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More than two decades ago, Paula came to work in the task area where we shared an office.

She had been given the position I had been vying for. It didn’t seem at all fair. I labored to make her feel uncomfortable and unwanted.

But because of her indomitable spirit she kept pressing onward with her positive attitude, generous smile, and infectious friendliness.

But I was not easily won over. I was miserable and worked overtime to counter her goodness.

Deep down I had to admit there wasn’t much about her to not like. She was Pollyanna and I was “The Bad Seed.”

Shame and guilt eventually made me feel loathsome. Perhaps she saw through my bristly facade. I truly hope at the time there was some essence of good that glinted from my soul’s innards. I’m guessing there was and she coaxed that spider silk thread out with her charm and began to weave the web of our friendship.

Understandably, a friendship is a two-way mechanism. A relationship functions best when both individuals proffer the finest qualities from their heart and soul. I had a lot of catching up to do and, consistent with my nature, I extended myself wholeheartedly.

Her friendship was a shining gem that sparkled brightly before my eyes. What she offered was beyond description or value. The bond that two beings can cement which lasts a lifetime… Friendship!

The saying, “Hey, watchya doin’?” became a part of our bitter, joyous, disheartening, thrilling, ecstatic, crushing, and wondrous happenings that living life brings.

Those were the words I stammered the night I drove over to her house and apologized for how I had treated her when we first met, admitting I had been cruel.

I should have gone to her earlier in our relationship and apologized. She never spoke of my treatment of her in those first days. She never told me that my actions had hurt her.

But when I asked her to forgive me she began to cry and all the pain I had been responsible for was etched on her face. She merely nodded.

Then smiled at me.

We hugged and cried together.

I heard those words from her during the rough days when her marriage was falling apart and she needed to talk. When there was a suicide in the family she spoke that phrase through the tear-choked pain of loss.

Though we no longer work in the same area, we still work for the same organization. No matter where the job assignment, stress is part and parcel of the job. And many times we’ve phoned the other with the question, “Hey, watchya doin’?”

We have seen heartbreaking human suffering, abuse, and loss. As much as we might try to “leave it all at the office” we cannot always shove it in the desk drawer, turn off the lights and head home with a peaceful spirit.

It is at such times we have sought solace in each other.

“Hey, watchya doin’?” she said. “Why don’t you come on over tonight for dinner? We need to talk.” I did, and she introduced me to her fiance — a wonderful man who would give her all that she deserved. The joy of a good marriage. She was long overdue!

She has asked me that question when her voice bubbled over with happiness because she wanted to tell me her daughter was engaged. And again, twice, each time she learned her daughter was pregnant.

“Hey, watchya doin’?”

That evening we got together and shared our fears. We were no longer young women and the fast rushing reality of years gone by seemed to hit us at roughly the same time.

“My folks are getting older. Oh, Kathy! I am so afraid of losingthem.”

Tears burned hot in my eyes. “Me, too.” My father had died years earlier but my mother and step father were still alive and very much a part of my life.

“Hey, watchya doin’?” I asked one late afternoon. “I just got in from work.”

“Why?” she replied.

Emotion choked me as I tried to squeeze the words past my constricted throat. “I have cancer…”

On another afternoon, when I woke up from surgery, I saw her face. By her side was her youngest daughter. They both smiled tremulously.

Their eyes shimmering wet. Their expressions full of love and hope. They had a gift and a card for me, but to this day I cannot tell you what the gift was.

All I saw was the glow of a loving friendship reflecting back to me — the years we had shared our secrets and hopes, our fears and triumphs.

“Love you!” she said.

“I love you, too.” I garbled roughly through my tears. “Thank you for being my friend.”

Two and a half years have passed since that afternoon. We still greet each other with that old phrase. And every now and then we will say…

“Love you! Thank you for being my friend.”

And when I say those words, I count myself blessed to have your friendship, Paula.

“I love you. Thank you…”

Copyright 2004 Kathy Pippig Harris

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Back in 2009, Robert Sellers gave us the first of the “Hollywood Hellraisers” books which focussed upon the lives and careers of legendary hellraisers Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed. Now he has given us another book in the series, “Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson”, which focuses on the wild lives of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson, 4 acting legends who are as famous for their exploits as they are for their acting.

Coming in at just over 300 pages you may feel that Sellers barely scratches the surface as he covers the lives of these 4 acting legends. But what he does is craft the book so that the lives of these 4 acting legends almost crossover so we discover how they started in similar ways, became friends, ended up sharing some of the same sexual conquests and so on whilst also giving those expected elements of looking at their childhoods through to adult life. It gives it a feeling of an ongoing story with 4 principle players whose lives are full of sex,drugs, drinking, wild parties and of course a movie career.

How Robert Sellers achieves this is that each of the actors lives share the same timeline, so whilst we learn about Brando’s break into acting you also learn what Hopper, Nicholson and Beatty were up to at the same time. It makes it fascinating because whilst at times the actors are separate entities there is always something linking them such as other actors like James Dean or acting coaching. It’s actually quite surprising how interweaved these 4 actors lives were even in their younger days.

But as you would probably expect where “Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson” is at its most fascinating is in the way it opens up the lives of these 4 notorious Hollywood hellraisers. It’s almost comical the way these stars lived from Brando’s semi paranoia, Hopper’s drug fuelled madness and the womanizing antics of Beatty and Nicholson. But it’s also interesting, especially when it tackles subjects such as the shooting at Brando’s home, the murder of Sharon Tate who was a close friend of Warren Beatty and so on.

For me personally I enjoyed the look into the life of Brando, the fact he often never learned his lines and had someone reciting them in his ear. Also the fact that he was forced to act again as he needed the money. But the lives of the other 3 actors are just as fascinating especially that of Dennis Hopper and his maverick tendencies when it came to his career. As such you also get a real insight into the cult classic “Easy Rider” and the numerous issues which came whilst making it. But at the same time there is also a tender side to the Dennis Hopper part of the book especially how it highlights that the death of his close friend James Dean seriously affected him.

The Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty parts of the book are just as good and there is something rather comical about the way they managed to score one sexual conquest after another. But at the same time whilst reading “Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson” you also understand that both men had serious power in and outside of Hollywood with Beatty having his finger on the pulse of everything go on.

What this all comes down to is that Robert Sellers “Hollywood Hellraisers: The Wild Lives and Fast Times of Marlon Brando, Dennis Hopper, Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson” is a cracking read full of fascinating information on these 4 Hollywood legends. In fact it’s not only so full of information but also so well written that you feel like you have read an in-depth biography on each of the legends instead of approximately 80 pages on each.

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By the 1940′s the saxophone was a well established and very popular instrument in both classical and jazz music. As the 40′s brought more musical styles like jump blues, rhythm and blues and rock and roll the instrument would become even more important and play a major roll in the new sound.

