monday july 31
Recently, while sorting though dusty bookshelves at home, I started paging through Letters From a Nut by Ted L. Nancy (rumored pen name of Jerry Seinfeld). Nancy writes bogus letters to corporations, and then publishes the letters alongside the corporate responses. ABC even had a sitcom in the works based on the books, but the project was cancelled. If you start reading and can't get enough, try More Letters from a Nut where Ted questions not the validity, but the grammatical correctness of the slogan "Nobody doesn't like Sara Lee."
sunday july 30
If you’re lucky enough to be on summer break, spend a few hours with Michael Malone’s inspired satire of academia and the literary scene, Foolscap. If you’re not, pick it up on your lunch hour, and it will have you smiling even at work.
Theo Ryan, the son of New York show biz parents, left his colorful backstage childhood behind to settle quietly as a drama professor at a backwater North Carolina university. Though he does have a play tucked away in a drawer (a drama about Sir Walter Raleigh, which a workshop director once cruelly panned), the most colorful thing in Theo’s life now is his friendship with Ford Rexford, a leading playwright and famous drunk, whose biography Theo is writing.
Ford pushes Theo to escape his safe little life, and Theo decides to go for it: he auditions for an amateur production of Guys and Dolls, gives in to a dizzying crush on a university preacher named Maude Fletcher, and even shows Ford his play.
Naturally, disaster follows.
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friday july 28
If you haven’t seen Making a Legacy, Living the Legacy at the Cincinnati Art Museum, this weekend is your last chance!
Sunday is the final day for this exhibition of the work of five African American artists from the tri-state area, each using a different medium. The result is a very rich show – Joyce Young paintings, Melvin Grier photographs, Carolyn Mazloomi quilts, Ellen Price prints, and a Thom Phelps installation. Making a Legacy was mounted by guest curator Thom Shaw, another local African American artist.
More of Grier’s photographs and an interview with him can be seen in the video Bearing Witness: Melvin Grier. Prints by Shaw and Price are included in Cincinnati Portfolio III: A Porfolio of Ten Prints. And be sure to explore the beautiful work in Mazloomi’s book Spirits of the Cloth: Contemporary African American Quilts.
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It's the end of July, and it seems like all the folks from the office have headed off on vacation, or are planning one. Trips to Florida, the Smoky Mountains, and all the old favorites...do they make you yawn? Looking for something different? Something to spice up the water-cooler confab? Something to make your co-workers stand up and say "huh?" Look no farther than America Bizarro: A guide to freaky festivals, groovy gatherings, kooky contests, and other strange happenings across the U.S.A.
Even if you're not ready to hop in the car in search of strange American folk culture, America Bizarro is a great read. Catch an entry here or there while you're waiting for the bus, or for an appointment and imagine a mini-vacation to International Tuba Day, the National Hobo Convention, or the World Championship Punkin' Chunkin Contest.
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Philip Seymour Hoffman's Oscar-winning role in Capote sparked renewed interest in Capote's In Cold Blood. With help from research assistant and friend Harper Lee, Capote composed this true crime classic which made the Modern Library's list of 100 Best Nonfiction Works published after 1900. In it, he details the 1959 murders of the Clutter family by ex-convicts Richard Hickock and Perry Smith.
All the attention brought to Capote's work has made me think about other classic murder cases, and the books written about them. The library has many, including:
It is hard enough in today's world to find someone to love, but when you cross racial lines, there are additional issues and problems. Will your family reject you and your mate, will friends disappear, will strangers stare and judge you? How will this affect your children together? Just what is it that attracts you to the mate that you choose? Kalina M. Craig-Henderson's book, Black Men in Interracial Relationships: What's Love Got to do with It , addresses these issues and more from the viewpoint of black men. She interviewed 25 black men in depth to find out why they entered into interracial relationships. What she found is that love comes in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Sometimes you just love someone in spite of all the issues.
If you would like to read other opinions on the subject, check out these titles
The conflict between Israel, the Palestinians, and now Lebanon has accelerated with terrible speed since June 10, when Hamas ended the current truce after blasts allegedly from Israeli artillery killed and injured Palestinian families on a Gaza beach. Hamas retaliated with the June 25 killing of two Israeli soldiers and the capture of a third. In a surprise move of solidarity, Hezbollah followed suit on July 12, crossing the border from Lebanon to kill three Israeli soldiers and capture two others.
Hezbollah’s entry into the conflict prompted Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Dan Halutz to threaten that the Israeli military would “turn back the clock in Lebanon by 20 years” if the soldiers were not returned. In addition to the daily news reports, a vision of what that would mean can be gained through Robert Fisk’s 1990 bestseller, Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon.
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