way slights everyone else in the movie, though you wish Louis Armstrong got to do even a little bit more than set off a few elegant licks while wearing those ridiculous devil’s horns. You also wish you could see more of Duke Ellington’s orchestra at work beyond flashes of its suave, imperturbable leader. (That IS Johnny Hodges in the front with the alto, right?) But first-time director Vincente Minnelli was too caught up in the dancing and singing – and rightfully so. His own eye is so greedy and avid for movement and energy that you can almost feel him sitting next to you as you’re looking for the next big moment.
Almost all of which moments are owned by Waters. Donald Bogle has elsewhere noted how often contemporary audiences are drawn to screenings of “Cabin” by the promise of seeing the young, cat-like Horne, yet leave those screenings dazzled by Waters’ charisma. If younger moviegoers had easy access to Waters’ recordings from the 1920s and 1930s, they’d be better prepared for her vocal agility. (Critics and historians, not that anyone pays them any mind, argue with conviction that Waters’ chops as a singer were the equal of Armstrong’s – and that her influence on jazz singing was just as emphatic & far-reaching.) But hardly anyone at any age is prepared for the moment when Waters’ Petunia, backsliding into “sin” to “save” Anderson’s Joe from the Devil’s clutches, sashays into a startlingly graceful jitterbug with Sublett’s Domino. One has read in books about both women of tension between Horne and Waters throughout “Cabin’s” shooting. (In her own memoir, “His Eye is On the Sparrow”, Waters doesn’t go into detail about the friction except to say that she “won every battle” and that her scrapes kept her away from the movies for another six years.) Whether Waters ended up dominating “Cabin” by fair or foul means, her triumph endures just as Dilsey, the character she played in her last film, 1959’s “The Sound and the Fury,” endured.
After the church screening was over, I asked the audience if there were still aspects of the movie that offended or seemed out-of-date. No one could think of any – and I honestly couldn’t come up with any that mattered. I do wish, in retrospect, that I’d asked them if it seemed as though the folks who were either in hell or engaging in “sinful” partying had a better time – and heard better music – than those who stayed close to Petunia’s righteous path. I decided against bringing that dilemma up in a Lenten discussion, though it now strikes me that there were folks willing to talk it over.
I did, however, bring up the closest present-day corollary to “Cabin in the Sky’s” blend of low comedy and Manichean melodrama: The films of Tyler Perry, especially those featuring Madea, Perry’s pious, pistol-packing alter-ego. Since I knew that all those assembled had seen more than one Perry movie more than once, I asked if there was any real difference between the depictions of black life in “Cabin” and those in, say, “Madea Goes to Prison.” They said there were none; a surprise to me since I expected them to mention the relative rawness of Perry’s depictions of single motherhood, class animus and teen pregnancy. “Cabin’s” dichotomy between Petunia’s milk-and-honey world view and the temptations of the flesh embodied by Horne’s duplicitous Georgia Brown seem like old school Disney by comparison. But in both cases, a simplistic (as opposed to simple) solution to mortal weakness and moral sloth is submitted to audiences for whom broad laughs and big emotions are perhaps the only justifications for entertainment.
Perry continues to astound the mainstream (white) world with the bushels of money he reaps for his movies. And his entrepreneurial moxie serves as a reminder that, unlike the 1940s (or the two decades subsequent to or preceding them), it’s possible for African American artists to have some control over how they’re depicted on screen, for better or worse. I still wonder whether future generations of black people will someday accuse his work of, at best, being too over-the-top or (so to speak) too black-and-white in their moralistic aims. I doubt it somehow. But of one thing I have no doubt: Madea, whatever her own martial skills or swaggering mojo, is no Ethel Waters.

WELCOME TO YEAR OF THE "SLUMDOG" MUTT

2009-02-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

(with acknowledgement to Frank Rich, NY Times, Sunday, February 8, 2009 )

President Obama sent me an email yesterday asking for an “economic crisis” story.

Our economic crisis began in 1991 when we moved for job reasons from Philadelphia to Brooklyn.