Illinios Jacqeut was a very good swing jazz player and like many others he was drawn to the new sounds. He was only19 years old when he worked with Lionel Hampton’s band and recorded his famous solo that started others honkin’ and screramin’ to start the beginning of the rock and roll saxophone.

One kid he inspired was Big Jay McNeely who took the honkin’ over the edge and made a show of it… laying on his back, strolling into the crowds and walking on top of bars. (That’s where the term “honkers and bar walkers” came from. That’s a good cd compilation series featuring other rock and roll saxophonists)

Ahh… those crazy kids. This was a new generation, born in the 20′s right around the time Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkinswere coming on the scene. They probably thought these guys were nuts, but they fuelled the bands and drove the audience crazy with their energy.

Honkin’ and screamin’ aside, the saxophone, especially the tenor was sounding big and raunchy like never before. Guys were growling more and making it squawk and really wailin’. The honkin’ was a fad that passed quickly but it helped to take the sax to another level of popularity, The rock and roll saxophone sound was now mandatory in all the jump, R&B, and rock and roll bands.

This new sound of the 40′s rhythm and blues produced many rock and roll saxophone stars. Besides the ones I mentioned above, here’s a few others; Joe Houston, Red Prysock, Sam “the man” Taylor, Lee Allen, Willis “gatortail” Jackson, Louis Jordan and King Curtis.

“Tenor battles” were popular as soon as you had a couple greats at any given time, like Coleman Hawkins with Lester Young, or Red Prysock with Sil Austin, and two of my favorites Sam Taylor with King Curtis.

Most of these guys were coming from the swing scene as well but were involved with their own R&B / rock and roll groups or were sidemen to star singers like Little Richard, Fats Domino, Wynonie Harris,and Ray Charles.

Without a doubt, one of the most influential for us guys playing any kind of rock and roll saxophone today is King Curtis, who came onto the New York scene shortly after the rock and roll movement got into full swing in the mid 50′s. Of coarse you’ve heard his sax on many hit records from Aretha Franklin to The Coasters and he had many of his own as well in the 60′s.

Unfortunately he was killed tragically at a young age. For me, his was the quintessential rock and roll saxophone

Rock on JF

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Is it Really Possible to Build a Working RC Jet Engine?

I have been doing some research on this question because up until now RC Jet Engines have been, as you can imagine very expensive to buy. Certainly in the thousands of dollars range, one major manufacturer is Jetcat USA, who have a fantastic range of products, but the do come with a hefty price tag. The problem has always revolved around the turbine and the material it needs to be made of to work efficiently, and absorb the heat involved. Indeed this was exactly the same problem faced by the engineers in Germany at the later part of WW2, they simply could not get the most suitable alloys to ensure the reliability of the early jumo series jets.

During my research I have found that it is now possible to buy an off the shelf Turbine that will form the basis of your home built RC Jet engine. It is clear however that you will still need a reasonable amount of engineering skill to use this turbine and produce a working Jet engine. I think that it would still be possible to out source the manufacture of the components to small local engineering firms, so that you might just need to carry out assembly of the components.

The Turbine will be used to produce a centrifugal type jet engine. This is the type of format favored by the majority of commercial RC Jet engine manufacturers. It is the type of engine first designed by Sir Frank Whittle and used in many early designs of post war aircraft such as the Gloster Meteor, the UK’s first operational Jet Fighter. Later developments saw a switch to the slimmer axial flow engine design, such as we see fitted to modern fighter jets.

I’m sure some very talented modelers out there will just be able to take the of the shelf turbine wheel and go and produce a working RC Jet Engine. For the rest of us mere mortals there are plans available that give us a blue print to work with.

Clearly this will be a major project, but the satisfaction gained, not to mentioned the money saved, will certainly make this project a truly worthwhile one. The only question is, are you up for the challenge?

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While ‘Sixties Abstraction’ was a distillate of all the ideas and experimentations, carried out during the era of ‘Pop Art,’ ‘Abstract Art’ was instrumental in the evolution of ‘Conceptual’ and ‘Performance Art.’ Abstractionists of the caliber of Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jasper Johns, John Cage, Frank Stella, Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Newman, helped revolutionize the contemporary creative degrees.

In the sixties, the New York City witnessed a surge in the artistic interests with the frontrunners, such as artists, collectors, and dealers, converging at Max’s Kansas City. Ideas were juxtaposed, confluences happened, and new trends were set, due to the intermixing of artists, especially ‘Formalists,’ ‘Minimalists,’ ‘Conceptualists,’ and ‘intellectuals.’ The resulting ‘Sixties Abstraction’ was revolutionary, spontaneous, and non-conforming to traditional norms. Art was now a competent medium for questioning the social values, moral, and political ethics, and even introspecting the seriousness of art itself.

The ‘Abstract Art’ of the sixties had the typical traits of ‘Minimalism,’ in which the portrayed subjects used to be reduced to their basic structure, usually a Geometrical form. ‘Colorfield Painting,’ an offshoot of ‘Sixties Abstraction,’ involved downsizing painting to flat, non-illusionary, and self-referential canvasses. ‘Colorfield Abstractionists,’ Morris Louis and Kennet Noland would combine the pools of vibrant colors, or just formed hue rainbows. Larry Aldrich called the peak of ‘Sixties Abstraction,’ as ‘Lyrical Abstraction,’ a more painterly, spiritual, and human-centric art form. In effect, ‘Lyrical Abstraction’ was more expressive and landscape oriented than the ‘Minimal Art’ was.

Creative changes to ‘Sixties Abstraction’ were visible in the styles, techniques, and the subjects of the art works. Andy Warhol painted with the help of machines instead of brushes, and even used soup cans as themes. Similarly, Roy Lichtenstein painted phony brushstrokes. ‘Abstractionist’ Ralph Humphrey’s rich & sensual paintings had simple formats, interspersed with colors, while Frank Stella’s power and energy packed works, and Brice Marden’s diverse emotional aestheticism, would elevate ‘Abstraction’ to an altogether different level. In the ‘Fiberglass Paintings’ of Ronald Davis, the colored planes of resins were painted under the surfaces of pictures. Larry Poons’ ‘Colorfield’ driven ‘Optical Dot Paintings,’ Peter Young’s clustered primary colored dots on white fields, and Dan Christensen’s unique spray gun painting, are some of the landmarks of ‘Sixties Abstraction.’

With everything falling to perfection, the cons associated with the ‘Sixties Abstraction’ included the mushrooming of galleries to cater to the demands of an ever-increasing clientele. As a result, though the ‘Abstractionists’ benefitted financially, creativity suffered, as materialism overshadowed aesthetic reasoning. By late sixties, ‘Lyrical Abstraction’ paved way for ‘Anti-Formalism,’ with ‘Abstractionism’ beginning to grow increasingly obscure.

