The Battle: Questions

Tedious is the battle
For poor folks
Striving to live,
Not some ordinary,
Solitary, eeking
Existence; but
Really to live life
Even as preachers with
Suspect theology would
Suggest!

Can my children succeed?
Can my home be safe?
Can my diabetes be controlled?
Can my girl earn a fair wage?
Can my table be spread?
Can my old car start?
Can my boss be fair?
Can my son be promoted?
Can my momma be lifted?
Can my color be an asset?
Can my father know my love?
Can the cops love me?
Can my side of town be honored?
Can my clothes be pressed?
Can my offering be valued?
Can I find a quiet place?
Can I expect better?
Can I pray and see progress?
Can I find real hope?
Can someone see me for who I am, really?
Can I love my community?
Can I love my enemies?
Can my enemies learn enough to love me?
Can we all get along?
Can my soul be found?  Saved?
Can playgrounds be built? 
Can playgrounds be safe?
Can sidewalks be repaired?
Can homes be built? 
Can neighborhoods be made over?
Can re-investment come my way?
Can opportunity be multiplied?
Can REITs work where I live?
Can I relocate to a "high opportunity" community?
Can the national dream be realized?
Can I contribute to someone's life and well being?
Can I be truly needed?
Can a child look up to me?
Can I be worthy of respect?
Can crack houses disappear?
Can City Hall work at last?
Can I win
the Battle?

Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane

Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane / At Carnegie Hall

Films for February

Looking for quality films to take in during African American History Month? 

Check this source!

DMA membership to be free!

Five good reasons to visit the soon-to-be-free Dallas Museum of Art

Michael Granberry / Reporter
November 28, 2012 | Permalink

Dallas Morning News--Arts GUIDE

For those who now have a license to visit the Dallas Museum of Art for free — well, at least you will when the “free” policy begins Jan. 21 — here’s a snapshot of what we recommend about the DMA, which will also free membership via its new Friends and Partners program:

1) Every Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m., you can take in the DMA’s “Thursday Night Live”program. Tomorrow night, you can listen listen to the Carolyn Lee Jones Sextet as part of the DMA’s Thursday night jazz series.

2) Through March 13, you can see the work of Glasgow-based artist Karla Black, who recently created two sculptures for the DMA, her first such project in the United States. As the DMA says in its own description, “Transforming light, fragile, often impermanent materials into powerful sculptures of commanding scale and presence, Black creates abstract works that resolutely eschew metaphor while simultaneously beckoning a complex series of associations.”

3) Texas art. The DMA offers Texas Artist Databases, a list of titles and dates for exhibitions presented by the DMA since 1909, and the Otis Dozier Sketchbooks, a digital collection that includes “nearly 1,500 sketches. When complete, it will make available over 6,200 images that comprise a complete representation of 130 sketchbooks by Texas regionalist artist Otis Dozier (1905-1987).”

4) The DMA’s current hot show, “Posters of Paris: Toulouse-Lautrec and His Contemporaries,”wraps up the day before free admission and free memberships begin. Even so, it’s a can’t-miss. Beginning with the early designs of “Jules Chéret – the ‘father of the poster’ — the exhibition explores the earliest days of the affiche artistique [artistic poster] and its flowering in Paris, first under Chéret in the 1870s and 1880s, and then with a new generation of artists including Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,Pierre Bonnard, and Edouard Vuillard, artists who brought the poster to new heights in the 1890s.” The DMA says the exhibition “examines the story of the French artistic poster in all its complexity.”

5) The DMA is a community resource, which is why director Maxwell Anderson’s push to go “free” is so brilliant, because it puts the museum within reach of the entire community. On a regular basis, it hosts Arts & Letters Live (which brings name authors to town), lectures, gallery talks, concerts, film, teen workshops and other family events. The DMA is home to 22,000 works of art, spanning 5,000 years, though not all are on view at any one time. Artists whose work is currently on view include Jackson Pollock and Claude Monet. Plus, the DMA is home to a highly acclaimed African art collection.

"We take care of our own"

I been knocking on the door
That holds the throne
I been looking for the map
That leads me home
I been stumbling on good hearts
Turned to stone

The road of good intentions

Has gone dry as a bone

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

From Chicago to New Orleans
From the muscle to the bone
From the shotgun house to the Super Dome
There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home
There ain't no one hearing the bugle blowin'
We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

Where're the eyes, the eyes with the will to see
Where're the hearts that run over with mercy
Where's the love that has not forsaken me
Where's the work that'll set my hands, my soul free
Where's the spirit that'll reign over me

Where's the promise from sea
To shining sea
Where's the promise from
Sea to shining sea
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown
Wherever this flag is flown

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

We take care of our own
We take care of our own
Wherever this flag's flown
We take care of our own

"We Take Care of Our Own"

from Wrecking Ball (2012)

Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen's Rock with a Message. . .

Rolling Stone published an interview with Bruce Springsteen conducted by Jon Stewart in its March 29, 2012 edition.  Springsteen spoke of his new album (Wrecking Ball) and of a number of his classic recordings that reflect his own social values and his vision for and concern about America.  His language is the language of community, fairness, compassion and collective will, as well as responsibility.  Here are some of his comments:

The first cut, "We Take Care of Our Own," is where I set out the questions that I'm going to try to answer.  The song's chorus is posed as a challenge and a question.  Do we take care of our own?  What happened to that social contract?  Where did that go over the past 30 years?  How has it been eroded so terribly?  And how is it that the outrage about that erosion is just beginning to be voiced right now?  I've written about this stuff for those 30 years, from Darkness on the Edge of Town to The Ghost of Tom Joad through to today. . . .

So these are issues and things that occur over and over again in history and land on the backs of the same people.  In my music--if it has a purpose beyond dancing and fun and vacuuming your floor to it--I always try to gauge the distance between American reality and the American dream.  The mantra that I go into in the last verse of "We Take Care of Our Own"--"Where are the eyes, where are the hearts?"--it's really:  Where are those things now, what happened to those things over the past 30 years?  What happened to the social fabric of the world that we're living in? What's the price that people pay for it on a daily basis?"  Which is something that I lived with intensely as a child, and is probably the prime motivation for the subjects I've written about since I was very, very young. . . .

You cannot have a social contract with the enormous income disparity--you're gong to slice the country down the middle.  Without jobs, without helping folks with foreclosures, without regulating the banks, without some sort of tax reform. . . .Without addressing those issues in some way, I don't think the country is going to hold together.  . . .at the end of the day, you can't have a society and you can't have a civilization without a reasonable amount of economic fairness, full employment, purpose and civic responsibility. (page 41)

"Bruce Springsteen's State of the Union"

Rolling Stone

Issue 1153, March 29, 2012