We had just bought a house in 1990 & over the next 5 years watched as the value became 30% lower than the outstanding mortgage. In 1996, when the last group of U of Penn students moved out and left behind a monster gas bill, it was time to call it quits.

Our options were zero. We could not sell it; could not afford to rent it. So, facing foreclosure & after hiring a lawyer, we devised a strategy. We asked FannieMae to take the house; we would turn over several months of mortgage payments that we had escrowed on advice of our lawyer. After months of agonizing letters, phone calls and assembling many pages of back-up documentation, we had gotten no where. Finally, I used a professional contact and made a call to a FannieMae executive in Washington, D.C.

The local Fannie Mae office finally returned our call. The negotiations were quick and dirty. Fannie Mae would take the house and the escrowed mortgage payments; we got to sign two loan notes from the mortgage insurance company to repay the loss over the next seven years. The only concession was that the notes were “no interest” loans. Fannie Mae came out whole; the mortgage insurance company was fine as long as we continued to have income and us, - well, we lost the $55,000 we had put into the house, and we dutifully felt guilty, repaid the notes and paid a substantial amount of Federal taxes every year thereafter.

Fast forward.

2001 - Facing the sale of the Brooklyn apartment we had rented when we left Philadelphia in 1991, we finally had to buy a place to live.

2007, our current mortgage was 42% of the market value. That's great news!

Last week I was trying to complete our 2008 tax returns. What a revelation!
Income in 2008 was 70% lower than in 2007 -
2008 basic living expenses were 45% higher (no vacations, clothes or
electronic purchases included!) -
And we will pay Fed taxes for 2008.
Our mortgage remains our “only debt.

How low can it go before it is an economic crisis?

So, having a "Yes We Can" outlook, I began to consider 2009:
2009 income is projected to be another 20% lower.
My retirement account statement dated December 31, 2008 had a loss of over 26% in less than 5 months.
Health insurance costs us $8800 a year.
Our monthly costs exceed current income by 30%; our mortgage is our only debt.

This is as low as it goes. What happens next?

How about an “economic stimulus” package or affordable health care. About $5000 a month will make us “whole.” We could settle for less. I’ve been reading and listening; I haven't found anything in the proposed “economic stimulus” bill that will provide any relief in the next 12 months.

So, I think we will have to use the $50,000 credit limit that I noted while cutting up a credit card which had changed its terms to charge 23% interest on any outstanding balance during the month, even for being one day late with a payment).

Then we could really qualify for being in an economic crisis. Can we will apply for a bailout from “TARP.”

So, President Obama, would you please ask Secretary Geithner to give us some advice?
or maybe a job.