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If you are interested in change management you probably, like me, have a dozen or more books on your bookshelf, each on one particular dimension of the change management process and none addressing the whole process. You also know you’ll probably buy the next highly acclaimed one to be published as you search for that elusive “answer” that will produce the desired outcomes from your change management initiatives.

This is why Leslie Allan’s book is such a gift to executives, leaders, managers and supervisors who want to initiate a change process in their organizations. It’s a complete guide and true to its subtitle a very practical guide.

How often have you heard the comment: Change doesn’t work? True, it doesn’t for many people and organizations. It doesn’t because change management initiatives are often poorly conceived, planned and implemented. It is important to note at the outset that Leslie Allan believes that for change management initiatives to be successful in organizations they need to be led by the CEO, executives and managers, not HR. So his book outlines a process these people can go through that gives the best guarantee possible that the change they want and need to implement will provide the outcomes they desire.

The book is actually a workbook and that’s why it is so valuable. It takes teams and their leaders through the entire change management process from conception to implementation. It is not, however, the read-chapter-1 and do-chapter-1 and then move-on-to- chapter-2 book. Rather it is a book a change management team, with a commitment to reflective practice, could work through as a group PRIOR to commencing a change process in their organization. This would mean that the leadership team becomes conscious of the possible challenges to the successful implementation of their plan in advance and can address them. In other words, many of the obstacles to success would be addressed BEFORE the process even begins.

This is not, however, a book about slick strategies. At the outset it contextualizes change management which is crucially important for any change management team to do to ensure the integrity of their initiative. This is the part that is often neglected or only superficially addressed and therefore results in a poorly conceived and ultimately failed process. Leslie Allan raises the importance, at the outset, of addressing six contextual issues:

forces for the change – what are both the external and internal forces in their country, industry, organization and in the global community?
scope of the change – how much of the organization will it encompass or impinge on?
objectives of the change – is it about infrastructure, systems, people, structure or culture?
duration of the change – is it short, intermediate or long?
depth of the change – will it be incremental and linear or transformational and multi-dimensional?
direction of the force for change – will it be driven from the top or will it emerge from the front-line workers?
It is Leslie Allan’s six phase, innovatively presented CHANGE process, however, that forms the major part of his book (coloured diagram of this cannot be shown here):

Create tension

Harness support

Articulate goals

Nominate roles

Grow capability

Entrench changes

Each of these phases is addressed in great depth and worksheets are provided for each, allowing people to record and document their ideas and responses as they proceed. While this approach has been presented in a linear fashion so that people can see the process, Leslie Allan makes it very clear that it is not, in practice, a linear process. He makes the point throughout the book that it is people, not machines, that make change happen – or obstruct it – and that those leading the change need to go back and around all the time, re-iterating the vision and repeating the message in a wide variety of ways to gain the support of their people.

In fact, one of the most important chapters for me was the G section on Growing the capability of people. After all this is my area of expertise and interest! Leslie Allan stresses the importance of investing in the organization’s people and their training, taking into consideration their various ways of learning and coming to know and understand, if we want change initiatives to be successful. This fitted well with the emphasis he put on the importance of communication in his H section on Harnessing Support.

One of the great values of this book is that it does address the important planning issues relating to organizational and business objectives. It does address, for example, the performance metrics in change management, but as well it strongly supports the engagement of the organization’s people in the process of change and offers much support, ideas and suggestions for how to do that in a way that will ensure the success of the change initiative. It emphasizes the need for those leading the process to not only be technically proficient but to also have highly developed soft skills, those all important people skills, interpersonal and communication skills.

This book is too comprehensive to review in its entirety. It’s a book, however, that I’d recommend to a whole range of professionals and business leaders, not only to those people initiating a change management process. It has excellent sections for project managers, teams leaders and people engaged in training and development, for example. It also has valuable information on the psychology of resistance and how to win people over to new ideas and change, an excellent section on communication, good information on goal setting and a comprehensive section on team building.

While seeing this book as a very valuable book on change management to have on your bookshelf, I’m not promoting it as the magic bullet of change management, because there is nothing magic about change. It is hard work! The book is, however, a very helpful, practical and excellent guide to the change management process. It charts a path to follow; it raises very pertinent questions for consideration; it offers many, many solutions to common problems faced in change management initiatives. The thirteen worksheets it provides to accompany the book mean that, having worked through the book, the readers have a very well-developed draft of a change management process – all in advance of commencement.

Leslie Allan is Managing Director of Business Performance Pty Ltd, a company specializing in creating practical tools and guides that help HR professionals perform their role more effectively. Mr. Allan has been assisting organizations improve their capability for over 20 years. He has contributed in various roles as manager, consultant and trainer within the manufacturing and service industries, both for public and private sector organizations. Mr. Allan has led and been involved in the full gamut of change programs, including training function start ups, strategic planning, new technology implementations, continuous process improvement, building relocation, workplace communications and customer focus initiatives.

Mr. Allan is a prolific writer on business issues, with many journal and web articles to his credit. He is also the author of five books on employee capability, training and change management. Mr. Allan currently serves as Divisional Council Member for the Australian Institute of Training and Development and is a member of the Australian Institute of Management and the American Society for Quality.

More information about this book can be obtained at http://www.businessperform.com/html/managing_change.html.

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A light rain fell outside the window. The day was cold and windy and brought with it the scent of woodsmoke.

The young girl quickly closed the door, shed her heavy jacket and wool mittens and hung them on the coat rack.

“How was school today, Karly?” her mother called out from the kitchen.

She followed her mother’s voice then sat down at the kitchen table.

Her mother, Linda, was making sugar cookies in the shapes of Christmas trees and snowmen. She opened the oven door and removed a sheet of cookies and put them on a rack to cool. The smell was mouth-watering. Karly stood up and walked quietly over to where the cookies were cooling. One had fallen from the rack and Karly reached out to grab it.

Her mother turned to her and shook her head, a slight smile on her lips, but her eyes were red with unshed tears. “School?” she prompted.

Karly sat down. “School was fine. I got a B on my History test. The bus ride home was boring.”

Her mother nodded, turned her face away and returned to her baking. But not before Karly saw a fat tear fall from her mom’s cheek.

Her voice a little raspy, her mom said, “When I’m finished here, we’ll start decorating the house. And tomorrow night, Christmas Eve, we will put the tree up.” She turned to Karly. “It is really going to feel like Christmas when we get through.”

“Okay, Mom. I’ll get the boxes out of the hall closet.” Then she added, “The cookies smell delicious…”

When she stood to leave, her mother handed Karly a small plate of warm cookies. “Help yourself!” she said with a wry grin.

~*~

By the time they had put the finishing touches on the tree, and the room was thick with the smell of pine, Karly felt the weight of sleep envelop her.

“Honey, your eyelids are at half-mast.” Linda walked over to her daughter, bent down and hugged her gently. “Why don’t you go upstairs, put on your pajamas, brush your teeth, and go to bed.”

