New Search

If you are not happy with the results below please do another search

797 search results for: MG Turner

473

Please Follow Me on Twitter

/0 Comments/in ,

I’m continuing to post and share items on my Facebook page, but in 2013 will also be ramping up my use of other social networks–especially Twitter, sharing material that I don’t always put on Facebook. If you’re on Twitter and want to follow me there, please do so–my handle is @philipsturner. You may sample the tweets on my profile page by clicking on this link or see a screenshot of the page below. At the upper right corner of this site, you may join me on any of the social networks where I’m active. I have other initiatives in mind for The Great Gray Bridge in 2013 and look forward to introducing them in the weeks and months to come, including publication of guest posts by other writers on key topics. As always, thanks for reading and sharing my enthusiasms and interests.

474

Benjamin Wheeler, “Nearly Always at Full Tilt”

/0 Comments/in

Readers of this blog may have noted my recent post, Benjamin Wheeler, September 12, 2006-December 15, 2012–RIP, about one of the children murdered last Friday in Newtown, CT, and his father, David Cole Wheeler, with whom I was a co-worker at Avalon Publishing Group from 2001-2006. When I put up that post on Saturday there was no picture yet online of young Benjamin, but I see tonight that the Wheeler family has now released a photograph of their handsome young boy, and I am sharing it here.

A full obituary has now run in the Newtown Bee:

Benjamin Andrew Wheeler

Benjamin Andrew Wheeler was born in Manhattan, September 12, 2006, and moved to Newtown in April 2007 with his parents, Francine and David Wheeler, and his now 9-year-old brother, Nate.

Ben died December 14.

Inspired by dear friends who had made the move some years before, the family found a house in Sandy Hook and a cultural, spiritual, and creative home in the rare collection of priorities and spirit that is Newtown. Since then, Francine has become a fixture in Newtown as a music educator and performer, and more broadly, as a founding member of the children’s music group, The Dream Jam Band, while David works as an illustrator and designer. Both of them are members of Newtown’s own Flagpole Radio Cafe live radio show.

Ben was an irrepressibly bright and spirited boy whose love of fun and excitement at the wonders of life and the world could rarely be contained. His rush to experience life was headlong, creative, and immediate.

He was a devoted fan of his older brother, Nate, and the two of them together filled the house with the noise of four children. He loved the local soccer program, often running across the field long after it was actually necessary, but always smiling and laughing as he moved the ball, nearly always at full tilt. He was becoming a strong swimmer and loved his lessons.

Eager to learn, he could not wait to get to school to see his teacher and his growing group of new first grade friends. Ben was also a member of Tiger Scout Den 6, which met at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Firehouse.

Earlier in December, Ben performed at his piano recital, and sitting still long enough to play one piece was an accomplishment he reveled in. He loved The Beatles, lighthouses, and the number 7 train to Sunnyside, Queens.

In a conversation with Francine before school on Friday, he said, “I still want to be an architect, but I also want to be a paleontologist, because that’s what Nate is going to be and I want to do everything Nate does.”

He will be sadly missed by his loving parents; his brother Nate; his grandparents Carmen and Annette Lobis of Garnet Valley, Penn., Ellsworth and Kay Wheeler of Charleston, S.C., and Harry Berquist of Newport News, Va.; great-grandmother Sophia Turchi of Broomall, Penn.; aunts and uncles Michael and Sheila Lobis, Anthony and Colleen Lobis, and Steven and Ann Lobis, all of Penn., Jeffrey and Dawn Wheeler of Wash., and Andrew and Jamie Wheeler of Hawaii; great-aunts and uncles James and Nancy Cole of Va., Robert Lobis of Colo., and Michael Lobis, Marianne Stewart, and Marie Turchi, all of Penn.; and numerous cousins and friends. He was predeceased by grandmother Ann Cole Berquist.

It is suggested that memorial donations be made to the Benjamin Wheeler Fund, c/o Trinity Episcopal Church, 36 Main Street, Newtown CT 06470.

The family will receive visitors at the Trinity Episcopal Church, Newtown, Wednesday, December 19, from 4 to 8 pm. The funeral will be held at the church Thursday, December 20, at 11 am. Burial will be private.
The B.C. Bailey Funeral Home of Wallingford has been entrusted with the arrangements. To leave a message of remembrance, please visit www.BCBailey.com.

—

My deepest condolences to David, Ben’s mother Francine, and their older son, Nate. Please feel free to leave a comment in space below, if you worked at Avalon with us, or would just like to say something.