Errant Thoughts on Black History Month

2009-02-07T10:26:00.001-08:00

Each February, like clockwork, my cousin Alan Green sounds a kind of digital horn to as many wired-in Seymours as he can gather around the Web to proclaim the beginning of our Black History Month guessing game. The rules are simple. He asks us questions about the Seymour family history stretching as far back as pre-Revolutionary slavery days and we send back answers. Often they’re the same questions (Q: “Which Seymour was the first African American in Connecticut to claim membership in the Sons of the American Revolution?” A: “Frederick William.”), though sometimes he or someone on the mailing list comes up with an unexpected curve that stumps everyone. I expect one of these to sail into my e-mail bag any day now.
However this ancestral gut check plays out, it’s become a welcome opportunity for all of us to shout out at each other from our work stations, college dormitories, home offices and Blackberries. Many of us live far away from each other. Some of us haven’t seen each other in years – or have never met at all. It has become the principal means for maintaining contact, not only with each other, but with all the sad and lonesome ghosts of our forebears who I imagine to be looking upon our jocular flurry of Q&As with something like bemused affection. I also imagine that the congenital streak of Yankee truculence embedded in the Seymour DNA also makes these ghosts wonder why we’re making such a big deal out of this junk.
As much as I love a good quiz show, I can understand such skepticism. I’m not so sure it’s confined, even hypothetically, to cranky ancestors. This year, more than ever, I’m sensing, at the very least, some fatigue among African Americans with the very notion of a Black History Month. Some might obliquely (or not) connect this discontent with last month’s inauguration in keeping with the yet-to-be-established-for-sure notion that Obama’s ascension means We Have Overcome. I think this isn’t quite right because a.) not that many black folks go that far with their euphoria when they sit down and think about it and b.) this ennui with Black History Month has been building for some time.
The most conspicuous example of this skepticism emerged two years ago on “The Daily Show” whose “resident black historian” Larry Willmore submitted to nonplussed anchor Jon Stewart as half-hearted an acknowledgement of Black History Month (hereafter intermittently shrunk to a space-saving acronym) as can be delivered on a fake news show. Willmore, who could stand a shot at his own fake news forum, gave voice to the nagging, suppressed imp within many of us. My own inner imp has wondered about the purpose of BHM long before Barack Obama took his SATs.
And I’m old enough to remember when February used to come around as “Negro History Month.” Being in an integrated public elementary school, I believed back then that I needed the month of February to distinguish myself and those who looked like me from the mainstream. (Look at what we did! Look at who we are!) Black wasn’t quite yet as Beautiful as it would become after I started high school, so February was pretty much all we had.
After the reawakening of Black Pride came to full fruition in the early 1970s, BHM was celebrated even more fervently at the same time that its very existence began to be questioned, beginning with, “Why February?” By this time, of course, a whole lot of people, black and white, started challenging the long-prevalent logic of celebrating African American history in the same month that the Great Emancipator was born. After Martin Luther King Jr.s Birthday was declared a holiday, one heard stirrings towards shifting BHM back a month. Hasn’t happened yet – and besides, who needed to bring Lincoln into the matter at all when W.E.B. DuBois’ birthday happened to fall on Feb. 22? Not that anyone makes a particularly big deal about DuBois when BHM rolls around like an in-law’s annual visit; still, it remains a convenient enough excuse.
My own discontent with BHM swirled around its particularity. “Shouldn’t every month be Black History Month?,” I would rhetorically ask those (mostly) whites and (some) blacks who noticed my diminishing enthusiasm for BHM. I still believe that just as I believe year-long conscientious attention should be paid to our shared, complex heritage. More to the point, allowing one month each year for the rest of America to pay close attention to us seemed just another excuse for the rest of America to ignore us for the remaining eleven. (“Twenty-eight days to make up for four-hundred years of oppression?,” Larry Willmore asked “I’d rather have casinos.” Which sounds as valid an option now as it was in 2007.)
But perhaps the most nagging itch came with the way public and private institutions persist in acknowledging BHM as a litany of -- and let the word be capitalized and italicized so all may bask in its all-encompassing glory – Achievements.
Not just, as the “Daily Show” mentions, Harriet Tubman and Tuskegee Airmen and “the guy who invented the peanut”, but a plethora of renegades, rugged individualists and (for want of a better word) “leaders” shoe-horned into a standardized model for Struggling Through & Getting Over. This iconography of Those Who Made It is stretched so wide that it even takes in those who put their bodies in harm’s way during the civil rights movement. Nothing irritates me more about this particular issue than the shorthand meted out by talking heads and lazy schoolteachers alike about Martin Luther King Jr.’s life work. It’s the world-view that insists on regarding King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize as an Ultimate Achievement; as if submitting to arrests, beatings, death threats, slander and, ultimately, cold-blooded murder were a career choice instead of a calling, a sacrifice, for God’s sake!
It’s so much easier in a world ruled by Tabloid Culture to deal not just with King, but with DuBois, Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells, Jackie Robinson and their like as granite icons of triumph-over-adversity rather than as complex, nuanced human beings whose flaws and contradictions may offer as much educational value as their virtues and successes. (You don’t see too many commercial TV spots during BHM extolling such troubling presences in the American psyche as Nat Turner, Bessie Smith or Paul Robeson, do you?) Worse, the reductive enshrinement of Getting Over, Making It , etc. reinforces in African Americans that such values are the ONLY ones worth striving for. As someone could and should have said in the middle of the Obama Inaugural euphoria, Getting Over is only part of the deal. What matters even more is what you do when you Get There. Consider the examples of Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas or (as it’s lately become depressingly apparent) David Patterson and ask yourself whether just Making It to the top is enough. If all BHM is about is extolling advancement (which, as noted earlier, used to be enough when there wasn’t anything else around) over honest and productive inquiry into the past, then maybe it, too, should be cast in granite and consigned to history’s basement.
And yet…I’m not sure I’m ready for that to happen. I still need some ongoing, clearly-marked acknowledgement and celebration of the beautiful, terrible passage that carried us all to this uncertain, yet potentially transfiguring time we live in now. One month isn’t enough, one year isn’t enough. But something like the recurring, interactive Seymour Family History game provides a useful, expansive model for honoring the past without neglecting further exploration of its shadowed corners, its derelict edges. It could be a template for showing that history not only begins at home, but also never stops adjusting, shifting, adding on…never stops, period.
Not that I even pretend to know everything there is to know about my family history, but I have always sensed, at least, that the Seymours have never been easily placated by simple bromides or easily explained behavior and neither should anyone else. Playing the game is another way of reminding each other that we’re still alive. When history is once again acknowledged as something that’s truly in the bloodstream and not on a marble plaque, Black History Month won’t be the only thing whose existence will once again be justified.