Karly nodded. “Goodnight, Mom,” she whispered, then went up to do as bid.

At the top of the stairs she realized she had not kissed her mom goodnight. Karly turned around thinking to run down and kiss her mom, but her mom wasn’t in the living room.

The back door closed with a click and through the window Karly watched as her mother sat in a chair on the patio, bent her head and sobbed. Their white cat, Peaches, slipped out of the shadows to join her mom–winding, lovingly around Linda’s legs.

With a face almost as sad looking as her mother’s, Karly got ready and went to bed.

Snug under heavy warm covers, Karly glanced out at the night past her bedroom window. She cried, too. A year ago, last autumn, her daddy and uncle had gone on a fishing trip to the Smokey Mountains. They were due back home by a certain date. They never showed and a search party was organized. Three days later Linda’s brother, Sam, was found, suffering from exposure, but he made it. Karly’s father, Jeremy, had never been located.

She missed her father painfully but seeing her mom so sad and knowing how she was hurting, Karly had prayed every night, asking God to bring her daddy back. In her letter to Santa, she had told him all she really wanted was for her mom to be happy again.

Before dreams took her away, a shimmering meteor shot brightly through the crisp night sky. “How beautiful,” Karly muttered, then fell asleep.

~*~

Karly got up before morning kissed the sky. Outside a foot of new snow coated the ground with glistening crystals, as soft flakes gathered on tree limbs and atop the cedar wood fence.

Karly stood near the tree and gazed bright-eyed at the gifts colorfully arrayed on the tree skirt. She bent down and added the gift she had made for her mom and as she did, she saw something barely visible at the top of the stairs.

Stepping away from her mother’s bedroom was a tall man, dressed for the cold weather in a heavy coat and cap. When he turned away from the door and looked down into the living room, Karly gasped in excitement.

“Daddy?!” she rasped.

He held his index finger to his lips–a gesture to be quiet. He quickly descended the stairs.

“Oh, my sweet Karly,” he said softly when he reached her. “I cannot stay, Honey.”

She started to respond but he continued and there was urgency in his voice.

“I came to give your mommy a gift. I have done that and now I must go.”

Karly wanted to rush into his arms–give him a big hug, but he was already turning to leave.

“What did you give her, Daddy?”

He smiled and his face was radiant. “Peace. I gave your mother peace.”

Floorboards in her mother’s room creaked. Her mom had woken up and was getting out of bed. Karly glanced up; wishing excitedly that her mother would hurry.

From behind her, Karly heard a scratching at the door. She spun around hoping to still find her father standing there. He was gone, but the scratching continued.

Karly walked over and opened the door. There, on the welcome mat stood Peaches, meowing softly. As Karly opened the door wider to let Peaches in, Karly spotted something in the snow.

Barefoot, she tiptoed in the snow to retrieve the object. What she pulled up out of the snow was a cap with a warm flannel lining–her father’s cap. The one he always wore when he went fishing.

Karly stared at the cap, and then she cast her gaze into the new morning sky. “Tell God thank you, Daddy. Please tell Him I am grateful.”

“I already have, honey.” There was a smile in his voice, “I already have…”

Karly heard her mom calling her. She turned to go inside and as she did she looked down at the cap in her hands. It glittered in her palms, then was gone.

“Karly! Come inside, dear. I have something to tell you.” Her mom sounded happy–alive.

Karly giggled with pure joy. “Me, too, Mom. Me, too!!!” she chimed, as she hurried back inside…

~*~*~

Copyright 2006 Kathy Pippig Harris

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Louisville’s vibrant and diverse arts community includes lively and active theatrical activities provided by the talented effort of Actors Theatre of Louisville, a Tony-Award-winning repertory theatre housed in a 1837 bank building now designated as a national historic landmark.and whose stone columned portion is one of the oldest buildings in Main Street and one of the finest examples of small scale Greek revival architecture in the U.S. As the centerpiece of the city’s urban cultural district, Actors Theatre has made significant economic impact on a vital downtown life and won high acclaim for its artistic programming and business acumen in sponsoring the annual Humana festival of plays which have gone on to New York and London and other ingenious stage productions. The Broadway Series hosts touring productions of Broadway’s best. It also presents approximately six hundred performances of about thirty productions during its year-round season, composed of a diverse array of contemporary and classical fare attracting one of the largest per capita subscription audiences in the country with an annual attendance of over 200,000.

Shakespeare’s plays are continually being staged at the Central Park at South Fourth Street thus transforming Louisville into the Bardstown in summer. But sadly we missed Shakespeare when we trouped down there from our Kurtz Hall residence just up the road one evening and waited in vain for him and the players. We were to see either As You Like it or Romeo and Juliet.

Walden Theatre, the leading theatre conservatory for young people in the U.S, one of the few annual theatre festivals celebrating William Shakespeare in the annual Young American Shakespeare Festival, which are often presented at the Kentucky Center the three stages of which are always alive with entertainment from Broadway to Bach and featuring bagpipes to bluegrass. Five major arts groups delight the senses with music, dance theater, drama and more while its mirrored exterior reflecting the surrounding city. Opened in 1983 the center has multiple performance venues for the internationally renowned Louisville orchestra famous for its recordings of contemporary works, the Louisville ballet and Kentucky Opera which is the twelfth oldest opera in the U.S., the Broadway Series, Stage One, The Louisville Children’s Theatre and extraordinary local, national, and international talents.

Images Friedonas Gallery features Julius Friedman’s posters as well as works by many other nationally and internationally respected artists. This 10,000 square feet gallery in the Louisville Design Center, located in the downtown hotel and entertainment district, features a variety of plays and concerts.

The Louisville Palace, the official venue for the Louisville Orchestra, is an elegant, ornate theatre in downtown Louisville’s so-called theatre district. In addition to orchestra performances, the theatre also features an array of popular movies, old and new, as well as concerts by popular artists. Located nearby is the Kentucky Theater, which was built in 1921 and operated for 60 years as a movie house, but was closed and almost demolished in 1986. Ultimately it was saved by local arts advocates, and the newly renovated Kentucky Theater opened its doors in 2000 and has become a vibrant community arts center and art film house.

The Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation Gallery serves as a spectacular retail outlet for some of Kentucky’s finest craftworks and sponsors regular traveling exhibits and workshops.

The Fund for the Arts the first and oldest in the U.S. has the bust of its founder former Mayor Charles Farmsley sitting proudly as if still alive in front of its headquarters.