 

 

475

Dogs Giving Comfort in Newtown

/2 Comments/in

A K-9 team of comfort dogs has been flown from Chicago to Newtown, CT to be available to grieving children and adults to be petted and hugged for consolation in the wake of the mass murders there last Friday. As reported by Naomi Nix in the Chicago Tribune, ten golden retrievers, including the dogs pictured here–Chewie, Ruthie, and Luther–are now in the small town, provided by Lutheran Church Charities. Nix’s story adds,

The dogs have been helpful even to those without children in Sandy Hook Elementary School . . . organizers said. “I asked [one man] how he is doing. He just kind of teared up and said: ‘This year, I’ve lost five loved ones and now this happened,’  Hetzner said. ”The whole town is suffering.“ The comfort-dog initiative first started in 2008 at Northern Illinois University after a gunman killed five students. . . . [It] was so successful that weeks later students petitioned university leadership to bring comfort dogs back to campus, Hetzner said. The initiative has grown from a handful of dogs in the Chicago area to 60 dogs in six different states, he said. Since then, the dogs have traveled across the nation to comfort people in the aftermath of major tragedies such as, Hurricane Sandy, and the tornado that hit Joplin, MO. On Monday, the dogs plan to be with Sandy Hook students for after-school activities.

Amid this tragedy, it gladdens my heart that these dogs will be in the town to be held and hugged, to give back what dogs do give, unconditional love. H/t Michael Rosenwald of the Washington Post who tweeted this earlier.

477

Fun Night of Live Music with Mona’s Hot Four

/0 Comments/in , ,

This past Tuesday night I had a great time at the Rockwood Music Hall for a combined launch of a new documentary and CD. The film is called “Tuesday at Mona’s” as is the new CD, a live recording, and they feature a jazz quartet called Mona’s Hot Four, who have a long-running weekly gig on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at Mona’s Bar on Avenue B between 13th and 14th streets. The basic outfit is clarinet, piano, stand-up bass, and guitar, and is regularly supplemented by additional players on various instruments.

This launch had originally been planned for the week Superstorm Sandy hit NYC, but was of course canceled. Mona’s frontman, clarinetist Dennis Lichtman reported that Rockwood was forced to cancel 81 shows because of Sandy. They were able to reschedule, and the boisterous crowd did not seem at all diminished by the change. Just after 8 PM a film screen was unrolled on stage, and a projector was clicked on to screen the new documentary. About 30 minutes long, the film tells the feel-good story of how an  eclectic tribe of jazz players ended up finding at Mona’s the ideal venue and audience for their passionate enthusiasms for tunes of the halcyon pre-bop era. There are several extended songs and a number of interviews with musicians, fans, bartenders, and Wall St. Journal jazz critic Will Friedwald, who touted Mona’s Hot Four and the scene at the bar in an 2011 diary-like piece, “After Midnight at Mona’s”:

11:30 p.m. Within a few numbers (“Margie,” “Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gives to Me”), it’s abundantly clear that this group is immersed in the early New Orleans jazz idiom…. 1 a.m. The room is packed with young men sporting beards and slender women with Bettie Page bangs and abundant tattoos. There must be 100 people crammed inside this tiny bar, with seats for maybe 15, and only a fraction of those either sitting or standing can actually see the band. The room is dense with young musicians carrying instrument cases, or wearing their saxes around their neck, waiting to be called. “I think it’s amazing that we’ve become a mecca for those who love this music,” Mr. Lichtman says….2:30 a.m. The band is starting to thin out, and plays two numbers just to delight the record collectors in the crowd, “Dardanella” and “Hang Out the Stars in Indiana,” the latter fetchingly sung by Ms. [Molly] Ryan.

Once the film ended, Mona’s Hot Four took the stage, with clarinetist Lichtman introducing his band mates: Gordon Webster (piano), Jared Engel (bass), and Nick Russo (guitar). Their playing is a joy to hear with clear melodic lines on standards like “My Blue Heaven,” tasty licks on “Sugar Blues,” and fluent ensemble work on “Up a Lazy River.” Though Rockwood is not the Hot Four’s usual venue, many additional players showed up to supplement the quartet. In the set that followed the documentary, they were joined on stage by a caravan of players on trombone, trumpet, banjo, snare drum, and a number of talented vocalists. Among this retinue was singer the aforementioned Molly Ryan and banjo player and vocalist Jerron Paxton.

Lichtman fronts another group, Brain Cloud, which I had enjoyed and posted about during the Brooklyn Folk Festival last May. I hope I have another chance to hear them sometime, as they have a semi-regular gig at the Rodeo Bar in Manhattan. That group also plays some jazz, though with a different flavor than Mona’s Hot Four, as well as Western swing, klezmer, and songs from Tin Pan Alley, with vocalist Tamar Korn (who also sang with Mona’s Hot Four this week). After the documentary and an abbreviated set of music, Lichtman announced that Mona’s Hot Four would later that night they’d be camped out at Mona’s Bar for their usual late Tuesday night set. I wasn’t able to migrate to Mona’s on this night, but I do hope to hear them there some other week. If you’d like to buy the DVD/CD which includes the documentary and live album in one package, you can order it via this link, and listen to some of the Monas’ hot stuff.