More on FORECLOSURE- Mom Buys a House

2009-02-07T09:43:00.000-08:00

Some of the earliest pictures of Irma & Robert Nahikian in front of their home bought with Irma Nahikian's tailoring for the US Navy, below.

_________________________________________________________

Compliments of Lavon, Brother No 1. And Thank You!_________________________________________________________

A few corrections to the blog, if I may...

For part of World War II, U.S. Navy Radioman First Class (RFC) Robert L. Nahikian (1) was stationed on the campus of the University of Alabama in Auburn, Ala. RFC Nahikian taught Morse Code to class after class of sailors soon to be heading to the South Pacific.

(1) Dad’s rating was RM3 then RM2 at Auburn...this means Radioman Third Class then Radioman Second Class. He made RM1 when the Navy Radioman school at Alabama Polytechnic Institution (later renamed Auburn University) was decommissioned (closed). The RFC is an incorrect ")designation."

Family lore has it that when the commanding officer was obsessed with having the sharpest looking sailors in the U.S. Navy. Inspections happened almost daily. During one inspection, he noticed RM3 (third class petty officer) Nahikian's tailored uniforms and demanded to know how this uniform had been altered.

RFC Nahikian, more than a little worried about his "altered" state, confessed that his wife & mother of his two (at that time) children had made the changes, removing the "bell" from the bell bottoms, sewing on the patches and tailoring the mid-blouse to fit. Irma Curtis Nahikian had arrived by bus. (2)
(2) "TRAIN...due to rationing, commercial intercity bus service was non-existant).

Soon, the commander set Mom up in business in a one room building. As hundreds of new sailors arrived, their uniforms were piled and piled beside Mom & her sewing machine. My sister and brother (about 4 and 7 years old) remember having a rotation of sailors that looked after them and their goat. (3)

(3) The base commander was a previously retired full commander that had been recalled to active duty. He was appalled by the appearance of the students under his command as they had been rushed through boot camp with insufficient time to have their uniforms altered to properly fit. When he saw that Dad’s uniforms were altered to fit perfectly he asked Dad where he had them done as he did not know of any local establishment capable of doing this work.

Dad explained that his wife was an accomplished tailor and had a sewing machine. It was suggested that if Mom was agreeable, the Navy could set her up in an on-base facility where she could operate a tailoring shop. She was given a large room at the end of a warehouse and she spent all day working with her foot-powered treadle Singer sewing machine altering uniforms and sewing on stripes. Keep in mind that this was a un-air conditioned building set in an open field in central Alabama. I can’t imagine what the temperature was.