Louisville is distinguished, like many American cities, with a multitude of museums of art, science and sports as well as monuments and historic sites and homes preserved for posterity amongst which is The Speed Art Museum which I happened to have visited in June 2006. Though described as the state’s first art museum holding collections spanning 6000 years with works by Rembrandt, Picasso, Monet, Rubens and Moore, modern American, African, ancient and Native American artists being exhibited here our visit was focused on the highly eclectic and post-modernist work of the African-American alumni of University of Louisville, Sam Gilliam whose works have traveled far and wide in America up to the Corcoran Gallery. His works are an adventurous and experimental combination of techniques and materials: pastiche, cloth-dyeing, candle work, wood, formica, mat-marking and pottery used to amazing effects especially in his daring display and combination of colors and use of space and the suggestion of patterned folds and ties hanging loose from the ceiling. An art learning center, a café Bristol and a Museum Shop exhibiting and hawking artifacts, curios and dresses from all over the world adds to Speed Arts Museum’s compulsion.

The Speed Art Museum was founded in 1925 by Hattie Bishop Speed as a memorial to her husband, James Breckinridge Speed, a prominent Louisville businessman and philanthropist. Designed by Louisville architect Arthur Loomis, the museum opened its doors on January 15, 1927, with an exhibition sponsored by the Louisville Art Association.

In 1934, the museum received Its first major donation, a valuable collection of North American Indian artifacts given by Dr. Frederick Weygold in 1934 was followed in 1941 by, Dr. Preston Pope Satterwhite making a significant gift – his collection of 15th century and 16th century French and Italian Decorative Arts including tapestries and furniture.and in 1944, he donated the English renaissance room, which was moved in its entirety from Devonshire, England necessitating an enlargement of the museum. The addition bearing his name was completed in 1954, as the first of three additions to the original building.

The Speed Art Museum Kentucky’s oldest and largest art museum with over 12,000 pieces in its permanent collection boasts of an extensive and historic collection ranging from ancient Egyptian to contemporary art featuring distinguished collections of 17th century Dutch and Flemish painting, 18th century French art, Renaissance and Baroque tapestries, and significant holdings of contemporary American painting and sculpture. African and Native American works are a growing segment of the museum’s collection. On its upper level, small cabinet galleries provide an intimate atmosphere for the museum’s collection of European paintings and sculpture.

During the tenure of Paul S. Harris the first professional director from 1946, acquisitions to the collection were made mostly in the areas of decorative arts and furniture. In 1962, he was succeeded by Addison Franklin Page, curator of contemporary art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. who further enriched and expanded the museum collection. After another major addition to the building in 1973, the Speed celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1977 with the acquisition of Rembrandt’s magnificent Portrait of a Woman. Mr. Page and the Board of Governors led the campaign to raise the $1.5 million necessary to purchase the work, one of the museum’s most significant acquisitions.

Mr. Page retired as Director in 1984 and was followed in 1986 by Peter Morrin, who was formerly curator of 20th century art at the High Museum in Atlanta who in continuing the enrichment of the collection, initiated an outreach program to involve the communities the museum serves. While the museum was closed for a dramatic renovation project in 1996, the museum received a life-changing gift, a bequest of more than $50 million from Alice Speed Stoll, granddaughter of James Breckinridge Speed. The bequest one of the largest given to any art museum significantly increased the Speed’s endowment, ranking it among the top 25 in the United States. Mrs. Stoll’s bequest secured the museum’s future and has allowed for several significant acquisitions including Jacob van Ruisdael’si, (1653), and Paul Cezanne’s Post-Impressionist masterpiece, Two Apples on a Table (about 1895-1900).

Since reopening in November 1997, the Speed Museum has dazzled the region with exciting traveling exhibitions,and new acquisitions to the permanent collection. It has also benefited greatly by a bequest from the estate of long-time Board of Governors member General Dillman A. Rash who left the museum works by Marc Chagall, Jean Dubuffet, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Maurice Utrillo.

The museum supported entirely by donations, endowments, grants, ticket sales, and memberships focuses its collection on Western art, from antiquity to the present day. Holdings of paintings from the Netherlands, French and Italian works, and contemporary art are particularly strong, with Sculpture prominent throughout. Representative artists include Rembrandt van Rijn, Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Tiepolo, Henry Moore, Thomas Gainsborough, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso, and contemporary artists Frank Stella, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Francis, Petah Coyne, Sam Gilliam, Vito Acconci, and Juan Munoz.

The Speed Art museum has come a long way since Mrs. Speed first opened the doors to the original museum nearly 80 years ago with its magnificent building and impressive collection of over 13,000 pieces serving more than 180,000 visitors each year, making it a nationally recognized institution.

The Speed Art Museum’s original 1927 limestone building was designed by Louisville architect Arthur Loomis. Loomis chose the Greek Revival style for the exterior and employed large skylights in the roof to bathe the galleries in natural light. There have been three major additions and one extensive renovation to the original 1927 building.

The Preston Pope Satterwhite Wing was added in 1954 to honor Dr. Satterwhite, a prominent benefactor of the museum. The Satterwhite Wing contains much of his own collection of medieval and renaissance works including tapestries and other decorative arts. A focal point in the wing is a 17th century carved period room from England.

The North addition, designed by Brenner, Danforth, and Rockwell of Chicago, opened in 1973. This addition showcases the museum’s 20th century art and features an auditorium and café.

The South addition, the museum’s most recent wing, designed by Robert Geddes of Princeton, New Jersey, opened in 1983. On its upper level, small cabinet galleries provide an intimate atmosphere for the museum’s collection of European paintings and sculpture. Also included in the addition are special galleries for temporary exhibitions.

Today, the Speed Art Museum has over 150,000 square feet of gallery, exhibition, and administrative space, making it the largest collection of art paintings, sculpture, furniture, and decorative arts by Kentucky artists. Since completing a major $12 million renovation and expansion in 1997, the Speed has brought major exhibitions of photography, painting, design, and sculpture to the region to help fulfill its ambitious mission: bringing great art and people together

The Speed Art Museum is housed in the University campus whilst the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, is located in Louville’s “Museum Row” in the West Main District of downtown. It is a nonprofit organization founded in 1981 to continue the art and craft heritage of Kentucky through the support and education of craft artists and education of the public. It supports regional as well; as national artists thus illustrating Kentucky’s long heritage of fine functional and decorative wood-working. The museum is supported in part by the Fund for the Arts and Kentucky Arts Council, a state agency of the Commerce Cabinet. Founded in 1981 by Phyllis George Brown, then First Lady of Kentucky and former Miss America, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft (formerly Art and Craft Foundation) was started as a dream to build interest in Kentucky’s rich craft and art resources. With the help of Mary Shands, the seeds were quickly sown for the Kentucky Art and Craft Foundation to continue to develop and eventually have a physical presence in Louisville. In 1984 the organization moved into the lower level of 609 West Main Street for retail and exhibition space and in spite of West Main Street being very deserted, the importance and popularity of the organization exploded.