Here’s a 2010 video of Mona’s Hot Four I just found online:

On my way back uptown, I stopped in at another great spot, the 11th Street Bar, to hear what live music they might have on in their back room. I was delighted to discover a band there led by guitarist Teddy Kumpel, whose band of drums, bass, and another lead guitar, was having fun playing an infectious melange of funk and blues. You can hear a sample of his groove at this page on his website. Please click through on this link to see all photos I took during this fun night of live music.

478

“A Few Genuine Songs . . . All But Drowned out by the Loud Siren of Ambition”

/0 Comments/in ,

In “Censoring Myself for Success,” a strikingly candid Op-Ed published yesterday in the NY Times, Somali-Canadian  poet, rapper, singer, and songwriter K’naan laments the influence of his label A&M/Octone on his latest album “Country, God and the Girl.” Coming after the worldwide fame that attached to him when his first hit song “Wavin’ Flag” became the anthem of the 2010 World Cup, K’naan writes that his early songs drew directly from his childhood experiences of a country trapped in continuous conflict, but then:

“A few days before I was to record [my third album], which was released in October, I received a phone call saying my record label wanted a little talk—before the songs were written. (I like to write in the moment.) For the first two albums, there were no such talks. But that was before my name was familiar. So let me start my story there.

In 2005 I found cheap recording space and sang about the killing ground of Somalia:

‘We begin our day by the way of the gun… you don’t pay at the roadblock you get your throat shot I walk with three kids who can’t wait to meet God lately, Bucktooth, Mohamed and Crybaby.’

In 2008, with a recording budget, I went on my own to Jamaica, to Bob Marley’s old studio, and sang of a lovely, doomed young friend:

‘Fatima Fatima, I’m in America, I make rhymes and I make ’em delicate, you woulda liked the parks in Connecticut… Damn you shooter, damn you the building, whose walls hid the blood she was spilling, damn you country so good at killing, damn you feeling, for persevering.’ …

Over breakfast in SoHo, we talked about how to keep my new American audience growing. My lyrics should change, my label’s executives said; radio programmers avoid subjects too far from fun and self-absorption.

And for the first time, I felt the affliction of success. When I walked away from the table, there were bruises on the unheard lyrics of my yet-to-be-born songs. A question had raised its hand in the quiet of my soul: What do you do after success? What must you do to keep it?

If this was censorship, I thought, it was a new kind—one I had to do to myself. The label wasn’t telling me what to do. No, it was just giving me choices and information, about my audience . . . who knew little of Somalia. How much better to sing them songs about Americans. . .

And there I was, trembling between doubt and self-awareness. I had started . . . striving to make (and please allow room for grandiosity here) my own ‘Natty Dread’ or my own ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’.’ But now, after breakfast, another voice was there, whispering how narrow the window of opportunity was. . . 

So I had not made my Marley or my Dylan, or even my K’naan; I had made an album in which a few genuine songs are all but drowned out by the loud siren of ambition. Fatima had become Mary, and Mohamed, Adam.

I now suspect that packaging me as an idolized star to the pop market in America cannot work; while one can dumb down his lyrics, what one cannot do without being found out is hide his historical baggage. His sense of self. His walk.”
—
Later, I found this posted by K’naaan on his Facebook page:

“After your overwhelming response, I’m inclined to write you all a quick note. Starting with the question: WHERE DID YOU PEOPLE COME FROM?!!! What an amazing and articulate bunch you are. You should know, I’ve read every single word in every single post underneath my essay, and, I am deeply moved. Have no fear, whatever you hear coming from me next, good or bad, will only be born from the intention to express. No other voice shall ever trespass into the sovereign continent of my words. I really do, from the bottom of my heart, thank you all. For gathering around me, like you did. I feel energized. Let it be a wondrous journey, thank you for riding along.