The rest of the building was a supply warehouse and there was a civilian employee who ran it. He resented Mon “invading” his little kingdom. He felt that women should not be working and should be at home. The goat you mentioned was his, not ours. He had it to keep the grass around the building cut and also milked it. This man also had a hatred for red-headed woodpeckers and shot them whenever he could with a BB gun.

The rotation of sailors who looked after Marta and I were actually the security guards who did keep an eye on us as we wandered in and out of their area of responsibility, but there were no sailors directly assigned to “look after” us."
For the next two years, (slightly more than one year ...1943 . I started second grade in Asheville in 1944) Mom sewed: patches, insignias, taking the bell out of the bell bottoms - at $.25 (yes, a quarter) each. A year later, RFC Nahikian (by now he was RM2) was deployed to a ship. Mom packed up her two kids, her sewing machine, $3750.00 and went home to Asheville, N.C.

This was the down payment for the home we lived in for the next 50 years. At 25 cents each, she had sewn 11,000 uniforms in 12 months

P.S. - Having a down payment did not guarantee buying a house. Mom found the house to buy for $7.500, but (of course) couldn't get a mortgage - no subprime lenders in those days, even with a 50% down payment. Finally the mortgage was approved in her Mother-in-Law's name. This was considered a unique exception; the bank officer noted that "Mrs. Nahikian has a job in a war product factory and is a responsible widow." (4)

(4) " The money for the down payment came from all those hundreds of uniforms Mom had altered in Alabama. But, when she started the purchase negotiations a big problem arose. Under North Carolina law at that time, a wife could NOT buy property and could not get a mortgage loan!!! Her husband could, but he had to be physically present to sign all the papers, mortgage agreement, etc. The fact that this was impossible as he was in the South Pacific had no bearing. No husband present . . . . No purchase, no mortgage loan, no exceptions. The dilemma was resolved by Grandmother Alice (as she was a widow, the requirement for a husband did not apply) buying the house and then giving it as a gift to her daughter-in-law. "

Gene's 2009 Oscar Picks

2009-02-06T07:22:00.001-08:00

Back in Gene's Newsday period (which seems a lot longer ago than it actually is), he was asked each year by Tom O'Neill, the indefatigable, unstoppable proprietor of the Gold Derby awards site, to submit his Oscar prognostications. Gene was good enough at handicapping this stuff to have been asked to return again & again. Tom graciously continues to ask Gene what he thinks about the Academys and Gene is more than happy to comply. Here's what he thinks as it presently runs on the LA Times "The Envelope.com" site

Foreclosures? Mom Buys a House-1944

2009-02-06T07:05:00.000-08:00

The Nahikian part of SeyNah grew up in Asheville, N.C. We lived in the same house all of my growing up years. Included were 4 siblings, dogs and from time-to-time various other family members (extended & not always so extended).

For part of World War II, U.S. Navy Radioman First Class (RFC) Robert L. Nahikian was stationed on the campus of the University of Alabama in Auburn, Ala. RFC Nahikian taught Morse Code to class after class of sailors soon to be heading to the South Pacific.

Family lore has it that when the commanding officer was obsessed with having the sharpest looking sailors in the U.S. Navy. Inspections happened almost daily. During one inspection, he noticed RFC Nahikian's tailored uniforms and demanded to know how this uniform had been altered.

RFC Nahikian, more than a little worried about his "altered" state, confessed that his wife & mother of his two (at that time)children had made the changes, removing the "bell" from the bell bottoms, sewing on the patches and tailoring the mid-blouse to fit. Irma Curtis Nahikian had arrived by bus only a few days earlier with two small children and her sewing machine.

Soon, the commander set Mom up in business in a one room building. As hundreds of new sailors arrived, their uniforms were piled and piled beside Mom & her sewing machine. My sister and brother (about 4 and 7 years old) remember having a rotation of sailors that looked after them and their goat.