The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft was established to promote the rich art and craft heritage of Kentucky through three main areas of programming: exhibition, education, and support of artists through a retail Gallery Shop. Since 1984 the organization has presented over 175 exhibitions, reaching approximately 65,000 viewers annually thus becoming a leader on the national forefront in preserving and advancing the art and craft heritage of Kentucky. by 1991. As part of the national “Year of the American Craft” the organization was recognized for its exemplary and unprecedented contributions to the documentation and interpretation of the cultural history of the commonwealth.

The organization has seen artists progress from novices to masters and Main Street transform from an almost a deserted noncommercial street to a thriving business and cultural district. By bringing the work of nationally recognized artists to Kentucky and by bringing the work of Kentucky artists to the national scene, KMAC has been able to preserve art and craft heritage and advance it.

Over ten years ago the organization started educational programming as part of their mission. In January of 2001 the organization purchased two adjacent buildings at 715 and 717 West Main Street in the heart of Louisville’s West Main Street Historic District. Built in the 1880s the building is a four-story cast iron structure with a beautiful pastel facade and giant windows. After renovation, the facility provides the organization with 28,500 square feet of interior space in which to operate, spread over four floors and a lower level.The new facility increased the size and visibility of the Gallery Shop, with frontage on Main Street, and houses three exhibition galleries: the Steve Wilson Gallery, the Mary & Al Shands Gallery, and the Lindy & Bill Street Gallery. The Lindy & Bill Street Gallery, on the second floor overlooking Main Street, is rented for meetings and entertaining. The third floor houses the Education Center and the fourth floor is used for administrative offices.

Just across the street we saw the Frazier International History Museum holding as ever a collection of arms, armor and related historical artifacts dating from 1,000 years back.

West Main Street at the center of Old Louisville downtown is at the heart of the cultural district featuring the second largest collection of cast-iron facades in the U.S, which in itself is a collection of the rarest arts in the world as well as a reservoir of individual art pieces as well as artistic activities..

Iroquois Park is the home of the renovated Iroquois Amphitheater which hosts the productions of Music Theatre Louisville as well as a variety of musical concerts in a partially covered outdoor setting.

Louisville is home to a thriving music scene with bands such as the widely known Flaw, Musica Silentis Doloris (MSD), False, Incursion 502 and Evil Engine 9. It is also home to the former members of the once post-grunge band Days of the New.

On Fourth Street in downtown is the brand new Fourth Street Live! outdoor entertainment complex, which features a wide variety of restaurants, stores and nightclubs. The complex sponsors many free concerts, as does the popular Waterfront Park.

The large performing arts community played a role in the relocation of ZFX Inc, the second largest theatrical flying special effects company in the world, from Las Vegas to Louisville in 2006.

FURTHER READING ON ART IN LOUISVILLE:

http://www.art-sanctuary.org/about.php

http://www.louisville.com/

http://doreentarter.localglobalconnect.com/ http://kristigrimaldo.weebloggity.com/

One of the most distinguished poets of our time Claude McKay was born in Sunny Ville, Jamaica, British West Indies in September 15, 1889, as the youngest of eleven children of his peasant parents in Jamaica, Thomas Francis and Ann Elizabeth (Edwards) McKay. McKay’s family was fairly well off having received land from the bride’s and the groom’s fathers.He. is mostly known by his much-quoted sonnet: “If we Must Die” which was popularized during World War II by British Prime Minister, Sir Winston Churchill.

Raised in Sunny Ville, in Clarendon Hills Parish by a compassionate mother and a stern father who passed on to his children much of the Ashanti customs and traditions of Ghana where he hailed from, his poetry demonstrates his undying attachment to his roots and a deep affection for Clarendon where he was born and raised. Such nostalgia for Jamaica was demonstrated even in his later poems when abroad.

His early dialect verse makes nostalgic references to the Clarendon Hills. His father, Thomas McKay, had always shared with his children the story of his own father’s enslavement seeking thus to instill in them a suspicion of whites that would become particularly evident in the writings of his son. McKay’s profound respect for the sense of community encountered among rural Jamaican farmers and a somewhat skeptical attitude toward religion encouraged by his older brother, an elementary school teacher, left an indelible mark on his literary work.

At seventeen, McKay through a government sponsorship became apprenticed to a cabinet-maker in Brown’s Town. At nineteen, moving on to Kingston, the capital, he joined the Police Force where his gentle disposition received its first great jolt. For then West Indian Policemen were recruited more for their muscle than their brain, which they were expected to celebrate and honor every hour whilst on the beat.

The Police Force was therefore not the best place for one like McKay who was always upset by human suffering. Two collections of poetry that he published in 1912 emerged largely out of his experience as a constabulary which he found along with urban life in general to be alienating. He felt uncomfortably located between the Jamaican elite and the great mass of the urban poor. Many of the concerns that would occupy much of his later work such as the opposition of the city and the country, the problems of exile, and the relation of the black intellectuals to their common folks appear first in these poems.

His second volume of poems of dialect verse Constab Ballads accurately records such experiences. His first volume of poems Songs of Jamaica was written only to relieve his bitter feelings of guilt while in the force. He calmly keeps reprimanding those responsible for social injustices to his people. To relieve his feelings, he sought to write of redeeming features in the dark picture. His gentle nature led him to pity his people’s suffering and to protest against it. He thus got compelled to relieve himself by celebrating their cheerfulness and other positive qualities. Their interest and vitality as human beings is enriched by their cheerfulness and good humor which vibrates in spite of generally dispiriting conditions.

His sympathy for the criminals, whom he often considered the victims of an unjust colonial order, could not allow him to work as a police constable beyond a year. During the ensuing two years back at Clarendon Parish he was encouraged to write Jamaican Dialect Poetry by Walter Jekyll, an English collector of island folklore with whom McKay had forged a close relationship. Jekyll had introduced him to English poets such as Milton and Pope.

In 1912 McKay published two volumes of poetry Songs of Jamaica and Constab Ballads. Songs of Jamaica with an introduction and melodies by Jekyll to celebrate the unpretentious nature and the simplicity of the Jamaican peasants who are closely bonded to their native soil. Constab Ballads centres more on Kingston and the contempt and exploitation suffered there by dark-skinned blacks at the hands of whites and mulattos. These books made McKay the first black to receive the medal of the Jamaican Institute of Arts and Sciences with a substantial cash award which he was to use to fund his education at Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, the United States.

He seemed to have regretted later having been “an agent of colonial oppression in a most brutal manner.” In both works McKay made extensive use of the Jamaican language, a patois of English.

When in 1912 McKay left Jamaica for the U.S.A., it was inevitable that this should lead to an eruption of Negro verse from his pen. For here was a man with a proud sense of his race, who had seen his people suffering in Jamaica and had fled an evergreen land with its luxuriantly waving palms bending to the force of the persistent tropical winds in quest of more opportunities in a more open world.