So much love to you guys,
K’naan”
—
In K’naan’s Op-Ed, I was struck as much by his self-criticism as by his critique of the execs who suggested he change his artistic approach. I suggest you read his whole Op-Ed for yourself, and note that the NY Times web page also includes a nice spoken word by K’naan, talking about Somalia and poetry. Finally, if you haven’t heard K’naan here is a video of his performance of “Wavin’ Flag on the CBC program “Q”: 

479

Donald Trump is “the Clown of New York” to a Defiant Scotsman

/0 Comments/in ,

Update: After publishing the blog post below, I dug a bit deeper and discovered a quite nuanced view of the controversy that was published just as it began to heat up in 2007. It’s an excellent piece by UK journalist Ed Caesar that originally ran in the Times of London, now found at Mr. Caesar’s own website. At that juncture five years ago, Trump was awaiting several of the local approvals required to build the gargantuan complex that would hold not just a golf course, but 900 vacation cottages and a ten-story hotel with 450 guest rooms. Michael Forbes was then a pesky annoyance to Trump, while many Scottish politicians favored the development. Some of it has since been built, but Forbes is still standing strong, and just won Scotsman of the Year, as noted below. While it seems that the village of Balmedie was then leaning toward support of Trump’s project, it appears that trend has since flipped in favor of the antis, of whom Forbes is the most visible symbol. The familiar dynamic has kicked in where Trump’s obnoxious personalty and bloated rhetoric has become the dominant element in the story. If you have some time, I recommend you read Caesar’s piece, as well.
—
The website Common Dreams reports that Donald Trump has angered lots of people in Scotland with his determination to build profit-making golf courses on pristine land that many locals do not want developed in this way. A farmer in Aberdeenshire, Michael Forbes (pictured above), has defied Trump’s demands to sell him acreage from his land, prompting the rude American to denounce Forbes as “a village idiot” who “lives like a pig.” Now, Forbes has won a national contest as Scotsman of the Year, being named over such luminaries as Wimbledon champion Andy Murray. Forbes is quoted by Common Dreams:

“I went right off him the first time I met him. He was being all nicey, nicey and talking about how successful he was and how much money he had. That was it for me. I took an instant dislike to him. He called me a village idiot …but I think everyone knows by now that he’s the clown of New York.”

The press in Britain have lionized Mr. Forbes a 21st century ‘local hero,’ reminiscent of the Scottish character in the 1983 Bill Forsyth film with Burt Lancaster and Peter Riegert “Local Hero,” who convinces his town to resist the siren song of an oil company’s money. Sticking to the film analogy, a documentary has been released on the golf course controversy, “You’ve Been Trumped.” Here’s a trailer for it:

An advocacy group has also been formed to push back against the development, Tripping Up Trump. I’ve been to Scotland several times over the years and admire people I’ve met there and remain entranced by the countryside, even seeing it only in photos. Kudos to those saying, “No” to Donald Trump! H/t Don Van Natta, Jr. (@DVNjr) who shared the Common Dreams piece on Twitter.

480

Teasing “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”

/0 Comments/in , ,

Update: One day after I published the post below about “The Hobbit,” the NY Times published this interesting piece today about the Tolkien archive, which is housed in the US, at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI. Also, please note an earlier blog post of mine, J.R.R. Tolkien Renounced Racial Politics in 1938 Letter to a German Publisher.
—
Some readers of this blog may recall that I happen to share a birthday with J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbit protagonists Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, having written about that literary link in a piece on this site labeled Personal History. Since my teens I’ve been a fan of Tolkien’s work and then enjoyed Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy. My wife and son and I already have tickets to see “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” when it opens late next week. I’ve seen a trailer or two for the film but have steered clear of reading much about it, not wanting to have the element of surprise hijacked by reading details I don’t need to know yet.  Still, I crossed paths today with a very encouraging Hobbit teaser on Nerdist.com, the website of Chris Hardwick, ebullient host of “The Talking Dead” fan show that is boradcast on AMC TV after the zombie-apocalypse program “The Walking Dead.”

What’s good for the book is also good for the film–a sense of humor. Though some of LOTR‘s self-importance is being retroactively returned to the tale, Bilbo is simply a much more fun reluctant-hero than Frodo, whose dewy-eyed earnestness was way too goody-goody at times. Martin Freeman [cast as Bilbo] also played Arthur Dent in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and that character–quite correctly–shares spiritual DNA with this Hobbit, who wants to live out the simplest pleasures of the countryside, but gets whisked into something bigger, and complains all the time. It also feels like the themes here are more tangible for kids to relate to than abstract ultimate-good versus ultimate-evil, such as the benefits of going outside and making friends instead of sitting around the house (granted, LOTR had a team of friends too, but it broke up rather quickly. This group stays together).

I greatly enjoyed the 2005 film version of Douglas Adams’ modern SF classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, directed by Garth Jennings, which featured not only the aforementioned Martin Freeman, but also Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Sam Rockwell, and the voice of Alan Rickman. So, if Peter Jackson’s new Hobbit film can conjure up some of that cinematic pleasure, then we’re in for a treat.