For the next two years, Mom sewed: patches, insignias, taking the bell out of the bell bottoms - at $.25 (yes, a quarter) each. A year later, RFC Nahikian was deployed to a ship. Mom packed up her two kids, her sewing machine, $3750.00 and went home to Asheville, N.C.

This was the down payment for the home we lived in for the next 50 years. At 25 cents each, she had sewn 11,000 uniforms in 12 months.

P.S. - Having a down payment did not guarantee buying a house. Mom found the house to buy for $7.500, but (of course) couldn't get a mortgage - no subprime lenders in those days, even with a 50% down payment. Finally the mortgage was approved in her Mother-in-Law's name. This was considered a unique exception; the bank officer noted that "Mrs. Nahikian has a job in a war product factory and is a responsible widow."

Gung Hay Fat Choy

2009-01-26T07:38:00.000-08:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR OF THE MUTT

from "The Mutts"

"Legend has it that in ancient times, Buddha asked all the animals to meet him on Chinese New Year. Twelve came, and Buddha named a year after each one. He announced that the people born in each animal's year would have some of that animal's personality." -Holly Hartman, http://www.infoplease.com/spot/chinesenewyear1.html

Those born in ox years (including 2009) tend to be painters, engineers, and architects. They are stable, fearless, obstinate, hard-working and friendly

The Year of the Mutt is a little different. Mutts are fearless, obstinate and of course, friendly! In 2009, the Mutts are reminding everyone to celebrate the most important trait of all -- inclusive exclusivity!

An Inclusive-Exclusive Tale

Inauguration Day - January 20 - the two oldest Mutts were in Washington, DC, holding two of the hottest "blue tickets" in town that would give us inclusive exclusive access to a "close-up" on the swearing in.

It was to be more exclusive than we could have imagined. 4 1/2 hours in the frigid cold, driven like Oxen, in circles. At 10:30am the "Blue Gate" was in sight with only 5,000 others with exclusive access in front of us.

So, a decision was made in keeping with an old Chinese proverb:

"It is not easy to stop the fire when the water is at a distance; friends at hand are better than relations afar off. "

Rushing several blocks in search of a bathroom, warmth and a TV, we joined the celebratory sisters and brothers in a Mexican restaurant. Amidst multiple shots of tequila, the crowd finally beat the loudest brothers into submission so that we could hear.

As the swearing ended, a voice rang out, "When does he get the ring?" We turned, asking, "What ring? He doesn't get a ring; he just gets Air Force One and the keys to the big White House." The voice insisted, "Nah, I know he gets a ring. Bush has to give it to him."

And so, as the shouts of celebration grew louder than the television commentary, we knew (in hindsight, of course) that we had witnessed this moment in complete Inclusive exclusivity!

We leave you with a proverbial Chinese thought:

"A Wise Man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it."

GUNG HAY FAT CHOY!

Obamardigras

2009-01-23T17:54:00.000-08:00

Washington, D.C. will never be the same again. It was one very BIG celebration.

The days were also full of symbols & many tears.

"You'll Never Walk Alone" - our people at the WE ARE ONE concert at the Lincoln Memorial...

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Bad Dogs

2009-01-23T17:45:00.000-08:00

With today’s entry, we initiate a new department: The Bad Dog List. When something or someone bothers The Year of the Mutt, we shall respond post-haste with a toss of the keys and a wagging finger of reproach. Of course, it’s highly unlikely that our stern calls of “Bad Dog!” will make our selections stay or sit, much less correct their unruly actions. But you have to let a Mutt know when she’s engaged in improper conduct. So here’s the first of what will, by year’s end, be a very long list of Very Bad Dogs:

THE PRESIDENTIAL INAUGURAL COMMITTEE
As many of you have heard by now, Tuesday’s History-Making Event was ruined for thousands of ticketed would-be spectators who waited and waited and waited and waited for what seemed like eons (six-to-seven hours in 11-degree wind chill smushed with other cold, sullen humans qualifies as at least an eon) only to be told, as they approached their respective entrances with an hour before show time, that there were no more people, with or without tickets, being admitted.
Among the many galling things about this situation was the lack of substantial information being put forth by those allegedly in charge of the inauguration as to the reasons for the lengthy delays. For those holding blue tickets, for instance, rumors of a broken metal detector floated through the crowd, though there were still no indications given as to whether those blue ticket-holders should call it a day well before being locked out and find a warm place to watch the swearing-in.
Things were reportedly worse for those holding purple tickets, many of whom were actual Obama campaign workers. Those poor folks were forced to huddle together in an underground pedestrian tunnel for hours and hours before being told to leave – which, even for those ticket holders fortunate enough to have gotten cleared and seated for the ceremonies, was just as arduous an ordeal.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who chaired the whole party offered apologies and promises to investigate. Sorry, but both ring pretty hollow to those who yearned to share in an unprecedented moment in our nation’s life. We hear there are going to be “consolation prizes” being offered to those who have unused tickets. OK, we’re consoled. We would still rather have been close enough to see Aretha’s hat.
BAD DOG, INAUGURAL COMMITTEE – and that goes for the Secret Service and the Capitol Police, too!

Year of the Mutt

2009-01-16T07:15:00.000-08:00

What is . . .

1. the Triple AAA family (hint: think African-American Armenian)

2. January 20, 2009

3. January 26, 2009 - Chinese New Year

Wait, Wait - don't tell me.

THE YEAR OF THE MUTT

And, so we begin!

Friday, January 16

Yep, we are going to chocolate city on Saturday while we can still get across the Memorial Bridge. This is a ceremonial "eve" celebration of The Year of the Mutt (aka, TYOM).

In past years, you have gotten our Christmas cards (we will be posting a few to help your memory).

At some point, life became a little out of control, which required us to shift to New Year's Cards (and yes, we will post a few of these too). For some this also included an invitation to begin the "new" year with a dose of hoppin' John, Collards & Gumbo) This was an add-on for those close enuf to get there (as opposed to those close by thoughts, words & deed).

To celebrate 2009 - with all of its momentous events & window-dressing - welcome to the initial entry to the annual Blog greeting - TYOM! Not as tasty, perhaps, as gumbo; certainly not likely to have the tradition of insuring coins (hoppin' john) and bills (collards) - but certainly the promise is that

1. it will be different - it may even be amusing

2. ah, it will be, as they say, "inclusive" since that's what we've always been about, for better or worse.

3. it will be timely - not too much nostalgia - except when you hear (if you haven't already) the "whb" story

So, follow it's strange twists and you can take it or leave it - the best of all possible choices.

The Year of the Mutt

It begins with a long family tradition. Grandfather, Eugene M. Seymour (Yup, same name as one of the authors), who referred to himself as a mongrel, proud as he was of the New England, African-American by default & choice heritage, a family named Seymour. During civil rights and black power years (the 60's, right?), this was not so popular. But in the 1940's - Hey, this is what's happening!

In 1989, we began to hold up the family tradition, when the Seymour & Nahikian clan sent a 1989 "new" year greeting -

In 1994, however, the tradition became even more pronounced clear with the "new" year's greeting . . .

We promised not too much nostalgia...so fast forward:

2009

* a President who would certainly fit into any AAA celebration - elected in part by Chafin's 1st Presidential vote in the great state of OHIO, only 40 years after I, his mother, spent the summer of 1968 in protest of it all...ending with a magnificent encounter with the Chicago Police!

and

*President-elect Obama's respect for the Seymour-Nahikian long-standing family tradition, when - in a speech on date?, 2008 (prize for who can fill this in from a google) - said "I am just a mutt."

Celebrate - The Year of the Mutt with us as we make the Seymour-Nahikian family tradition a national phenomena!

(TYOM on-line store, where you will be able to collect the appropriate celebratory gear, is not open yet, but will be available soon. It will include TYOM Hoppin' John, TYOM cornbread mix, and of course, the TYOM door knocker now being designed. Limited editors of the historic cards are now being uploaded, but we haven't figured out how to take credit cards, yet!)