And he goes to America to meet unimaginable Negro suffering. But rather than return to the less demanding life of Jamaica, he felt a compulsion to remain and join the struggle, for he was already bound with the American blacks in their bondage. And no wonder. For McKay’s early years in New York were a time of growing racial bitterness, with the stiffening of the South. Negro disillusionment with Booker T. Washington and a consequent adjustment of the Negro attitude; the increase in white hysteria and violence, which was to become even harsher after the war which had been fought by them as well as in defence of democracy and the rise of Garveyism and the hostility between Garvey and the N.A.A.C.P. and others – all such factors combined to bring about the Negro Renaissance, of which McKay became an integral part.

McKay however maintained for a long time a sober reaction to his new and disturbing environment. Determined to maintain the dignity of his poet’s calling, he refused to allow the quality of his reaction as a poet to be warped. He equally refused to allow his ambitions and status as a human being to be destroyed. His verses remained virile keeping with the prevailing atmosphere then, for those early years in America were really crucial years for the Black cause. But the virility of his verse is based on more than mere bitterness. It includes and depends on a certain resilience – or stubborn humanity traceable to McKay’s capacity to react to Negro suffering not just as a Negro, but as a human being. For as he maintains, the writer must always retain this capacity for a larger and more basic reaction as a human being to maintain his humanity.

In so doing he would avoid stunting his emotional growth and his stature as a human being. By identifying with his own race, a writer can proceed to that greater and more meaningful identification based on his humanity thus qualifying him to handle “racial” material.

“If We Must Die” immediately won popularity among Afroamericans, but the tone of the Negro critics was apologetic. To them a poem that voiced the deep-rooted instinct of self-preservation seemed merely a daring piece of impertinence. William S Braithwaite whom McKay described as the dean of Negro critics denounced him as a “violent and angry propagandist using his poetic gifts to clothe [arrogant] and defiant thoughts.” Whilst another disciple characterized him as “rebellious and vituperative.”

McKay goes on to point out the lapses and failings in respectable Negro opinion and criticism. This in turn brings in distortions and evasions in their representation and interpretation of the social realities informing the texts.

This brought about the apparent ambivalence in his love-hate relationship with America. Having had no illusions about America and the experience of its Negroes, he could at the same time pay her the tribute she deserved: one reflecting both its appeal as well as its bitter dejection. which he still endures as a necessary test of his resilience. In paying her this tribute he triumphs through his successful resistance to the threat of spiritual corrosion America’s ‘hate’ threatens to start within him. He could thus “stand within her walls with not a shred / Of terror, malice, not a word of fear.” Or as in “Through Agony,” he refuses to meet hate with hate. McKay thus continued his admiration for America despite the pain which she caused.

McKay sees not only the violence done to his own people, but that which the whites inflict on themselves as well. McKay is touched by misery: in “The Castaway” where, standing in a beautiful park, he is attracted not by the visible delights of nature but by “the castaways of earth,” the lonely and derelict, and turns away in misery. And it is mot clear and does not matter if they are black or white. In “Rest in Peace” his tender heart responds to the suffering of his people as he bids farewell to a departed friend.

McKay meets America’s challenge as man and poet. He meets the challenge which America’s hate sets for his humanity, and in his resistance he flings back his challenge to the forces of hate in “America.” As poet and man he enforces self-discipline which gives to his pain a dignity through which his verse sometimes transcends racial protest and becomes human protest.

McKay’s poetry certainly reflected another aspect of Negro reaction. This reaction is a new consciousness of the African connection following Marcus Garvey’s “Back to Africa” appeal. Intellectual Negro poetry was thus moving nearer to Africa spiritually. Garvey’s call for a black man’s religion was paralleled in sophisticated verse, So was his insistence on the past glories of the Negro race. So was the new pride he encouraged in Negro beauty and indeed in everything black, ideas of which he sometimes put into rather indifferent verse romanticizing Africa. McKay does the same in poems like “Harlem Shadows.”

When McKay arrived in America he enrolled in Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute with the intent to study agriculture disrupted his studies at Tuskegee Institute after only two months there and out of frustration. He enrolled at Kansas State College where he remained until 1914. Then after two years he resumed his career as a writer. He then went to new York where like Hughes he landed in Harlem. Whilst familiarizing himself with the literary scene in New York, he supported himself as a waiter and a porter from 1915 to 1918. His first break came in 1917 when Waldo Frank, a Jewish radical novelist and cultural critic published two of his sonnets “The Harlem Dancer” and “Invocation” in the December issue of The Seven Arts, a highly respected avant-garde magazine.

Between 1918 and 1919, McKay went abroad, visited England and lived in London for more than a year. There he compiled Spring in New Hampshire and Other Poems (1920). In 1919, on his return to New York, McKay joined the staff of Liberator magazine as associate editor and continued in that position until 1922, a period in which Max Eastman was then the editor. In 1922, McKay completed Harlem Shadows, a work of poetry considered a landmark of the Harlem Renaissance .

Short- story writer Frank Harris who published several of McKay’s poems in Pearson’s seems also to have made a major impression on the young poet. Unlike later black writers, McKay did not rely primarily on such periodicals as the Crisis and Opportunity as outlets for his verse. Though he wrote for black magazines occasionally, his literary ties were mostly with white publications, particularly with the leftist magazines based in Greenwich Village. Indeed, Max Eastman, the dean of the American literary left in the early twentieth century, published McKay’s “The Dominant White” in the April 1919 issue of The Liberator and nine more of his poems in the July issue. McKay later served as Eastman’s editorial staff contributing essays and reviews as well as poetry. He also befriended the famous white American poet Edward Arlington Robinson.

In 1919, he met George Bernard Shaw the British playwright whilst visiting England. G.K Ogden included nearly two dozen of McKay’s poems in the summer 1920 issue of Cambridge Magazine. I.A. Richards, one of the foremost English literary critics of the twentieth century, wrote the preface for McKay’s third book of verse, Spring in New Hampshire. According to Richards, McKay’s was among the best works being produced in Great Britain then.

On his return to the US, McKay continued to work for and contribute to a number of publications including that of his fellow Jamaican, Marcus Garvey, Negro World. The next year in 1922, he published his most important poetry collection, Harlem Shadows, thus virtually inaugurating the Harlem Renaissance. That book was a means through which he could place the militant “If We Must Die” inside of a book. This sonnet inspired by the racial violence that racked America in 1919 interpreted as a war-like cry by black radicals later served as one of the unofficial rallying cries of the Allied Forces in World War II, particularly after being recited in an emotionally charged speech before the House of Commons in response to Nazi Germany’s threat of invasion during World War II. Harlem Shadows marked a point of no return for several literary figures in Harlem who saw in McKay’s masterful treatment of racial issues evidence that a black writer’s insights into matters of race could serve on more than on occasional basis as suitable subjects for poetry.

That same year McKay visited the USSR. For being active in the social justice movement, McKay had become a Communist, believing that communism offered his cause greater hope. In 1923, in Moscow McKay addressed the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, as a black poet sympathetic to the Soviet cause. He achieved instant popularity among the proletariat as well as with Communist Party officials of the USSR. He was introduced to the Soviet leaders and had his poem “Petrograd May Day, 1923″ published in translation in Pravda. Nevertheless, dismayed by the rigid ideological requirements of the Communist Party concerning all artistic productions, and perhaps a little tired of being treated as a novelty, and having to subjugate his art to political propaganda.

McKay traveled extensively abroad. After visits to Berlin and Paris, he settled down in France for a decade. He, however, remained in contact with the expatriate community of American writers.

Whilst in France his first novel Home to Harlem was produced in 1928 and work on his second Banjo was started. This last novel was completed during his travels in Spain and Morocco in 1929.

In these two novels of the 1920s McKay investigated how the concepts of race and class worked in a world dominated by capitalism and colonialism, and how cosmopolitan and rural black communities can be reconciled to each other.

Home to Harlem. the first bestseller novel by an African-American that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature was reprinted five times in two months. It was more commercially successful than any novel by an African American author to that point. For it satisfied a consuming curiosity among Americans for information about the nightlife and the lowlife of Harlem. The novel examines two characters who literally take the reader on a tour of Harlem. Jake, an African American longshoreman, a hedonist, and a World War 1 veteran, deserts the army and returns to his beloved Harlem where he falls in love with a whore after she affectionately and surreptitiously returns the money he has paid her.

Through Jake we are introduced to Ray, a Haitian intellectual expatriate who worries constantly and feels isolated from the African American community as a result of his European education. He thus envies Jake who is more spontaneous and direct. As for Ray, his own desire to become a writer interferes with his enjoyment of life. The stern W.E.B. Du Bois was caustic in denouncing McKay’s presentation of Harlem, declaring that the book “for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth, I feel distinctly like taking a bath.” In response, McKay accused Du Bois of failing to make the proper distinction “between the task of propaganda and the work of art.”

Ray appears again in Banjo with another “natural” black character, the African American musician Lincoln Agrippa Daily. Set in the old French port of Marseilles, this second novel of McKay features a shifting group of black longshoremen sailors and drifters from Africa. As in his first, McKay articulates the need for the exiled black intellectual to return to his common black folks.

McKay’s third novel, Banana Bottom regarded generally as his finest fictional achievement takes the theme of the two previous novels even further. It depicts also a black individual in white western culture juxtaposing two opposing value systems – Anglo-Saxon civilization versus Jamaican folk culture. It tells the story of a Jamaican peasant girl, Bita Plant, who is rescued by white missionaries after being raped. In taking refuge with her new protectors she also becomes their prisoner with all their cultural values being foisted upon her and her introduction to their organized Christian educational system.

All this culminates in a bungled attempt to arrange her marriage to an aspiring priest. But Bita escapes from him as he attempts to rape her. But later overcoming the memory of rape she returns to the people in their native town of Jubilee where she eventually finds happiness – fulfillment. She ends up thus rejecting European culture and the Jamaican elite, choosing to rejoin the farming folk. This novel did not make much of an impression on the reading public then.

After twelve years wandering through Europe and North Africa, McKay returned to Harlem. Three years later in 1937 he completed his autobiography, A Long Way from Home, in a futile attempt to bolster his financial and literary fortunes. His interest in Roman Catholicism which was growing significantly during the 1940s after his repudiation of communism and officially joined the church in 1944. Though he wrote much new poetry then, he failed to publish any, a failure he blamed on the Communist Party in the U.S. ). His final work Selected Poems (1953) was published posthumously.

From 1932 until his death in Chicago 1948, McKay never left the United States. His interest in communism dwindled, according to Sister Mary Anthony: he had caught some of the spirit of that Catholic apostolate. And gradually he came to realize for himself that in Catholicism lay the hope of the race, indeed, of all the races. He was received into the Church in Chicago in October, 1944, by Bishop Bernard Sheil and is now on the staff of the Bishop Sheil School in that city.

By the mid 1940s McKay’s health had deteriorated and after enduring several illnesses, he died of heart failure in Chicago in 1948.

McKay’s work as a poet, novelist, and essayist has been widely seen as heralding several of the most significant moments in African American culture. His protest poetry was seen by many as the premier example of the “New Negro” spirit. His novels were sophisticated considerations of the problems and possibilities of Pan-Africanism at the end of the colonial era, influencing writers of African descent throughout the world. His early poetry in Jamaican patois and his fiction set in Jamaica are now seen as crucial to the development of a national Jamaican literature.

Stephanie Gonzales http://realestatebarcamp.org/terriworley/ http://blog.thaimuslim.com/joeyamavisca/

In the hollow of the night; it takes many shapes…

A blanket–soft, like brushed suede.

Wispy and frail, like a newborn soul.

Ephemeral and ghosty, gathering in ragged bits.

A vertical sheet, numinous and glowing.

The mist strokes the earth, grass,

surrounding trees,

and takes a part of them with it–

a breath of pine, an exhalation of damp soil,

the fragrance of autumn dried grasses.

And the mist leaves a moist zephyr of its self behind…

a shivery, wet caress.

The mist revels in the dark shroud of night,

or the dim gray of a wintry cold morning.

Winter and autumn are its preferred seasons,

yet it will pay a visit on the odd spring day.

It is dark and creeping on a moonless night–

bold and daring when the moon is full and bright.

In the harvested fields of an October evening,

that blanket of white hugging the damp earth, beckons–

Calling all souls.

The mist in the hollow embraces me.

It does not part for me when I enter,

but instead becomes me,

fuses with me–the shimmer of it…

the mystery.

The hidden aspect of its nature reveals to me

what others only perceive as gray, and obscuring.

On a still night, the eddy you espy in the mist, is me;

my spirit, going for a moonlit stroll.

The sole bit of shredded gray, which rolls o’er the headstone of the dead–is me.

There, in that frothy nimbus above the lake, or the river; I can be found.

Welling up from the hollow in the weald, to ghost amid the trees; you’ll find me in the brume.

When you enter the mist in the hollow, does it part for you?

Or do you get wet?

Obsessed, am I–this night–with the mist.

~~*~~

The mist is the pall that hangs like drapes over the lake, or swamp during the twilight hour.

And, it is the drizzle that mingles with sea air and ghosts over the breakers, then scurries past the beach and on to the cliffs. It is thick and tangy with brine as it creeps under doorways, wends ’round drowsy towns, knocks on the door of the widow on the hill, brushes the children’s swing back and forth in the churchyard, and then travels on.

Copyright 2000 by Kathy Pippig Harris

http://ednafogle.weearth.com/ http://jonchesnut.blenderindonesia.org/